Oral history in the classroom: Linking historical research and
Oral history in the classroom: Linking historical research and history education
Voices 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 8 th Army
General HB Klopper (2 nd 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
