Introduction

The widespread use of contextualisation in history stems from the fact that history cannot be comprehended without context. Historical contextualisation has been regarded by many scholars as one of the backbones of historical reasoning (Monte-Sano, 2010; Reisman, 2012; Van Drie et al. 2015). Also, contextualisation has been included in the formal history curricula of many countries, such as Australia, Belgium, Canada, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and the UK (Huijgen and Holthuis, 2014). The privileged status of historical contextualisation is confirmed in the current Ghanaian curriculum framework (NaCCA, 2019).

Contextual thinking is the basis of the science of historical construction, and this refers to examining historical events within their appropriate settings. When contextualising, historians, history educators, and learners “organise information about the past to describe, compare, and explain historical phenomena” (Van Drie and Van Boxtel, 2008, p. 89). This makes it possible to examine the relationships between events or explain cause-effect relationships in history. For instance, De La Paz et al. (2014) opine that contextualisation is the extent to which students identify and situate arguments and primary sources in the appropriate time, place, and setting, which serves as a mental structure that regulates historical thinking.

The outcome of contextualising is the circumvention of presentism. Averting presentism in any historical endeavour requires understanding the social, political, and cultural norms of the period under investigation, as well as knowledge of the events leading up to the historical event and other relevant circumstances about the historical event (Endacott and Brooks, 2013). This makes contextualisation essential in history education. Because of its importance, how contextualisation features in history teaching and curriculum documents is of great interest to the history education community. Therefore, giving the concept the needed research attention is germane. As Sendur, van Drie and van Boxtel (2021) note, contextualisation is a key concept in historical reasoning that warrants research. Unfortunately, most studies on contextualisation have focused on testing contextualisation pedagogies along the lines of sourcing, collaboration, and close reading. For example, De La Paz et al. (2014) and Reisman (2012) examined these heuristics in a disciplinary reading and writing curriculum intervention and primary source instruction, respectively. Others have also looked at students’ knowledge of historical contextualisation (e.g., Hartmann and Hasselhorn, 2008; Huijgen et al. 2018; Nokes et al. 2007; Sendur et al. 2021). Additional studies focused on how students’ ability to perform historical contextualisation can be advanced (e.g., Baron, 2016; Huijgen et al. 2017; Van Boxtel and van Drie, 2012).

However, not enough is known about how historical contextualisation is reflected in curriculum documents such as history textbooks. Crawford (2004) reminds us that understanding curriculum documents such as textbooks requires identifying, analysing, and critiquing their content in different forms. This article contributes to this call by investigating the final product of 12 history textbooks to establish how historical contextualisation is reflected in them. To contextualise this, the study addresses this research question: how is historical contextualisation reflected in 12 History of Ghana textbooks for primary schools? This study is part of a larger investigation of how the concepts of change and continuity are reflected in 12 history textbooks for primary schools in Ghana. This adds new knowledge to the growing interest in textbook research in history education.

Conceptual framework

Historical contextualisation

Historical contextualisation is one of the four heuristics proposed by Wineburg (1991, 1998) that form part of the general framework for historical reasoning (Van Boxtel and Van Drie, 2018; Van Drie and Van Boxtel, 2008). Historians contextualise by examining the chronological, geographical, and social characteristics of the historical event under study (Van Boxtel and Van Drie, 2012; Van Drie and Van Boxtel, 2008; Wineburg, 1991, 1998). This enables historians to interpret the uniqueness of the historical event or the specific period that accounts for the general understanding of the period or event being studied (Carr, 1990). This study uses Van Boxtel and van Drie (2012) definition of contextualisation. The authors conceptualised historical contextualisation as an activity in which one situates phenomena and people’s actions in the context of time, historical locations, long-term developments, or specific events to explain, compare, or evaluate these phenomena and actions. The activity requires knowledge and understanding of the social, political, cultural, economic, and environmental milieu that influences and shapes the events at a particular time (Essiaw, 2022).

