Historical Empathy

Historical empathy

The “enriched understanding within context” that “arises or develops from the active engagement in thinking about particular people, events, and situations in their context, and from wonderment about reasonable and possible meanings within, in a time that no one can really know… It is robust, tough, and insightful even as it is imaginative, and it is always based upon available evidence.” from O.L. Davis Jr. "In Pursuit of Historical Empathy." In O. L. Davis Jr., E. A. Yeager & S. J. Foster (Eds.), Historical Empathy and Perspective Taking in the Social Studies. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2001.

Do your students feel part of the history they are learning?

Wonderment is a form of analysis and interpretation in history.

Wonderment can be a key element of meaningful learning for your students.

See also:

Dear Sadie: Love, lives, and remembrance from Ontario's First World War

Craig Brown. Ma'am Darling: 99 Glimpses of Princess Margaret. Fourth Estate, 2018.

My new book: Transforming the Canadian History Classroom: Imagining a New 'We.'

Lina Mai. Use Historical Empathy to Help Students Process the World Today from Facinghistory.org