The image of the Achaemenid Empire in German textbooks under imperialism (1880-1918)

The conflict between Europe and Asia is an important tradition of European historical culture. A key motif of this narrative are the wars between the Persian Empire under the Achaemenids and Greek Poleis in the 5th century BC. in which Greek victories are said to have saved Europe from Asian barbarism. It seems obvious that this narrative is emphasized in a special way in textbooks under imperialism. However, a look at the textbooks shows that differentiations are necessary. The early Persian kings, especially Cyrus, are presented in most textbooks as successful rulers who created and effectively administered a world empire, which could serve as a model especially in the time of imperialism. As Asiatic barbarians, the Persians appear in some textbooks at the time when the Persian Empire collapsed under Alexander's attack.

Explaining and narrating history.

This post-doc-project focuses on the question, which types of explanation could be tought and measured in digital learning modules. Using the platform offene-geschichte.de the project explores the potential of explanations -written by students in 9th and 10th grade- in explanations as its own text-genre as well as an integral part of complete (historical) narrations. The assumption that literacy in writing in simplified tasks manifests itself in different ways than in written explanations as part of a complete narration, should be tested in digital modules, which address global history. The performance study wants to investigate authentic proficiency levels of explanations without distortion by already known narrations in public history and history class.

Shaping the future through school reform. „Gesamtschulen“ and the subject of „Gesellschaftslehre“ as forms of social engineering

In the 1970s, „Gesamtschulen“ were founded in North Rhine-Westphalia and the subject of „Gesellschaftslehre“ was conceived as an integration of history, geography and political studies. This involved a reform strategy of a gradually developing erosion of the traditional tripartite school system and the independent subject of history in the 1960s, which was perceived as contingency by the participants. With the help of innovative institutions the active shaping of the schoolsystem and the future society was sought, which was supposed to correspond to the prevailing ideas of democratization, political participation, and emancipation at that time. So far, historical research has not yet focused on the processes of the emergence of the „Gesamtschule“ and the subject of „Gesellschaftslehre“. The dissertation project therefore examines the development of „Gesamtschulen“ and the subject of „Gesellschaftslehre“ in North Rhine-Westphalia (1969-1980) from a historical-didactic and contemporary-historical perspective. The approach will be based on the concept of social engineering. The question is raised as to what extent the shaping of individual student behavior aimed for in the course of this development should bring about a reform of the entire future society.

Learning history digitally - on the learning concept of web-based learning software. An empirical investigation." (embedded in the Graduate College "GKqL").

Despite the availability of digital applications for historical learning, there is a lack of research regarding learning processes in digital media and digital task formats. Therefore, this project contributes to the empirical research of a web-based solution using the example of the learning platform segu for historical learning. The approach of this study is dichotomous: evaluation of the offered content on the learning platform, followed by an empirical study based on a qualitative explorative design.

At first, the content evaluation aims at typologizing the tasks and learning materials. For this purpose, the construction principles of the tasks, the complexity of the task formulation, the cognitive demand level and media usage are examined.

In the second step, hypotheses are derived regarding the performance of student tandems in working on digital historical learning tasks. Therefore, the students are videographed while working on a learning module of the segu platform. Sampling will follow the theoretical sampling approach and consists of 10 pairs of students (N = 10). The documentary method is the chosen evaluation method as it allows access to the explicit and implicit knowledge of the test persons. The main contribution of this study is the reconstruction of student behaviour and applied processes regarding digital tasks: How do the students communicate about digital learning tasks and which are the chosen processes? Which historical thinking operations do they show when working on different digital learning tasks? Do they resort to subject-specific cognitive procedures or general classroom-specific routines? How do they interact with the computer? Does the human-technology interaction influence the solution path?

Acceptance and use of digital media in history lessons. An empirical analysis of the situation in the administrative district of Düsseldorf

Within the framework of an empirical study, teachers working in the administrative district of Düsseldorf were given the opportunity to describe their use of (not only) digital media in history lessons and to articulate their attitudes, experiences and needs for improvement in this regard. Furthermore, the research project intends to open up "acceptance" for history didactics. The design of the quantitative study therefore focuses on the following three elements:

1. determination of the relationship between acceptance and historical learning by adapting the findings of general acceptance and specialised technology acceptance research.