In the history classroom, contextualisation requires learners to place historical events or source documents in a larger context by dating or periodising the event or source document and indicating who produced the source and for what reason (Bharath, 2015). Situating a source document or an event in a larger context involves two key elements: time and space. As Reisman and Wineburg (2008) indicate, contextualising requires knowledge of periods and chronological knowledge of significant events and developments in the past. The inability to use this knowledge may result in seeing the past as a bunch of unconnected events. Remarkably, learners would not be able to explain, compare, or evaluate historical phenomena and historical agents’ actions (Reisman and Wineburg, 2008). However, historical contextualisation becomes meaningful in the classroom when it helps learners to explain historical phenomena, make comparisons, or understand processes of change and continuity (Van Boxtel and Van Drie, 2016). The history textbooks should, therefore, contain tasks on historical contextualisation that could help learners explain, compare, or evaluate historical phenomena and historical agents’ actions. It is, therefore, necessary to examine how the history of Ghana ‘approved’ textbooks for primary schools reflects historical contextualisation. This work has the potential to provide insight into how curriculum documents such as history textbooks promote historical contextualisation.

As highlighted, Talin (2015) proposes the use of the four ‘Ws’ to analyse and understand contextualisation in history. The four ‘Ws’ are derived from the 5 W 1H principle, shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1: The 5W 1H principle for analysing contextualisation (adapted from Talin, 2015).
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This figure shows the 5W 1H principle proposed by Talin (2015) to analyse contextualisation in history. This framework was adapted to investigate how History of Ghana textbooks reflects the concept of contextualisation.

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Talin (2015) indicates that four of the Ws in the 5 W 1H principle, i.e., When, Where, Who, and What can be used to establish contextualisation in a historical document such as a textbook. In the context of this study, the framework was used to analyse historical contextualisation in 12 history of Ghana textbooks. Analysing contextualisation, Wineburg (2001) points to the use of questions such as: When did the historical event take place? Where did it take place? Who was involved? What was the situation at the time? Leon and Whelan (2008) further pose questions such as: When was the document written? When did the events discussed in the document take place? What relevant or significant events came before or after? And for what occasion? Who was the audience? How did the audience regard the author? What was the climate of opinion at the time of this writing? This means readers can use contextual information provided by the historical document (in this case, a textbook) to understand the actions or decisions of historical personalities and the setting in which events took place. Such historical text analysis is critical, as it shows the discipline’s complex nature and enhances students’ appreciation of the past (Seixas and Morton, 2013).

Methods

Data sources and analysis

This study is underpinned by the critical paradigm that blends qualitative and quantitative approaches in analysing the contents of textbooks. Specifically, the content analysis design, which allows researchers to quantify words, themes or concepts, was adopted for this study. The list of approved History of Ghana textbooks was officially obtained from the National Council of Curriculum and Assessment (NaCCA, 2021). The list comprised 96 History books, including Teachers’ Guides, Activity or Workbooks and Learners’ Textbooks. A multi-stage sampling technique was employed to select the number of textbooks for the study. First, the purposive sampling technique was used to select forty-five (45) History of Ghana Learners’ Textbooks issued by eight (8) publishers. The History of Ghana Learners’ textbooks were purposively sampled because, unlike the Teachers’ Guides and Workbooks or Activity Books, the learners’ textbook includes activities for the learner and incorporates pedagogical instructions for the teacher (Bharath, 2015). The simple random sampling technique was further used to select twelve (12) learners’ textbooks issued by four (4) publishers to represent the six (6) classes in the Ghanaian primary school, with each class having two (2) textbooks from two different publishers. This selection was guided by the recommendation of Braun and Clarke (2021) in a qualitative study that requires a minimum of 12 samples to reach data saturation. Table 1 shows the characteristics of the 12 History of Ghana textbooks used for this study.

Table 1 Characteristics of the 12 selected History of Ghana textbooks.
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A thematic matrix was developed from the historical thinking frameworks that Wineburg (2001) and Talin (2015) proposed (See Appendix A). An alpha-numeric coding system was developed to help in data entry and analysis. The alphabet represented the publisher or textbook name, while the number represented the class level. For instance, the code A2 meant a textbook issued by publisher A for Basic 2. The sampled History of Ghana textbooks were analysed based on textual content and visual images.

