Rethinking Historians’ Expertise

The ReThink network examines the practices of professional historical research and the acquisition of relevant skills from the point of view of education and the theory of history

Project overview

The ReThink research network examines the practices of professional historical research and the acquisition of relevant skills from the point of view of education and the theory of history, thus bringing together specialists on the conceptual foundations of history and the empirical testing of learning. The research is conducted jointly at three Finnish Universities: at the Department of Teacher Education at the University of Turku and the Departments of Philosophy at both the University of Oulu and Åbo Akademi University. The network aims to contribute to the development of history teaching in higher education and the training of teachers in primary and secondary schools, and provoke public debate on the role of history in schools in general as well as on the ways in which the past is dealt with by enthusiasts outside the discipline.

Keywords: Conceptual change; Constructivist theory of history; Epistemic cognition; Epistemology; Expertise in history; Eye-tracking; Higher education; Historical thinking; Motivation; Spatial Statistics; Structural Equation Modeling

Team members

Jonas Ahlskog Anna Ahtola Erkki Anto Natan Elgabsi Mikko Kainulainen Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen Satu Laitinen Ilkka Lähteenmäki Jan Löfström Kalle Pihlainen Marjaana Puurtinen
Jonas Ahlskog

Jonas Ahlskog

Philosophy, Åbo Akademi University

Jonas Ahlskog holds the title of Associate Professor (docent) of Philosophy from Åbo Akademi University (ÅAU). He is Postdoctoral Researcher in Minority Studies at ÅAU, Principal Investigator of the Kone Foundation research project Doing Justice to Experience: Relations to the Difficult Past in History and Memory, and has experience of academic teaching in both history and philosophy as University Teacher (universitetslärare) at ÅAU. Ahlskog has held visiting research fellowships at Harvard University and Södertörn University. Ahlskog’s philosophical research is focused on conceptual questions concerning historical knowledge, action, understanding, explanation, testimony, memory, and cultural theory. In history, Ahlskog is primarily doing research about conceptions of nation, class, language and identity in political and ideological movements during the 20th century in Finland. He is the author of The Primacy of Method in Historical Research (Routledge 2021). Outside academia, Ahlskog is adviser (sakkunnig) for Svenska folkskolans vänner r.f., within a project about contemporary challenges for non-formal adult education.

  • jonas.ahlskog(a)abo.fi
Anna Ahtola

Anna Ahtola

Department of Teacher Education, University of Turku

Anna Ahtola’s (MA, education) master’s thesis examined museums as multisensory learning environments, thus combining the perspectives of museum pedagogy and special needs education. Ahtola’s other research interests include lifelong learning and different types of learners. In addition to work in the field of education and teaching, she also has comprehensive experience in working in sales environments.

  • ajkaht(a)gmail.com
Erkki Anto

Erkki Anto

Department of Teacher Education, University of Turku

Erkki Anto (MA, education) works as a Project Researcher at the Department of Teacher Education and has specialized in the use of the eye-tracking methodology in educational research settings. He is preparing a doctoral dissertation about the text-comprehension skills of university students.

  • emanto@utu.fi

Natan Elgabsi

Natan Elgabsi

Philosophy, Åbo Akademi University

Natan Elgabsi’s PhD project in philosophy started in 2014 and will be finished in early 2022. In the project, he works mainly on the relationship between epistemology and ethics in the human sciences, particularly on existential questions of responsibility and understanding in the philosophy of historical and anthropological writing. From 2022 onwards Elgabsi will work as a researcher in the project Doing Justice to Experience: Relations to the Difficult Past in History and Memory. The principal investigator of the project is Jonas Ahlskog, and the project is funded by Kone Foundation.

    • nelgabsi(a)abo.fi
Mikko Kainulainen

Mikko Kainulainen

Department of Teacher Education, University of Turku

Mikko Kainulainen is a PhD candidate at the University of Turku, Finland. With a focus on epistemic practices and conceptual change, his current research is located at the intersection of history education and expertise in history.

Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen

Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen

Centre for Philosophical Studies of History, University of Oulu

Professor of Philosophy Jouni-Matti Kuukkanen received his PhD in Philosophy from the University of Edinburgh in 2006 and has also worked in the universities of Durham, Leiden and Hull. Kuukkanen is a founder and co-director of The Oulu Centre for Philosophical Studies of History, and has published widely on the philosophy of science and specifically on Thomas Kuhn, on the philosophical foundations of the historiography of science and the history of ideas, and on the philosophy of historiography. His book Postnarrativist Philosophy of Historiography (Palgrave) was published in 2015.

Satu Laitinen

Satu Laitinen

Department of Teacher Education, University of Turku

Satu Laitinen (PhD, education) works as a University Lecturer at the Department of Teacher Education at the University of Turku. Her research focuses on motivation and its structure and stability. In her work, Laitinen has specialized in the use of sophisticated statistical tools, such as Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). She has published on motivation and associations between language skills and child’s interest in, e.g., Finnish Journal of Education and Research Papers in Education.

