Historical learning and contemporary witnesses

Contemporary witnesses rank among the most popular and at the same time most ambivalent figures in historical culture. Their accounts are constitutively perspectival – temporally, biographically and at times ideologically – emerge within a dialogical situation, and acquire their shape only through the narrative linking and interpretation of experience. Learners nonetheless frequently receive them not as perspectival re-constructions but as unmediated access to the past. History education describes this phenomenon as the authenticity trap: the "aura of authenticity" (Sabrow) makes a single person's narrative appear more compelling than competing interpretations and impedes its de-construction.

In discussing the state of research in history education, the normative tension between mono- and multiperspectivity becomes apparent. Existing studies work almost exclusively with witnesses to National Socialist rule or to the period of German division. This corresponds to school practice but entails topic effects that arise from learners' prior knowledge and established concepts and that pre-structure the interaction. Since these subjects are strongly charged in normative terms, and since the witnesses interviewed can claim the moral status of a victim group, it becomes explicable why a majority of learners succumb to the »aura of authenticity« (Sabrow) and interpret the witness's account not as a re-constructed and perspectival narrative but as the sole »true« history.

From this a twofold desideratum follows. Theoretically, learners need to be introduced to contrasting historical narratives conveyed personally by contemporary witnesses – multiperspectivity here possesses a democratic-pedagogical as well as a cognitive dimension and ranks, with reference to the Beutelsbach Consensus, among the founding principles of civic education in history teaching. Methodologically, it must be investigated whether and how learners are able to de-construct these contrasting narratives as perspectival, retrospective accounts.

The guiding research question accordingly reads: To what extent do reflected concepts of history become apparent when students are confronted not with a single contemporary witness on a morally charged subject, but with two witnesses on a regional, everyday-history topic?

The research setting used for this doctoral project is located within an everyday- and local-history subject area: the stationing of Dutch NATO units in East Westphalia-Lippe between 1965 and 1995 and the coexistence of Germans and Dutch. The pre-selection of two contemporary witnesses with differing backgrounds ensures that learners encounter divergently shaped views of the period of deployment.

Theoretically the project draws on the FUER competence model, in which de-construction competence forms a core component of methodological competence. Since de-construction competence manifests itself not in isolable elements of knowledge but in complex movements of thought, and since epistemological beliefs become visible only in context-bound acts of thinking, a reconstructive procedure is required.

The research design is embedded in a teaching unit within an upper secondary history course and follows a three-step sequence of preparatory phase, project day and reflection. The preparatory phase comprises two lessons. Following an introduction to the research project, learners complete four sentence openings: »For me, migration means…«, »With contemporary witnesses I pay particular attention to…«, »History means to me…« and »The aim of history teaching is…«. This initial survey captures central conceptions and terms held by the students and is at the same time significant for their later self-reflection, since it forms the reference point of the concluding diagnostic task. After the historical background has been worked through – NATO deployments in the region and their social and economic consequences – learners write a first summarising essay in which they are to explain why Dutch NATO soldiers were stationed in East Westphalia-Lippe and how Germans and Dutch lived alongside one another.

The project day forms the centre of the undertaking. Here the witness interviews take place, in which learners not only receive the interpretations offered but can actively pose questions. The conversations are deliberately conducted consecutively rather than as a panel discussion, so that no one-sided influence arises, for instance through more dominant discussion behaviour. Learners subsequently discuss the results and write, in individual work, a report informing readers about the project day and taking account of the statements of both witnesses.

A period of reflection then follows: learners are handed back their previously written texts and materials and are asked to diagnose for themselves the extent to which their thinking and their view of the subject have changed. Two questions guide the investigation here: to what extent are the witnesses' statements cited as grounds for a change, and have epistemological beliefs – such as the implicit concept of history or the perception of contemporary witnesses – shifted? This reflection, at once substantive and metacognitive, permits a twofold access: it indicates how learners themselves assess the changes, and it makes it possible to examine the extent to which the changes they identify correspond to what can be traced in their texts.

On the following day, guided interviews are conducted with eight to ten selected learners. These aim at an in-depth reconstruction of individual learning processes and focus on the role of contemporary witnesses in historical learning, in order to ascertain learners' plausibility judgements and beliefs and to identify narrative structures potentially adopted from the witnesses.

The outlined study aims to complement the hitherto effect-oriented research on work with contemporary witnesses by adding a perspective oriented towards individual processes.