To establish the extent to which a History of Ghana textbook reflects the concept of contextualisation, the data were analysed in three stages. In the first stage, evidence of historical contextualisation was identified in the textbooks, counted and rated on a scale of 0–5. The rating was done using Microsoft Excel (2019) Functions (COUNTIFS; IF). A count of 40 or more evidence in a textbook (x ≥ 40) was rated ‘5’; a textbook with a count of 30–39 (≥30:x ≤ 39) was rated ‘4’; a textbook with a count of 20–29 (≥20:x ≤ 29) was rated ‘3’; a textbook with a count of 10–19 (≥10:x ≤ 19) was rated ‘2’; a textbook with a count of 1–9 ( ≥ 1:x ≤ 9) was rated ‘1’; a textbook with a count less than 1 (x < 1) was rated ‘0’. In the second stage, descriptive statistics were used to show the direction of the data. Mean and Standard Deviation were used to determine the level of evidence of historical contextualisation reflected in the 12 History of Ghana textbooks. In the third stage, Maton’s (2013) principle of a shift in the Semantic Wave was used to determine whether there was strong evidence (SE), intermediate evidence (IE), weak evidence (WE), or no evidence (NE) of historical contextualisation in the textbooks. Figure 2 summarises the stages for analysing the data.

Fig. 2: Stages in determining how History of Ghana textbooks reflect historical contextualisation.
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This figure summarises the stages of analysis to determine historical contextualisation in history of Ghana textbooks for primary schools.

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Results

From the analysis, a mean of 3.75 and above (\(\widetilde{x}\,\ge\) 3.75) indicates that the textbook had Strong Evidence (SE) of the statement establishing contextualisation. In contrast, a mean of 3.74–2.50 (\(2.50\,\ge \,\widetilde{x}\le\) 3.74) means the textbook had Intermediate Evidence (IE) of the statement establishing contextualisation in history. A mean of 2.49–1.00 (\(1.00\,\ge \,\widetilde{x}\,\le \,\) 2.49) shows that the textbook has Weak Evidence (WE) of the statement establishing contextualisation. However, a mean score below 1 (\(\widetilde{x} < 1.00\)) shows that the textbook has No Evidence (NE) of the statement to establish contextualisation in history. A standard deviation below 1.00 indicates that the results from the textbooks are homogeneous and the results are heterogeneous when it is above 1.00. The results are presented in Table 2.

Table 2 How historical contextualisation is reflected in the history of Ghana textbooks.
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The results from Table 2 indicate that the history of Ghana textbooks has an intermediate level of evidence on historical contextualisation. This is evidenced by the overall mean (M = 2.60). The finding implies that learners may be able to situate historical events in the proper context using the guidelines, examples and samples of activities in the textbooks. This finding is, however, not representatively seen in all the textbooks as the average standard deviation (SD = 1.22) shows heterogeneity across the textbooks. For instance, while textbooks B1, B2, B3, D4, D5 and D6 show good reflection of historical contextualisation, textbooks A1, A2, A3, C4, C5 and C6 show a relatively weak reflection of historical contextualisation. Specifically, most of the textbooks show intermediate evidence (M = 3.67, SD = 0.78) in connecting historical events and processes to specific circumstances of time and place. This means that the history of Ghana textbooks provides historical events, pictures, and activities at a particular time and place. Connecting historical developments to specific periods and places suggests that learners and textbook users have access to examples and guidelines in the textbooks that will help them to situate events, including the learner’s life history, in the proper context of time and place.

Again, the results indicate that most of the history of Ghana textbooks provided intermediate evidence (M = 3.33, SD = 0.98) of connecting historical events and processes to broader regional, national, and/or global processes. This result is also homogeneous across the textbooks, indicating that the History of Ghana textbooks provided some historical events and visuals that appeared to be situated in a broader regional, national, or international context. The results further demonstrate that there were exercises or activities in the textbooks that seemed to request learners to situate historical developments in their society in broader national, sub-regional, regional, and global contexts, suggesting that the textbooks’ attempt to build on learners’ mental frame capable of situating issues in their appropriate context.

Regarding how the History of Ghana textbooks used Talin’s (2015) ‘5Ws 1H’ principle in establishing contextualisation in history, the results in Table 2 show an intermediate level of evidence (M = 3.08, SD = 1.00). Other corroborative evidence of the use of the ‘5 W IH’ principle is cited in Fig. 3. The author of Textbook B1 provided guiding questions reflecting aspects of the 5Ws 1H principle. This was in an attempt to guide learners to contextualise historical happenings by, first, identifying what historical site is identified in the community, second, when the historical site was built, third, who made the historical site, and, finally, why it was built.

