Historisches Lernen erforschen. (Wissenschafts-)Theoretische Grundlagen und empirische Fundierung

Abstract

Contrary to the prevailing view of the supremacy of theory, the paper argues for a cyclic connection of theory and empiricism in the process of knowledge creation in the field of history didactics. We justify this view against the background of the activity theory of the cultural-historical school and show how we use our concept of narrative competence, existing approaches to historical thinking and learning, and empirical analyses from our research project “Research of Learning Processes in History” to substantiate historical thinking and learning in such a way that its understandings contribute to social orientation in relevant fields (e.g., research, history teaching). Finally, we discuss the opportunities and challenges of our approach and draw implications for the relationship between theoretical and empirical (as well as normative and pragmatic) knowledge production.