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In 2011, the Finnish National Board of Education assessed the learning outcomes of history with a study whose results raised doubts about the fulfilment of the goals of history education. This article seeks to expand awareness about Finnish adolescents' understanding of historical empathy. The study assessed twenty-two 16-17-year-old high school students' ability to understand predecessors' actions in particular historical situations. The study also examined how well a simulation exercise works as a tool of empathy teaching and evaluation. Students participated in the simulation and afterwards the students were interviewed. They also participated in a survey that measured their attitudes before and after the exercise and wrote an essay at the end of the course. The results of the study show that most of the high school students did not reach the goals set for history teaching. The weak performance of students is explained by the strong tradition of history teaching which has been continuing in Finnish schools despite the curriculum reform. Teaching still concentrates on passing a metanarrative on to students who have not yet enough experience of explaining historical events from a multiperspective point of view.

Articles you may be interested inLow temperature thermal diffusivity measurements of transparent solids and gases by the mirage technique AIP Conf. Low temperature thermal diffusivity measurements of gases by the mirage technique Rev. Sci. Instrum. 70, 98 (1999); 10.1063/1.1149548Low thermal diffusivity measurements of thin films using mirage technique A method to determine anisotropic thermal diffusivities parallel to the surface of a solid sample is presented. The measurement method is based on the mirage effect and the data are analyzed using multiparameter least-squares regression fitting. The specimens studied were of medium and low diffusivity: rare earths, ceramics, and polymers. Before this study, the low-diffusivity limit for the applicability of the mirage method was about 0.02 cm2/s, and therefore this technique has not been suitable for polymeric materials. In this work the limit has been reduced to 5 X 10V4 cm2/s by improving the measurement apparatus and the data analysis method. The thermal diffusivities obtained agree with the values obtained using the flash method within f 20%. The agreement with published values is good, taking into account that for ceramics and polymers the literature gives only the correct order of magnitude due to the differences in the manufacturing process. Even though the sensitivity of the measurement decreases with the decreasing diffusivity, the thermal diffusivity of bulk polymers can still be determined within an accuracy of 10%. For polymer foils the method has been found to be reliable when the foil thickness exceeds 100 pm.