Exploring pedagogical approaches for connecting the past, the present and the future in history teaching

Using the past to orientate on the present and the future can be seen as one of history’s main contributions to educating future citizens of democratic societies. Because tools for pursuing this goal are scarce, this study explores three pedagogical approaches that may help teachers and students to make connections between the past, the present and the future: working with longitudinal lines, with enduring human issues and with historical analogies. The efficacy of these approaches was examined in three case studies conducted in two Dutch secondary schools with eighth- to tenthgrade students (N = 135) and their teachers (N = 4) as participants. Explorations took place within the boundaries of the existing history curriculum and in close collaboration with the teachers who participated because they felt a need to motivate their students by means of a pedagogy to make history more useful. Findings suggest that working with longitudinal lines and enduring human issues in a traditional history curriculum with chronologically ordered topics is more complicated than working with historical analogies. The historical analogy approach appears to have most potential to encourage students to use the past to reflect on present-day affairs. In terms of students’ appraisals of the relevance of history, the application of the enduring human issue approach showed positive effects.