”Man måste förstå människors agerande utifrån den kontext och den tid som de levde i”: En kvalitativ intervjustudie av fem ämneslärares förståelse av samt arbete med begreppet historisk empati i historieundervisningen

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine Swedish history teachers’ understanding of historical empathy and their expressed pedagogical practices for the promotion of historical empathy in the classroom. The study also explores if it exists a connection between the teachers’ understanding of historical empathy and their expressed choice of pedagogical practices for cultivating such empathy among their students. A qualitative interview method has been used and the study employs a phenomenological approach. Interviews with five history teachers were conducted and the result was derived by using thematic analysis. The result suggests that the teachers’ in general terms understand historical empathy as the ability to understand historical agents and their choices and actions based on their historical context. Thus, the teachers interpret historical empathy as the ability to understand and contextualize historical agents. Some teachers also include a clear distinction between historical empathy and sympathy in their definitions of the term. Moreover, the teachers express that they select from a broad variety of pedagogical practices for the promotion of historical empathy consisting of a plethora of discussion exercises, different writing assignments and the use of podcast interviews. The result show no clear connection between teachers’ understanding of historical empathy and their methods of cultivating such empathy among their students. Furthermore, the study implies that teachers perceive the benefits of working with historical empathy in the history classroom to outweigh the perceived problems of working with historical empathy. The study concludes that the teachers’ interviewed have a rather similar understanding of the nature of historical empathy, that there seems to exist no clear connection between teachers’ understanding of the term and their methods of cultivating it and that teachers appear to have a predominantly positive attitude towards historical empathy. Further research is however required in order to be able to with certainty confirm these findings.