Overview
The study
of history, as noted earlier, rests on knowledge of facts, dates, names,
places, events, and ideas. In addition, true historical understanding requires
students to engage in historical thinking: to raise questions and to marshal
solid evidence in support of their answers; to go beyond the facts presented
in their textbooks and examine the historical record for themselves; to
consult documents, journals, diaries, artifacts, historic sites, works
of art, quantitative data, and other evidence from the past, and to do
so imaginatively--taking into account the historical context in which these
records were created and comparing the multiple points of view of those
on the scene at the time.
Real
historical understanding requires that students have opportunity to create
historical narratives and arguments of their own. Such narratives and arguments
may take many forms--essays, debates, and editorials, for instance. They
can be initiated in a variety of ways. None, however, more powerfully initiates
historical thinking than those issues, past and present, that challenge
students to enter knowledgeably into the historical record and to bring
sound historical perspectives to bear in the analysis of a problem.
Historical
understanding also requires that students thoughtfully read the historical
narratives created by others. Well-written historical narratives are interpretative,
revealing and explaining connections, change, and consequences. They are
also analytical, combining lively storytelling and biography with conceptual
analysis drawn from all relevant disciplines. Such narratives promote essential
skills in historical thinking.
Reading
such narratives requires that students analyze the assumptions--stated
and unstated--from which the narrative was constructed and assess the strength
of the evidence presented. It requires that students consider the significance
of what the author included as well as chose to omit--the absence, for
example, of the voices and experiences of other men and women who were
also an important part of the history of their time. Also, it requires
that students examine the interpretative nature of history, comparing,
for example, alternative historical narratives written by historians who
have given different weight to the political, economic, social, and/or
technological causes of events and who have developed competing interpretations
of the significance of those events.
Students
engaged in activities of the kinds just considered will draw upon skills
in the following five interconnected dimensions 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 argument 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
documents and records, analyze their relevance, develop interpretations
of the document(s) they select, and demonstrate a sound grasp of the historical
chronology and context in which the issue, problem, or events they are
addressing 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 that
students need 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
specific historical content in order to function--a relationship that is
made explicit in Chapters 3 and 4, which presents the standards integrating
historical understandings and thinking for history for grades 5-12.