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Explaining the Third Reich: Swedish students' causal reasoning about the Nazi seizure of power in Germany
Author(s) -
Wendell Joakim
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
the curriculum journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.843
H-Index - 36
eISSN - 1469-3704
pISSN - 0958-5176
DOI - 10.1080/09585176.2017.1398098
Subject(s) - german , nazi germany , nazism , theme (computing) , situational ethics , power (physics) , causality (physics) , psychology , sociology , social psychology , history , computer science , physics , archaeology , quantum mechanics , operating system
The topic of this study is how Swedish students aged 15–16 use causal reasoning in history when given a high‐stakes task about explaining a historically significant event, the rise of the Nazi regime in Germany. The study is based on student texts from the Swedish national test in history. The student texts are mainly analysed with regards to how many, and what kinds of, causal factors are used by the students. The study finds that while most students are able to combine agents and situational factors in their explanations, the explanations show a recurring theme of combining a generic sense of economic crisis with Hitler and the German people as the important agents, to the detriment of other causes that could open up for different interpretations of why the Nazi regime came to power. To counteract this, the study suggests increased emphasis on some contextual factors in teaching practices.