Fig. 3: A scan of Textbook B1, page 39.
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This figure shows a learner activity in a History of Ghana textbook requiring learners to use the 5Ws 1H principle to contextualise a historical site.

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Similarly, in Fig. 4 below, the author provided guiding questions to help learners situate historical sites or memories in the appropriate historical context by identifying what historical sites exist in the learner’s district or region, where the historical site could be found, when the historical site was constructed, and why it was built. These findings suggest that learners can use the contextual information provided in history textbooks to understand the actions or decisions of historical personalities and the setting in which events took place. These become gateways for learners to interpret historical events (Seixas, 2006).

Fig. 4: A scan of Textbook B2, page 63.
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This figure shows a learner activity in a sample History of Ghana textbook that requires learners to contextualise historical sites using the 5Ws 1H principle.

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Discussion

This study examined how historical contextualisation is reflected in 12 History of Ghana textbooks for primary schools. The findings show that the textbooks have an intermediate level of evidence on historical contextualisation, suggesting that contextualisation is fairly reflected in the textbooks. This finding is in line with the position espoused by several scholars that historical contextualisation is incorporated into history curricula worldwide (Lévesque, 2008; Seixas and Morton, 2013; Van Drie and Van Boxtel, 2008). However, the situation is different in the case of Ramoroka and Engelbrecht (2015), who concluded that there was no evidence of contextualisation in history textbooks because of the lack of dates on which sources were produced. Regardless of the incongruity in the literature, the finding shows that the opportunity to develop historical thinking skills is appreciably reflected in the textbooks used in the study. Historical contextualisation has a definite purpose in historical construction and, more importantly, helps learners to understand the context. Sufficient historical contextualisation in the textbooks means that learners can engage explicitly with contextual issues and the nature of the historical event. Learners are likely to encounter different historical events, and the context would aid their ability to understand each historical event. Barton (2005) argues that learners may not understand the role of evidence without engagement with context. Learners’ appreciation of context is a requirement, as it is an approach grounded in the process of historical reasoning (Barton, 2001). Thus, learners’ appreciation of the contextual text may assist them in moving beyond their perspective to appreciate different perspectives on historical events (Barton and Levstik, 2004) because they would be able to take part in meaningful historical inquiries and consider multiple viewpoints on a single event. Hence, we argue that historical reasoning is enhanced in historical enquiry if historical events are well contextualised in history textbooks.

The textbooks do present a range of perspectives on the topics at hand. For instance, the study has established how textbooks connect historical developments to specific periods and places. This insinuates that learners and textbook users have access to textbooks’ examples and guidelines that would help situate events, including the learner’s life history, in the proper context of time and place. Monte-Sano (2011) argues that this may enhance the imaginative abilities of learners as they analyse and reflect on historical developments and situate them in the proper context of time and place. The textbook text may encourage learners to explore sources by considering the perspective of the context in which they were created (Seixas and Morton, 2013). The context can assist students in understanding their situation and interpreting their words accurately. The finding is consistent with Vella’s (2010) study, which revealed that Maltese history textbooks provided enough content to help learners situate historical events and documents at specific times and places in history. The finding further corroborates Bharath’s (2015) finding that South African history textbooks show a good reflection of contents (historical events, visuals, and exercises) that help learners contextualise historical developments in appropriate times and places in history.

Similarly, the results indicate that most textbooks provided evidence of connecting historical events and processes to broader regional, national, and global processes. This suggests that the textbooks provided some historical events and visuals that appeared to be situated in a broader regional, national, or international context. The finding contradicts the findings of Andrew-LaSpina (2003) that history textbooks used in the USA, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand focused primarily on highlighting Indigenous people (nationals) and their place in history rather than connecting their historical activities to the global context. The finding, however, demonstrates that there were exercises or actions in the textbooks that appeared to require learners to situate historical developments in their society in broader national, sub-regional, regional, and global contexts. This finding is remarkable, as it depicts the textbooks’ attempt to build learners’ skills such as analysing, imagining, and critical thinking. For instance, Nokes et al. (2007) opined that a historical source’s ability to connect events to a broader context implicitly encourages critical thinking among learners. By implication, the history textbooks’ reflection of contents that link events of the past to broader national or international context can improve the reasoning ability of learners as well as promote the core competency of cultural identity and global citizenship, as provided by the History of Ghana Curriculum (NaCCA, 2019).

