Geschichtswissenschaften
Refine
Year of publication
- 2019 (4) (remove)
Document Type
- Article (4) (remove)
Language
- English (4) (remove)
Has Fulltext
- yes (4)
Is part of the Bibliography
- no (4)
Keywords
- Mixed marriages (1)
- Netherlands (1)
- Roman Congregations (1)
- Tametsi (1)
- computational linguistics (1)
- historical thinking (1)
- task complexity (1)
- textbook research (1)
- triangulation (1)
Institute
- Geschichtswissenschaften (4)
- Präsidium (1)
In his widely acclaimed book “Das Kalte Herz” (The Cold Heart), economic historian Werner Plumpe tells the story of the history of capitalism, which in his view represents a sober form of economics which has proved itself superior and higher performing than other systems. To this day, the long tradition of capitalism criticism has not understood that in capitalism, great wealth is utilized to produce goods that are usually affordable for people with small incomes.
This special edition of HERJ (number 16.1) sprang from an international symposium in Salzburg, Austria on 11 and 12 May 2017, called Triangulation in History Education Research (H-Soz-Kult, 2019). It includes 12 articles on mixed-methods research and triangulation in history education research from seven different countries: Australia, Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
The purpose of history education in Austria has changed over at least the last decade. While the focus used to be to give students a master narrative of the national past based on positivist knowledge, the current objective of history education is to foster historical thinking processes that enable students to form transferable skills in the self-reflected handling and creation of history. A key factor in fostering historical thinking is the appropriation of learning tasks. This case study measures the complexity of learning tasks in Austrian history textbooks as one important aspect of their quality. It makes use of three different approaches to complexity to triangulate the notion: general task complexity (GTC), general linguistic complexity (GLC), and domain-specific task complexity (DTC). The question is which findings can be offered by the specific strengths and limitations of the different methodological approaches to give new insights into the study of task complexity in the domain of history education research. By pursuing multidisciplinary approaches in a triangulating way, the case study opens up new prospects for this field. Besides offering new insights on measuring the complexity of learning tasks, the study illustrates the need for further research in this field – not only related to the development of analytical frameworks, but also regarding the notion of complexity in the context of historical learning itself.
The article analyses how the decrees of the Council of Trent regarding marriage were used by the Church of Rome as a tool to contrast mixed marriages in Early Modern Europe. It investigates how these decrees were evaded by local churches in order to administer a practice of confessional coexistence impossible to eradicate, and how they were manipulated by actors – even Protestants – to put an end to undesirable unions. It also presents the interpretation that the Church of Rome made of the Tametsi to resolve the age-old issue of mixed marriages in the Low Countries, issuing the Benedictine Declaration, later applied to other contexts with a strong Protestant presence – above all out-side Europe. Although the Council of Trent claimed to have fixed a homogeneous and flawless nuptial ritual, the various local practices did not always adapt to it. Indeed, they bypassed it; sometimes refused it. This led parish priests and missionaries to turn to Rome for the resolution of concrete cases. The decisions taken for individual cases became a normative reference point. It was produced by the continuous interaction and negotiation with local churches and went on in fact to profoundly influence the sacramental rituality of marriages, which Tametsi had claimed were fixed and immutable.