When historians study the past, they try to understand how people in the past thought and lived. Understanding the foreignness or pastness of the past is a challenge because people in the past did not live under the same sociocultural conditions as today (e.g., different value systems, no internet, etc.). Historians have to be careful not to impose their own persent-day values and judgments onto past events and actors (that is, presentism). 

Taking historical perspective means understanding the social, cultural, political, and emotional settings that shaped people's lives and actions in the past. It requires knowledge about the period and place and specific information about the practices, values or beliefs of individuals. Thus, taking a historical perspective is not about imagining what we would have thought or done but how people at the time would have likely felt and acted (for exemple: understanding how child evacuees felt when their ship was torpedoed on 17 September 1940). 

Taking a historical perspective requires (a) knowledge about the period and place in time as well as (b) specific information about the practices, values or beliefs of individuals. To acquire this knowledge, it is important to refer to and use historical sources provided to you in this investigation.   

See the following documents to understand more about the concept of historical perspective (empathy) in history (from the Historical Thinking Project)