Historical accounts by fourth graders at the beginning stage of learning history show that these young students lack an experience-based framework for grounding and connecting historical teaching. Implications for teaching history to elementary school students and aspects of children's reliance on imagination in constructing historical narratives…

Interviews with fourth graders who had not yet received systematic instruction in U.S. history revealed that these students are interested in the past, concerned about human intentionality and cause-effect relationships, and able to construct coherent narrative accounts of historical events as they understand them. However, they lack an…