Research approach and research questions

In my doctoral thesis with the working title "What pupils imagine slavery to be: An investigation into historical thinking", I examine subject conceptions and learner conceptions on the topic of slavery within the framework of the Didactic Reconstruction research model. A comparison between the concepts collected is intended to reveal similarities and similarities, but also potential barriers to learning. The aim of the work is to develop didactic guidelines on the basis of an empirically sound reconstruction of the topic. My specific research interest is to investigate how specialised scholars on the one hand and learners on the other explain, substantiate, weight, concretise and contextualise equality and inequality in the historical context of slavery. The following questions structure the research area:

• What implicit theories do students have on the question of the origin and justification of slavery (systems)?
• Which life-world experiences and structural-scientific concepts, as represented in specialised science and subject didactics, flow into these theories?
• Are there frequently occurring, contradictory patterns of interpretation?

Survey and evaluation

In line with the model of didactic reconstruction, I apply the recursive procedure of collecting subject-related ideas (specialist publications including a selection of currently introduced history textbooks at lower secondary level) and collecting learner ideas in individual interviews.

The empirical part of my work on learner perspectives consists of twelve qualitative individual interviews (material-supported, semi-standardised guided interviews according to Scheele/Groeben) and accompanying questionnaires with ninth-grade students from Oldenburg. For the subject perspective, author texts from seven school history books were collected. Both data sets were analysed using Mayring's qualitative content analysis method, paying particular attention to the semantics of reference and meaning. Qualitative content analysis, preferably used in social research, enables a controlled reduction and evaluation of existing verbal data material in four steps.
For the textbook analysis, this means that after the preliminary work of scanning relevant text passages, the text is analysed in tabular form. In the first phase - the paraphrase - the text is divided into units of meaning or units of analysis. An evaluation unit can consist of a minimum of one word, but usually consists of one sentence up to three sentences.
In the second phase - generalisation - the existing paraphrases are summarised, passages with the same meaning are deleted and all paraphrases are standardised at a level of abstraction. At this point, text structuring features such as toning particles, rhetorical questions etc. are deleted in order to outline the core content of the statements.
The third phase of reduction reduces the amount of text even further, as statements on the same topics are summarised and structured (e.g. all the causes of slavery mentioned in the textbook).
In the final phase, the reduced texts are coded and explicated in terms of the research question. A code should summarise the theory of slavery (e.g. on causes, characteristics, etc.) in a keyword, if possible, or in a half-sentence. The codes are obtained both deductively and inductively. They are partly derived from the research questions and partly developed from the material. All codes together represent the theoretical horizon of the present work or of the interview partner. These theories are explained in the overall context. Here, ambiguous, contradictory or otherwise (linguistically) conspicuous text passages (e.g. in the case of individual word creations or extensive use of foreign words) from the paraphrase are given special consideration because they represent productive starting points for the overall interpretation. In so-called context analyses, the textbook or interview text is placed in relation to other statements in the overall text and the meaning of individual formulations is also examined.
I am currently in the process of analysing the available data material. With all due caution in this phase of the evaluation, the following preliminary results can be drawn from the student statements:

• There is a noticeable general tendency to despecify historical events, combined with the interpretation and explanation of historical phenomena based on real-life experience (e.g. script 'shopping', 'trading' for the topic 'slave auction')
• Contrary to subject-specific differentiation, many of the interviewed students seem to be inclined towards a prototype idea of American plantation slavery, which is partly based on an idea of 'civilisation vs. naivety/backwardness'.
• This notion seems to be grounded in a clear concept of progress as an ongoing evolution for the better, which is often linked to the reductive two-part time pattern 'past-present'.

For the area of concepts of slavery in textbooks, the following can be stated so far:

• Here, too, an immanent progress-development concept is recognisable, from which in part problematic conclusions are drawn.
• Economic aspects of enslavement (particularly in the case of American plantation slavery) are often at the centre of the descriptions.
• For antiquity, only a few reasons for enslavement (e.g. war) are mentioned in some cases, which more often thematise inequality than the equality of slave owners and slaves.

For my thesis I have chosen Slavery as an example to examine how learners perceive and explain equality and inequality in historical contexts. The major issues to be addressed in the study are:

• Which implicit theories do pupils hold regarding the causes of slavery?
• How do their everyday experiences influence their implicit theories?
• What kind of historical interpretation patterns and preconceived ideas have youths developed with respect to slavery?

Using the model of didactical reconstruction as a basis for my iterative approach, I will compile and compare subject-specific conceptions as well as learners' perspectives in order to develop a didactical framework for the teaching of history. The hermeneutic analysis of historical conceptions of youths will be based on representative scientific publications and schoolbooks currently used in history classes. The study will mainly explore how these publications deal with the topic of antique and modern slavery in the American South in the 18th an 19th century.

In the empirical part of my study I will analyse twelve individual interviews partly standardised (based on additional material given to the learners). These interviews were hold with pupils in 9th grade attending schools in Oldenburg (grammar school and comprehensive school). The method to be applied is Mayring's qualitative content analysis; special consideration will be given to the semantic analysis of key passages. The learners' principal conceived ideas which form part of their historical knowledge and thinking will be visualised in a concept map.

Sylke Bergau & Hilke Günther-Arndt (in preparation): Schülervorstellungen zur Sklaverei: Von der semantischen Analyse zur Visualisierung von Wissensstrukturen, in: Harald Gropengießer, Marc Gerhard Ulrich Kattmann (eds.): Fachliches Lernen erforschen - Handbuch zur fachdidaktischen Lehr- Lernforschung - Didaktische Rekonstruktion.