This article presents problems and possibilities associated with incorporating into history teaching a digital demographic database made for professional historians. We detect and discuss the outcome of how students in Swedish upper secondary schools respond to a teaching approach involving digitized registers comprising 19th century individuals and populations. Even though our results demonstrate that students experience the use of this digital database as messy, stressful, complicated, even meaningless and frustrating, they also perceive working with it as most interesting. We discuss this twofold outcome, its reasons and lessons to learn from it. ？When technology is functioning and the task is specialized and sufficiently guided by the teacher, which is not always the case, our results propose that digital databases can stimulate young people’s interest and historical thinking. Knowledge construction based upon historical thinking is evident in the students’ examination papers in which they present and debate their findings. These papers indicate that students can use a digital database and write history based upon empirical evidence, source criticism and historical empathy, just as professional historians do.
References
[1]
Tibbo, H.R. Primarily History in America: How U.S. Historians Search for Primary Materials at the Dawn of the Digital Age. Am. Arch. 2003, 66, 9–50.
[2]
Stieg Dalton, M.; Charnigo, L. Historians and Their Information Sources. Col. Res. Libr. 2004, 65, 400–425.
[3]
Bass, R.; Rosensweig, R. Rewiring the History and Social Studies Classroom: Needs, Frameworks, Dangers, and Proposals. J. Educ. 1999, 181, 41–61.
[4]
Clarke, G.W.; Lee, J.K. The Promise of Digital History in the Teaching of Local History. CLH. 2004, 78, 84–87.
[5]
Tally, B.; Goldenberg, L.B. Fostering Historical Thinking with Digitized Primary Sources. J. Res. Tech. Educ. 2005, 31, 1–21.
[6]
Lévesque, S. Learning by Playing: Engaging Students in Digital History. Can. Issues 2006, Fall, 68–71.
[7]
Dennis, B.; Smith, C.; Smith, J. Using Technology, Making History: A Collaborative Experiment in Interdisciplinary Teaching and Scholarship. Rethink. Hist. 2004, 8, 303–317, doi:10.1080/13642520410001683969.
[8]
Zahn, C.; Roy, P.; Hesse, F.W.; Rosen, J. Comparing Simple and Advanced Video Tools as Support for Complex Collaborative Design Processes. J. Learn. Sci. 2010, 19, 403–440, doi:10.1080/10508401003708399.
[9]
Lee, J.K. Digital History in the History/Social Studies Classroom. Hist. Teach. 2002, 35, pp. 503–317. Available online: http://chnm.gmu.edu/digitalhistory/links/pdf/chapter1/1.51a.pdf (accessed on 14 December 2012).
[10]
Council of Europe. Recommendation Rec (2001) 15 on History Teaching in Twenty-First-Century Europe; Strasbourg: France, 2001.
[11]
Wineburg, S. Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past; Temple University Press: Philadelphia, USA, 2001.
[12]
Lévesque, S. Thinking Historically: Educating Students for the Twenty-First Century; Toronto University Press: Toronto, Canada, 2008.
[13]
Rantalo, J. How Finnish Adolescents Understand History: Disciplinary Thinking in History and Its Assessment Among 16-Year-Old Finns. Educ. Sci. 2012, 2, 193–207, doi:10.3390/educsci2040193.
[14]
Levstik, L.S. Negotiating the History Landscape. Theor. Res. Soc. Educ. 1996, 24, 393–397.
[15]
Friedman, A.M. World History Teachers’ Use of Digital Primary Sources: The Effect of Training. Theor. Res. Soc. Educ. 2006, 34, 124–141, doi:10.1080/00933104.2006.10473300.
[16]
Burton, O.V. American Digital History. Soc. Sci. Comput. Rev. 2005, 23, 206–220, doi:10.1177/0894439304273317.
[17]
Hillis, P.; Munro, B. ICT in History Education: Scotland and Europe. Soc. Sci. Comput. Rev. 2005, 23, 190–205.
[18]
Kairos Future. IT och digital kompetens i skolan, Available online: http://www.kairosfuture.com/publikationer/it-och-digital-kompetens-i-skolan (accessed on 2 December 2012).
[19]
Hicks, D.; Doolittle, P.E.; Lee, J.K. Social Studies Teachers’ Use of Classroom-Based and Web-Based Historical Primary Sources. Theor. Res. Soc. Educ. 2004, 32, 213–247, doi:10.1080/00933104.2004.10473253.
[20]
Lee, J.K., Doolittle; Hicks, D. Social Studies and History Teachers’ Uses of Non-Digital and Digital Historical Resources. Soc. Stud. Res. Prac. 2006, 1, pp. 291–311. Available online: https://www.fi.ncsu.edu./research_papers/new-literacies-collaborative/social-studies-and-history-teachers-uses-of-non-digital-and-digital-historical-resources.pdf (accessed on 14 December 2012).
