Overview
Children’s study of history rests on knowledge of facts, names,
dates, and places. In addition, real historical understanding requires
students to engage in historical thinking: to raise questions and to
marshal evidence in support of their answers; to read historical narratives
and fiction; to consult historical documents, journals, diaries, artifacts,
historic sites, and other records from the past; and to do so
imaginatively-taking into account the time and places in which these
records were created and comparing the multiple points of view of those on
the scene at the time.
Real historical understanding also requires that children have
opportunities to create historical narratives of their own. Such narratives
may take many forms: group stories dictated to the teacher in grades K-1,
and individual stories, letters such as a child of the time may have
written, journals, and reports in grades 2-4, for example.
Historical understanding also requires that students thoughtfully
listen to and read the historical narratives created by others.
Well-written historical narratives are interpretative, revealing
conditions, changes, and consequences, and explaining why things happened
as they did. Following such narratives, and analyzing the events they
describe and the explanations they offer, promote important skills in
historical thinking.
Because of the importance of historical fiction in opening the past
to children and engaging their interests in the people and events of long
ago, it is especially important for children to learn to analyze these
stories for their historical accuracy, to compare these stories and their
illustrations with primary sources-historical artifacts, photos, diaries,
and other records of the past-and to differentiate fact and fiction.
Children should also have opportunities to compare different stories about
a historical figure or event in order to analyze the facts each author
includes or omits, and the interpretations or point-of-view communicated by
each-important early steps in the development of students’ abilities
to compare competing historical interpretations of events.
Students engaged in activities of the kinds just considered will
draw upon skills in the following five types of historical thinking:
1.
Chronological Thinking
2. Historical Comprehension
3. Historical Analysis and Interpretation
4. Historical Research Capabilities
5. Historical Issues-Analysis and Decision-Making
These skills, while presented in five separate
categories, are nonetheless interactive and mutually supportive. In
conducting historical research or creating a historical story of their own,
for example, students must be able to draw upon skills in all five
categories. Beyond the skills of conducting their research, students must,
for example, be able to comprehend historical artifacts and records consulted
in their search, analyze their purpose and importance, and demonstrate a
grasp of the historical time (e.g., long, long ago) and geographic place in
which the problem or events developed.
In short, these five sets of skills, developed in the following
pages as the five Standards in Historical Thinking, are statements of the
outcomes we desire students to achieve. They are not mutually exclusive
when put into practice, nor do they prescribe a particular teaching
sequence to be followed. Teachers will draw upon all these Thinking
Standards, as appropriate, to develop their teaching plans and to guide
students through challenging programs of study in history.
Finally, it is important to point out that these five sets of
Standards in Historical Thinking are defined in the following pages largely
independent of historical content in order to specify the quality of
thinking desired for each. It is essential to understand, however, that
these skills do not develop, nor can they be practiced, in a vacuum. Every
one of these skills requires historical content in order to function-a
relationship that is made explicit in Chapter 3, which presents the
standards integrating historical understandings and thinking.