Abstract
The purpose of this study is to investigate the actual state of history learning of university students and to examine whether teaching activities aimed at interrelating knowledge promote their inference of historical events. For this purpose, we used the “Columbus problem” that asked the location of the West Indies where Columbus had arrived in 1492 and that can be solved by associating knowledge about Columbus (e.g., the destination, route direction, discovery place). The pre-test showed that not a few students placed the West Indies in the vicinity of India, and their answers were inconsistent with their knowledge. It suggested their knowledge was isolated and individual. Then we conducted the teaching activities in which we interrelated their factual knowledge to the background knowledge of the historical event. As a result, 73% of the students were able to identify the places of the West Indies correctly. The teaching activity had positive effects on their inference. But some students still identified them incorrectly. Future research needs to investigate how we could encourage students to interrelate knowledge appropriately.
https://ror.org/03qg42k57 
