Understanding Support System for Causal Relationship in Historical Learning

Abstract

In historical learning, to grasp the causal relationship between historical events and to understand factors that bring about important events are significant for fostering the historical learning. However, some students are not able to find events that have causal relationships. The objective of this paper is to develop a support system for understanding the meaning of a causal relationship and making valid causal relation graphs in the historical learning. When events have a causal relationship, a state change in one event causes the other event. To consider these state changes are critically important to connect historical events. This paper proposes understanding scheme for grasping causal relationships between events by arranging state changes. Our system firstly asks students to arrange state changes of historical people according to the historical events, and then to draw the causal relation graph. The described state changes are indicated on the links in the causal relation graph. By observing the state changes on the links, students are not only able to check whether their causal relation graphs are correct, but also understand that state changes are important for grasping the causal relationships.