Contextualization in Historical Teaching

Contextualization

  • Definition: Contextualization is the process of placing people, events, or issues within the specific historical, cultural, political, and economic conditions of their time.
  • Purpose: It allows for an understanding that an object, person, or event is a product of its time, thereby helping to avoid presentism (judging the past by present-day standards).
  • Benefits:
    • Adds richness and texture to historical understanding.
    • Reveals the inherent complexity of history, moving beyond simplistic black-and-white narratives.
    • Highlights the external factors that make an event significant, preventing it from appearing to exist in a vacuum.
    • Helps explain why different groups or individuals might view the same event differently due to the surrounding circumstances.

How to Teach Contextualization

  • Examine Norms of the Time: Students must consider the cultural, political, and social norms of the specific time period.
    • Example: What happened in 1775 cannot be viewed with the same lens as 2025 because geography, demographics, politics, and societal thinking were drastically different (e.g., the U.S. was geographically much smaller in 1775).
  • Avoid Present-Day Judgment: The goal is to teach students to evaluate historical events or people based on the standards and conditions of their own time, not current ones.
  • Connection to Perspective:
    • Contextualization focuses on external factors (what is happening around individuals/events) that impact how the world is perceived.
    • Historical empathy (to be discussed later) deals more with internal factors influencing perspective.
  • The Importance of Practice and Repetition:
    • Contextualization is unnatural for students and requires continuous, repeated teaching and practice.
    • Teachers must provide multiple opportunities for students to engage in activities that foster this skill.

Challenges in Teaching Contextualization (Dissertation Example)

  • Study Design: Students were asked to write a historical monologue from the perspective of either W.E.B. Du Bois or Booker T. Washington, using primary sources from both.
  • Observed Difficulty: Out of 22 students, 2 chose Du Bois, and 20 chose Washington. All 20 who chose Washington, despite having primary sources, wrote from Du Bois's perspective.
  • Reason for Difficulty: Students struggled to contextualize Booker T. Washington's approach (e.g.,