2. theoretical analysis of the existing findings with regard to the concept of media and media use from a general and, in particular, history didactic perspective.

3. empirical investigation of practical media use in North Rhine-Westphalian history lessons by means of a questionnaire-based data collection with special consideration of digital teaching and learning offers

The practice of historical culture 2.0 - an investigation into the content and beliefs contributed by users on the video platform YouTube

The information structures of historical-cultural knowledge are progressively transforming - away from analog data storage towards digital media technology. The resulting discussions in historical didactics are influenced by terms and concepts from the IT industry, which imply a comprehensive, if not revolutionary, change in existing requirements for historical education. They serve utopias that are based on desirable goals such as progressive democratization and diversification of the media landscape. However, these expectations have not yet been empirically proven.

Describing History, Explaining History. An investigation of subject-specific writing concepts and skills of comprehensive school students at secondary level I.

Language is one of the constitutive elements of history education. Students encounter it not only as a subject in the course of dealing with sources and representations, but it is also the medium of the learning process. In the process of historical reasoning, the development of historical judgements requires a variety of subject-specific speech acts. The development of descriptions and explanations is initiated primarily in the form of the so-called "operators" included in the tasks. Under the title: "Describing History, Explaining History. An investigation of subject-specific writing concepts and skills of comprehensive school students at secondary level I", an attempt was made to work out theoretically and empirically the linguistic-cognitive and subject-specific requirements for the operators "Describe" and "Explain" used in written tasks in history lessons. The aim was to promote students' subject-specific writing skills and to develop their historical reasoning skills.

Publication: https://www.vandenhoeck-ruprecht-verlage.com/detail/index/sArticle/57607

History as a Writing Subject. An Empirical Exploration of the Interrelation between language-related and subject-related Learning

In history lessons, the written handling of tasks for engaging with the past is common practice. However, the writing of and about history in subject-specific text genres is seldom practiced. This situation is disadvantageous on one hand because history is often encountered in the form of “text”. On the other hand, reflecting on history requires specific cognitive operations based on educational and domain-specific language skills. The specialized use of language can thus be considered both a precondition and a goal for historical education. Learners need to be explicitly taught how to handle this form of language in history lessons because language proficiency ultimately plays a crucial role in the success of historical education. This claim is supported by a key finding in the empirical study described here: the study revealed a close connection between learners' first-order concepts, their educational language skills, and their ability to perform linguistic speech-actions in the context of "historical reasoning." Additional findings suggest that the relevant domain-specific language skills are best conveyed in history lessons, preferably within the context of subject-specific text genres.

Publication: https://www.vandenhoeck-ruprecht-verlage.com/detail/index/sArticle/57659

Josef Suwelack (1888-1915): Aviation Pioneer, Entrepreneur, War Participant. Approaches to a Westphalian Aviator and his Myth

The research project is dedicated to the biography of Josef Suwelack (1888-1915) in an individual case analysis. Born and raised in Billerbeck in Westphalia, he was an aviation pioneer, an 'entrepreneur' in aircraft design and production in Berlin and Essen, and fell as a pilot of a German reconnaissance plane in 1915 over the Western Front of World War I in France.

The positivistic genre-specificity of aviation biographies such as those about the "Red Baron" Manfred von Richthofen can also be observed in large parts of the tradition about Josef Suwelack and can also be found in other aviation biographies. In general, it can be noted that the reception documents about the Westphalian aviator show a high degree of individualization and stylization.

To offer the reader an alternative proposal for dealing with Suwelack's story and to make him him aware of the mechanisms of his aviator (hero) construction are central concerns of the work. The aim of the deconstruction is to identify how the myths about Josef Suwelack are anchored in the aviator topicality and to analyze the underlying narrative intention in a diachronic comparison. In the reconstruction, in turn, contingencies - discontinuities, breaks, and less plannable or planned moments and decisions - shall be made visible.

