While Western and established democracies are wary of teaching students about national identities and aspire to broaden the framework of history education, the Republic of China (Taiwan) is still struggling to construct a Taiwanese identity to safeguard its freedom from the Chinese historical narrative. As the divide between Taiwan and China grew,…

Every semester, instructors of general education survey classes in history struggle with the same questions as they rewrite their syllabi: How can I get my students to engage more deeply into writing and research? How can I help them develop their problem solving and critical thinking skills? How can I make history more interesting to non-history…

Tom Bennett begins his article with a tale of a frustrating afternoon with Year 7. We've all been there. In his case, his frustration was caused by his finding a conceptual gap between how well his class wanted to do and the actual quality of their causal thinking. Bennett decided to use counterfactuals to improve their thinking. This article…

History educators find themselves in the peculiar situation of wishing to introduce students to the history discipline while lacking a clear conception of the features intrinsic to historical inquiry across its various specialisations and subject matters. In affirming that no one methodological charter hangs in the corridors of academic history…

Inspired by the work of the social and cultural historian Tim Cole, Stuart Farley decided to look again at the way he teaches the Holocaust. He wanted to focus on the geographical concept of place as a way of enabling his Year 9 students to build far more diverse narratives, which took full account of the chronological diversity of people's…

This dissertation study examined how secondary social studies teachers in an ICT setting plan and teach as they adapt their instruction to prepare students for the new social studies Regents examination framework in New York State. Utilizing a qualitative approach, the researcher asked teachers to complete a survey. Sixty-three participants…

This paper makes a conceptual argument for using the Decoding the Disciplines research paradigm as a pedagogical innovation in the field of teacher education. It incorporates empirical findings from a research project in which teacher candidates conduct Decoding interviews to deepen understanding of historical thinking and learn pedagogical…

Classical background, topics of schooling history in high school and university bring attention to the existence of global challenges of the 21st century common today. These calls necessitate the creation of new historical study from the younger contemporaries allowing to enter consciously the real world of the people living before and near it,…

After reflecting on the difference between his study of source extracts at university and how he was using source extracts in the classroom, Jonathan Sellin went in search of a new way to help his pupils to situate sources in context. Finding inspiration in the work of intellectual historian Quentin Skinner, Sellin decided to show his Year 9…

Like many history departments, Hugh Richards' history department at Huntington School uses enquiry questions to structure their medium-term planning. Yet Richards noticed that his efforts to build knowledge across an enquiry by teaching macro-narratives as an unfolding story seemed to make it harder for some pupils to see and retain the bigger…

A troubling gap exists between the current state of history assessment and the knowledge and skills deemed essential for students to thrive in the 21st century. We propose a new assessment of historical thinking that represents a promising alignment with extant cognitive research, as well as with the practices that undergird the discipline. In…

This article reports a validity study of History Assessments of Thinking (HATs), which are short, constructed-response assessments of historical thinking. In particular, this study focuses on aspects of cognitive validity, which is an examination of whether assessments tap the intended constructs. Think-aloud interviews with 26 high school…

Many American high school government and history teachers aim to convey curriculum content without bringing in their own personal political beliefs or biases. However, in the hyperpolarized political climate of the past decade, teachers have grappled with teaching their courses when potentially controversial political or cultural issues come up in…

To combat the spread of fake news, researchers and academics point to the importance of historical thinking. While generally researched in terms of formal education, historical thinking is also being considered in history museums. This research study examined the ways in which children demonstrate historical thinking in history museums' hands-on…

Many scholars working on history education have stressed that, in order to "do history," a congruent relation between substantive and procedural knowledge is required. In response to this argument, this article emphasizes the need to consider pupils' relations to substantive knowledge. With reference to history textbooks currently used…