WHA Annual Meeting: Korea 2026

This panel examines how historical perspective can be systematically designed, implemented, and analyzed in middle school world history classrooms in Korea. In an era of globalization, the ability to understand perspectives shaped by different historical contexts has become increasingly important. Although historical perspective is widely recognized as central to historical thinking, students often struggle to move beyond presentist or relativist interpretations.
We conceptualize historical perspective across three interrelated domains. Contemporaneous perspective refers to understanding how historical actors interpreted events within the social, political, and cultural conditions of their own time. Historiographical perspective concerns how later historians and interpreters construct differing accounts of the same event based on distinct questions, values, and evidentiary frameworks. Cross-temporal perspective involves comparing and synthesizing perspectives from different temporal positions, examining how interpretations shift across time.
Paper 1 presents the design principles of ten inquiry-based curriculum units built around widely used primary sources in Korean middle school textbooks. The materials articulate a staged progression across the three domains of perspective. Paper 2 analyzes 1,020 student responses generated through classroom implementation in ten schools, identifying patterns in students’ recognition and explanation of historical perspective. Paper 3 offers an in-depth analysis of cross-temporal perspective through close examination of students’ written conclusions on selected modern topics. Together, the panel clarifies the epistemic challenges of perspective learning and suggests instructional directions for world history education.