Publication: https://www.schoeningh.de/katalog/titel/978-3-506-79298-3.html

Textbook narrations of history: Places to deal with the future?

The project deals with the role of the future in school history textbooks. The production process and the design of future narratives are examined. In contrast to previous history didactic textbook research, the content analysis of future narratives is linked to their creation and production process. On the first level, the project asks how future narratives are designed in terms of content, what role they play in the textbook and what topics find their way into it. On the second level, the production process is analysed praxeologically and asked how this particular form of textbook narrative is created, confirmed in correction and approval procedures and published in the school history textbook.

Publication: https://www.vandenhoeck-ruprecht-verlage.com/themen-entdecken/geschichte/zeitgeschichte-ab-1949/52107/die-zukunft-erzaehlen

Alterity in history lessons.

Can students understand other cultures through teaching? History lessons should enable students to understand the positions and ways of thinking of historical actors. The project addressed the question of whether and how foreign cultures can be experienced through history lessons and how the acquired level of understanding can be captured empirically. For this purpose, a model of perspective taking was developed in connection with currently discussed competency models, which was subjected to an initial examination in the context of an exploratory intervention using the example of Japanese history during the Tokugawa period (1603-1868), which explicitly focused on the social structure and mentality.

Publication: https://www.logos-verlag.de/cgi-bin/engbuchmid?isbn=5121&lng=deu&id=

Project “Monuments – a place of thoughts” (completed)

Because of their public accessibility, monuments as phenomena of historical culture are part of the reality of students' lives. But they are rarely given any attention. But precisely because monuments are authentic, “hands-on” sources that can also function as founders of regional identity and precisely because they are not self-explanatory but rather raise many questions, long-term engagement with them can retain the interest of students and thus sustainably stimulate historical learning processes. Promoting historical learning with monuments was the declared goal of the two-year project “Monuments – a place of thougts. Monuments as an expression of regional identity”, which was carried out between 2013 and 2015 as a cooperation between the Department of History Didactics at the University of Duisburg-Essen and the “Institut für niederrheinische Kulturgeschichte und Regionalentwicklung” (InKuR) was coordinated and carried out. The project was funded by the Robert Bosch Foundation. The close connection to various cooperation partners (including the university archive, university library, city archives, state archives of North Rhine-Westphalia, Office for Urban Development, City Planning and Transport Planning, etc.) ensured targeted and individual support for participants from different schools. The results of the project are summarized in a common project volume.

Read more: https://www.uni-due.de/inkur/denkort_denkmal_main.shtml
Publication of the results: https://www.uvrr.de/geschichte/denkort-denkmal.html

Witnesses of the Shoah

From 2015 to 2017, Alexander von Humboldt scholarship holder Katalin Morgan worked on a research project she designed in cooperation with Prof. Dr. Markus Bernhardt at the University of Duisburg-Essen. The communication scientist Prof. Dr. Matthias Proske from the University of Cologne was also involved. Katalin Morgan researched how teachers and young people at schools work with the digital DVD educational medium “Witnesses of the Shoah, school learning with video interviews”. With the help of an ethnographic approach, the use of the DVD in history lessons at five schools in North Rhine-Westphalia was examined. The participating teachers independently used the DVDs in their history lessons in an exploratory manner. The theoretical framework of the project is multidisciplinary and combines historical didactic approaches with findings from philosophy, linguistics, communication science and psychology in order to investigate the question of what influence the DVD series has on German young people's awareness of guilt and responsibility as part of their historical consciousness. The following research questions should be taken into account: How do young people react to the content of the DVD series? How do they receive this medium? How do the witnesses' memories construct the students' current encounters with this topic? These questions were examined with the help of systematic classroom observations, teacher and student interviews, and students' tasks. The data was systematized and evaluated using discourse analysis. It remains to be explored whether the project's findings will have an impact beyond the German education system on the teaching of history in contexts in which identity and emotion play a role.