The findings also have practical implications for instruction. First, the findings underscore the importance of connecting textbooks’ reconstructed context to classroom instruction to enhance historical contextualisation. Contextualisation brings teaching and learning closely to learners’ realities. By helping learners to relate the educational tasks within the context of their knowledge and everyday experiences, historical contextualisation facilitates the linking of theory and practice between textbooks and their experiences, as learners add meaning and value to what they learn in school (Mouraz and Leite, 2013). History teachers are expected to do this exercise with learners to enable them to examine historical texts within their historical context. In the end, learners’ arguments and positions would be significantly less presentism and use more historical context knowledge in their submissions. Thus, the practical application of historical contextualisation may encourage learners to avoid their present-oriented perspectives. Rather, learners will consider the differences in cultures and belief systems between the past and the present when answering test questions (Sendur et al. 2021). This suggests that historical contextualisation in history textbooks and other curricula documents should be implemented with appropriate pedagogical practices because, as Wineburg (2001) notes, historical thinking is unnatural and should be taught to students in history classrooms. In line with this, to achieve the relevance of historical contextualisation in history textbooks, teachers must explicitly teach learners how to construct a reasoned historical argument within context (Sendur et al. 2021). This may avoid misunderstanding historical events and agents’ actions (Barton and Levstik, 2004; Lévesque, 2008) because learners become aware of how they can approach a historical question or argument from a historical standpoint. This approach to historical materials demonstrates students’ understanding of history, which Seixas and Morton (2013) consider a “demonstration of powerful understanding” (p. 189) that contributes to students’ thinking historically (Sendur et al. 2021).

Second, the findings highlight the possibility of learners acquiring and using other procedural concepts through the appreciation of historical contextualisation. Appreciating historical contextualisation requires using chronological knowledge, such as considering the specific period or sequencing historical events within their contexts. Foster (1999) argues that learners must possess knowledge about chronology before they can perform historical contextualisation. Barton and Levstik (2004) briefly indicate that chronology and historical time are indispensable parts of historical contextualisation. Sequencing events provides a mental framework enabling fewer learners to make sense of the past (Stow and Haydn, 2000). Dawson (2009) notes that chronological knowledge may contribute to a ‘sense of a period’. Lomas (1993) acknowledged that, without a grasp of the concept of chronology, one could hardly fathom change, development, continuity, and historical contextualisation. Wood (1995) also provided that the relevance of chronology is based on it being a precursor to understanding contextualisation. Indeed, the various ideas shared by scholars suggest that historical contextualisation serves as one of the major gateways in historical thinking. Thus, engaging in historical contextual issues allows one to engage with other procedural concepts. As Haydn et al. (2015) argue, through historical contextualisation, students acquire knowledge that they apply to gain different historical reasoning competencies.

This study contributes to understanding how history textbook writers incorporate historical contextualisation. This means that textbook writers follow the philosophical guidelines in the history curriculum. The philosophy provides that learning history should be based on the need to produce students who can reconstruct the past by describing, analysing, and evaluating past events by communicating their views on how the past could influence the present from an informed position. Defining, analysing, and evaluating historical events from an informed position requires appropriate curricular and pedagogical support. Therefore, considering historical contextualisation in the textbooks would support this endeavour. The finding implies that textbooks must unpack curriculum intentions to help pedagogical decisions. Hence, we see it as necessary to focus further on other pertinent historical reasoning issues in current debates on historical thinking. This will establish how other historical thinking concepts are reflected in a broader academic and scientific discourse on history textbooks.

Conclusion

This study concludes that historical contextualisation is reflected in the history textbooks used in the study. The implication is that these textbooks reflect the nature of procedural knowledge and explicitly show contextualised historical materials to support learners in developing their understanding of the process of historical enquiry. Contextualised materials aid classroom teaching and learning in ways that allow teachers’ planning and teaching to reflect the nature of history and its pedagogy. The study contributes to understanding how textbook writers incorporate historical contextualisation within textbook narratives in line with history curriculum requirements. The study also contributes to understanding how historical contextualisation is needed in history textbooks to promote historical reasoning among textbook users such as teachers and students. We propose that further studies investigate other ways of assessing historical contextualisation in history textbooks.