Oral history in the classroom: Linking historical research and history educationVoices of the past: Historical research, new trends and findings and their value for teaching

Background to PhD research

South African Prisoner-of-War Experience during and after World War II: 1939 – c.1950 Oral history

12 interviews during 2010 and 2011 (86 – 97)

Diaries Memoirs Archival research Secondary sources

POW Experience 1939 – 1945

General experience

Decision to volunteering

Battle experiences Capture Camp life Escape / liberation Homecoming

Individual experience

Formed by attitude (pessimist or optimist)

Reactions to external events

Interpersonal relationships with enemies & allies (extrovert or introvert)

Ability to adapt

Oral testimony & history education?

In the classroom...

Historical context (Husbands, C. 2003. What is History Teaching? Language, ideas and meaning in learning about the past. Open University Press.)

Context = Historical understanding Learners see past as ‘pre-existing present’ Fail to ‘identify the ways in which people in the past

were similar to us.’ ‘fail to grasp historical actors’ intentions in choosing

particular course of action.’ Fail to see ‘underlying causal connections between

different actions and events.’ ‘lack historical frame of reference [...] unable to

locate individual actions and events in the range of possible actions, or beliefs available to historical actors.’

Achieving historical understanding...

‘Hard’ understandings (i.e. Who, what, where, when...)

Context (values, beliefs, ideas...) Expose learners to wide range of models for

causal connection in history Understand events had multiple causes and Varying importance Understand that events had different social,

economic, political and religious causes or Had interconnected causes

Learners’ mini-theories Gut & lay mini-theories Restructure or create new mini-theories

Learners encounter past through Events, objects, evidence (Husbands =

Museum education) Abstract ideas (beliefs & ideas of past)

Historical Fact + Context = Historical understanding

Historical facts

Historical facts: Fall of Tobruk on 21 June 1942 British 8th Army General HB Klopper (2nd South Africa Division) General Erwin Rommel Union Defence Force (volunteers) 30 000 Allied Troops captured 10 722 South Africans captured

Fact & mini-theories ≠ historical understanding

Mini-theory reaction on issue of volunteers: gut mini-theories: ‘they were stupid’ Lay mini-theories: media

Fictional & popular – NOT historically accurate

Using oral testimony to clarify historical context and achieve historical understanding

Context

Extracts from oral testimony ‘...also why did I volunteer? Because I was 17,

there was a war on and I didn’t want to miss it, you know it was sort of a boys’ adventure story.’

‘Well at 19 years old we obviously had a pretty fair idea of right and wrong and we’d been recognising over the years that Hitler was a threat to peace and ruining the lives of [a] great many people and so I think we joined up out of principle...’

‘when war started I thought I’ll go and do my bit, and I volunteered when I was 17 telling them I was 18 as all kids did in those days ...’

Critical analysis of testimony

Why do men go to war? (present) What does each extract tell you about

why each man decided to volunteer? What does the extract reveal about the

man’s personality / sense of responsibility? (values & beliefs, i.e. context)

Why did he say [....]? Why did these men go to war? (past)

Examine individual experience Restructure understanding of motivation Recognise multiple causes for events /

circumstances Understand beliefs and abstract ideas of

those involved in past events Opportunity for learners to link their

perceptions (mini-theories) to historical framework

Oral testimony links the present to the past