Ilkka Lähteenmäki

Ilkka Lähteenmäki

Centre for Philosophical Studies of History, University of Oulu

Ilkka Lähteenmäki (PhD, philosophy) is a Postdoctoral Researcher at University of Oulu, Finland. His research focuses on possibilities and limitations of different forms of historical (re)presentation, including games, social media feed, museum exhibitions, and of course the traditional narrative historical text. Lähteenmäki’s PhD thesis discussed the theoretical usefulness of conceptualising different kinds of historical representations as historical worlds instead of informative texts or explanations.

  • ilkka.o.lahteenmaki(a)oulu.fi
Jan Löfström

Jan Löfström

Department of Teacher Education, University of Turku

Jan Löfström, PhD, is Professor of History and Social Studies Education at the University of Turku. In 2020-2021, he was Visiting Professor at the Linnaeus University, in a project on the intersections of historical and moral consciousness, directed by Professor Niklas Ammert and funded by the Swedish Research Council. The project resulted in the book, “Historical and moral consciousness in education: Learning ethics for democratic citizenship education”, by Niklas Ammert, Silvia Edling, Jan Löfström and Heather Sharp, published by Routledge in 2022. His research interests include uses of history, teaching of controversial and sensitive history, historical consciousness, theoretical foundations of school social studies, economic education, and gender education.

  • jan.lofstrom(a)utu.fi

Kalle Pihlainen

Kalle Pihlainen

Philosophy, Åbo Akademi University

Kalle Pihlainen is Adjunct Professor of Philosophy and Cultural Theory at Åbo Akademi University and of Political History and Cultural History at the University of Turku, Finland. His research focuses on the theory and philosophy of history as well as literary and historical culture, with particular emphasis on the ethics and politics of historical representation, embodiment and existential phenomenology. He has published extensively on these topics in journals and anthologies, and a book, The Work of History: Constructivism and a Politics of the Past (Routledge). His current research project, funded by the Estonian Research Council, concentrates on the turn to materiality in recent theory debates. He is active in a number of organizations for the promotion of research in the theory and philosophy of history, including the International Network for Theory of History (INTH), of which he is a co-founder.

Marjaana Puurtinen

Marjaana Puurtinen

Department of Teacher Education, University of Turku

Marjaana Puurtinen’s (Adj. Prof.; PhD, education; MA, history) research focuses on the characteristics of expertise and the development of skills related to proficiency in both history and music. In addition to her interests in bridging general cognitive theories on expertise to more domain-specific views on proficiency, she has specialized in the application of eye-tracking methodology to learning research and worked on the visual processing of music notation, written text, and historical images. She is one of the two coordinators of the Turku Eye-Tracking Laboratories. In 2021-2026, Puurtinen holds an Academy Research Fellow position at the Department of Teacher Education, University of Turku and works on her project Eye on History: How Experts and Novices Deal with Visual Representations of the Past.

News and events

Research funding for Rethink members from Turku University Foundation

June 21, 2023

Research funding for Rethink members from Turku University Foundation

In their 2023 call, Turku University Foundation awarded Marjaana Puurtinen 12 480 e for the research project “Miltä historia nykyään näyttää? Tulevat historian ja opetusalan ammattilaiset ja menneisyyden katsominen ja kokeminen virtuaalitodellisuudessa” [̶...
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Article Alert: “Historians’ criteria for appraising historiography: An interview study”

September 2, 2022

Article Alert: “Historians’ criteria for appraising historiography: An interview study”

Please feel free to check out a recent article by Mikko Kainulainen, Marjaana Puurtinen and Clark A. Chinn, published in the Proceedings of the 16th International Conference of the Learning Sciences 2022, via this link. Abstract: Developing and applying epistemic ideals o...
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Article alert: “Aims in the practice of historiography: An interview study with Finnish historians”

April 21, 2022

Article alert: “Aims in the practice of historiography: An interview study with Finnish historians”

Please check out a recent open-access publication by Mikko Kainulainen, Marjaana Puurtinen and Clark A. Chinn, published in Historical Encounters in 2022 (click here to see the article). Abstract: Many recent approaches to history education—such as ones related to histori...
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Institutional and organisational affiliations

ÅA

ÅA

Åbo Akademi University
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UTUGS

UTUGS

University of Turku Graduate School
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University of Turku

University of Turku

University of Turku
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University of Oulu

University of Oulu

University of Oulu
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Turku Eye-Tracking Laboratories

Turku Eye-Tracking Laboratories

Turku Eye-Tracking Laboratories
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Oulu Centre

Oulu Centre

The Oulu Centre for Theoretical and Philosophical Studies of History
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ISHD

ISHD

International Society for History Didactics
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INTH

INTH

International Network for Theory of History
Detail
FBF

FBF

Folkets Bildningsförbund
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EARLI

EARLI

European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction
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Feel free to contact us directly through our personal emails or Marjaana Puurtinen (marjaana.puurtinen(a)utu.fi) regarding general network activities and coordination.