Working with oral history in history lessons as a measure to promote historical competences: A cluster-randomized controlled intervention study

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School authorities and history education experts recommend giving students the chance to experience the oral histories of contemporaries in school because oral histories can provide students with exceptionally good learning experiences and foster their interest in historical topics. Eyewitnesses of the past play an important role not only in school but also in the culture of remembrance and in Holocaust education. Furthermore, family narratives comprise a significant part of the development of youths’ historical consciousness (especially those with immigration backgrounds). At the same time, oral history accounts involve some "risks": their particular influence on the culture of remembrance, school, and family through a specific "Aura" and "authenticity". These can potentially conflict with the prior goals of history lessons, which are to foster competencies in historical (critical) thinking. Furthermore, working with eyewitnesses might contradict the so-called “prohibition against overwhelming students” ("Überwältigungsverbot" in the Beutelsbacher Consensus). A prior intervention study of the applicants gave initial indications of a confirmation of the benefits and risks of interviewing eyewitnesses of the past in school as discussed in the literature. In the competence tests of their epistemological principles (insights into the need to deconstruct historical accounts and understanding the individual perspective of an eyewitness of the past), students in the live group scored worse than those in the video and text groups, but they evaluated the learning and motivational potential of the oral history approach considerably higher than the students in the video and text conditions. In the present randomized controlled intervention study, we will compare the (differential) effectiveness of three groups (live, video, waitlist control group, N = 1872 ninth graders in the highest school track). Four further research questions will be examined: (1) Thanks to newly developed instruments to measure competencies in historical thinking, we will measure the effect of working with oral histories in history classes concerning the entire theoretical construct of historical thinking. Furthermore, we will examine students’ knowledge of certain topics, their interest, and their evaluation of the teaching unit. (2) The intervention on the "Peaceful Revolution in the GDR" will be held by the teachers themselves, who will be trained with an obligatory manual for the teaching unit. The study design with two intervention groups and a waitlist control group is in line with the standards of randomized controlled field trials. (3) Thanks to corresponding preparatory work required to the development of an instrument to capture the perception of the “aura” of the eyewitness through the learners it will be possible to assess whether the eyewitnesses have a mediating as well as a moderating effect on the increased performance.