[21]
Engberg, E.; Vikstr？m, L. K？rlek, liv och d？d p？ webben: Befolkningshistoriska k？llor som resurs i historieundervisningen. Aktuellt om historia 2007, 1, 37–49.
[22]
Turkel, W.J. Intervention: Hacking History, from Analogue to Digital and Back Again. Rethink. Hist. 2011, 15, 287–288, doi:10.1080/13642529.2011.564840.
[23]
Lo, J.J.; Chang, C.J.; Tu, H.H.; Yeh, S.W. Applying GIS to develop a web-based spatial-person-temporal history educational system. Comput. Educ. 2009, 53, 155–168, doi:10.1016/j.compedu.2009.01.016.
[24]
Wilson, S.M. Teaching History and Social Studies. In Teaching Academic Subjects to Diverse Learners; Kennedy, M.M., Ed.; Teachers College Press: New York, USA; pp. 99–116.
[25]
Shulman, L.S. Those Who Understand: Knowledge Growth in Teaching? Educ. Res. 1986, 15, 4–14.
[26]
Mishra, P.; Koehler, M.J. Technological pedagogical content knowledge: A framework for teacher knowledge. Teach. Coll. Rec. 2006, 6, 1017–1054.
[27]
Wineburg, S. Historical Problem Solving: A Study of the Cognitive Processes Used in the Evaluation of Documentary and Pictorial Evidence. J. Educ. Psy. 1991, 83, 73–87, doi:10.1037/0022-0663.83.1.73.
[28]
Wineburg, S. Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts: Charting the Future of Teaching the Past; Temple University Press: Philadelphia, USA, 2001.
[29]
Historical empathy and perspective taking in the social studies; Davis, O.L., Yeager, E.A., Foster, S.J., Eds.; Rowman & Littlefield: New York, 2001.
[30]
Lee, P.; Ashby, R. Empathy, perspective taking, and rational understanding. In Historical empathy and perspective taking in the social studies; Davis, O.L., Yeager, E.A., Foster, S.J., Eds.; Rowman & Littlefield: New York, 2001; pp. 21–50.
[31]
Barton, K.C.; Levstik, L.S. Teaching history for the common good; L. Erlbaum Associates: Mahwah, N.J., 2004.
[32]
Lowenthal, D. The past is a foreign country; Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, 1985.
[33]
Barton, K.C. Research on Students’ Ideas about History. In Handbook of Research in Social Studies Education; Levstik, L.S., Tyson, C.A., Eds.; Routledge: New York, USA, 2008; pp. 239–258.
[34]
Vikstr？m, L. ’Indiko’– en internetv？g till v？r historia och dagens gymnasieelever: Informations- och kommunikationsteknikens implementering, brister och potential i undervisningen utifr？n ett konkret exempel. Ume？ University: Ume？, Sweden, 2002. Unpublished paper.
[35]
L？ngstr？m, S. Ungdomar tycker om historia och politik; Ume？ University: Ume？, 2001.
[36]
Hansson, J. Historieintresse och historieundervisning: Elevers och l？rares uppfattningar om historie？mnet; Ume？ University: Ume？, 2010.
[37]
Ohlander, A. Farliga kvinnor och barn: historien och det utom？ktenskapliga. In Kvinnohistoria: om kvinnors villkor fr？n antiken till v？ra dagar; Hirdman, Y., Ed.; Utbildningsradion: Stockholm, Sweden, 1992; pp. 71–85.
[38]
Available online: http://rystad.ddb.umu.se/indiko/index_en.html (accessed on 14 December 2012).
[39]
Br？ndstr？m, A.; Vikstr？m, P.; Edvinsson, S. Longitudinal Databases: Sources for Analyzing the Life-Course. Hist. Comput. 2002, 14, 109–128, doi:10.3366/hac.2002.14.1-2.109.
[40]
Available online: http://www.ddb.umu.se/digitalAssets/96/96588_indiko-anvndarhandledning.pdf (accessed on 14 December 2012).
[41]
Merriam, S.B. Qualitative Research and Case Study Applications in Education: Revised and Expanded from ‘Case Study Research in Education’; Jossey-Bass: San Francisco, California, USA, 1998.
[42]
We conducted our study in accordance with the ethical guidelines of the Social Research Association and the Swedish Research Council. Available online: http://the-sra.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/ethics03.pdf (accessed on 6 January 2013).
[43]
Booth, A. Teaching History at University: Enhancing Learning and Understanding; Routledge: London, UK, 2003.
[44]
Saye, J.W.; Brush, T. Scaffolding Critical Reasoning about History and Social Issues in Multi-Media Supported Learning Environments. Educ. Technol. Res. Dev. 2002, 50, 77–96.
[45]
Swan, K.; Hofer, M. Technology in the Social Studies. In Handbook of Research in Social Studies Education; Levstik, L.S., Tyson, C.A., Eds.; Routledge: New York, USA, 2008; pp. 307–326.
