“No, no, the cold war was not that dramatic”:A case study on the use of a drama task to promote students’ historical imagination

History, for some students, is a complicated subject. For example, topics regarding politics and nation formation, on which history textbooks typically focus (Foster & Crawford, 2006), are difficult for students to imagine (Lévesque, 2008). Students need to create a context to understand such historical events and developments. This can be done by developing a “sense of period” (Dawson, 2009), consisting of concrete elements, such as information about daily life (such as clothing and housing) or ideas and attitudes (such as laws, religion). Historical imagination can also be focused on historical situations (e.g., the feudal system) or the actions of historical persons (e.g., voting for Hitler). The assembling of these elements of information about time, place and people is also regarded a relevant component of historical contextualization.