Historical thinking


Historical thinking is a set of critical literacy skills for evaluating and analyzing primary source documents to construct a meaningful account of the past.
Sometimes called historical reasoning skills, historical thinking skills are frequently described in contrast to history content such as names, dates, and places. This dichotomous presentation is often misinterpreted as a claim for the superiority of one form of knowing over the other. In fact, the distinction is generally made to underscore the importance of developing thinking skills that can be applied when individuals encounter any history content. Most educators agree that together, history content—or facts about the past—and historical thinking skills enable students to interpret, analyze and use information about past events. In doing so, students will realize the complexity of history with all of the pieces and perspectives that cannot be captured through one narrative. Furthermore, as described by Dr. T. Mills Kelly, characteristics of historical thinking develop sourcing skills, the ability to construct and support an argument, and, "the ability to present the past in clear ways, whether in writing or in other media, saying what can be said and not saying what cannot."

U.S. Standards for Historical Thinking in Schools

In the United States, the National Center for History in the Schools at the University of California, Los Angeles has developed history standards that include benchmarks for both content in U.S. and world history and historical thinking skills in grades Kindergarten-4 and 5-12. In both of these age ranges, the Center defines historical thinking in five parts:
  1. Chronological Thinking
  2. Historical Comprehension
  3. Historical Analysis and Interpretation
  4. Historical Research Capabilities
  5. Historical Issues-Analysis and Decision-Making
As part of the national assessment effort called “The Nation’s Report Card, ” the United States Department of Education has also developed benchmarks for student achievement in U.S. history. Their rubric divides history learning into three basic dimensions: major historical themes, chronological periods, and ways of knowing and thinking about history. The third dimension is further divided into two parts: historical knowledge and perspective, and historical analysis and interpretation.

The Role of History Textbooks in Learning to Think Historically

History textbooks draw much attention from history educators and educational researchers. The use of textbooks is nearly universal in history, government, and other social studies courses at the primary, and secondary levels in the U.S.; however, the role of textbooks remains controversial.
Arguments against reliance on textbooks have ranged from ideological to pragmatic. While textbooks are often presented as the objective truth, they are selected versions of a constructed past.
The creation and revision of textbooks can be a never-ending political process, with many groups fighting over the version of history they think should be presented as the truth to schoolchildren. For example, Texas history textbooks did not include slavery as a central cause of the Civil War until 2018, even though slavery has long been understood to be at the core of the Civil War. The debate continues––the Texas Freedom Network still thinks the revised curriculum " not paint a full picture of civil rights movements in the United States," among other failings. The subjective process of choosing narratives to include in a history textbook can be seen in Marty Rowley's comment on the controversy over Texas textbooks: "Public education is by nature public... our job is to make sure that the standards reflect what Texans want their children to be taught.”
Historical thinking has been suggested as a way to avoid presenting only one narrative as the truth. In response to the controversy over Texas textbooks, "Fritz Fischer, the chair of the history department at the University of Northern Colorado, said many of these problems could be solved if the school board prioritized making primary documents available to students, rather than deciding on which version of events ought to be taught."
Still other critics believe that using textbooks undermines the process of learning history by sacrificing thinking skills for content—that textbooks allow teachers to cover vast amounts of names, dates, and places while encouraging students simply to memorize instead of question or analyze. For example, Sam Wineburg argues: "Traditional history instruction constitutes a form of information, not a form of knowledge. Students might master an agreed-upon narrative, but they lacked any way of evaluating it, of deciding whether it, or any other narrative, was compelling or true”.
Most textbook critics concede that textbooks are a necessary tool in history education. Arguments for textbook-based curricula point out that history teachers require resources to support the broad scope of topics covered in the typical history classroom. Well-designed textbooks can provide a foundation on which enterprising educators can build other classroom activities.

Historical Thinking Teaching Models

Models for historical thinking have been developed to better prepare educators in facilitating historical thinking literacies in students.

Benchmarks for Historical Thinking

Peter Seixas, Professor Emeritus from the University of British Columbia and creator of , outlines six benchmarks for historical thinking literacies in students. The benchmarks focus on developing the skills necessary for students to create an account of the past using primary source documents and narratives, or what Seixas terms "traces" and "accounts." Although these benchmarks provide a model to develop historical literacies, Seixas states that the concepts only can be applied with substantial content learning about the past.
Created by David Hicks, Peter E. Doolittle, E. Thomas Ewing, the SCIM-C strategy of historical thinking focuses on developing self-regulating practices when engaging in analyzing primary sources. The SCIM-C strategy focuses on the development of historical question to be answered when analyzing primary sources. This strategy provides a scaffold for students as they build more complex investigation and analysis practices identified in the "capstone stage". The capstone stage in the SCIM-C model relies on students having analyzed a number of historical documents and having built some historical knowledge about the time, event, or issue being studied.