Historical thinking is defined, according to Wikipedia, by many education resources as a set of reasoning skills that students of history should learn as a result of studying history. Sometimes called historical reasoning skills, historical thinking skills are frequently described in contrast to history content such as names, dates, and places. Many of us are schooled in social studies, US History, and World History by taking notes, memorizing names, dates, and facts, and regurgitating it on some form a test. We may have been subjected to videos while the teacher graded a few papers, and the teacher called this teaching and learning. 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 many cases historical thinking helps us understand and find meaning in present day events and future events.
21st century classrooms launches this type of thinking as early as Kindergarten. The use primary source items including artifacts, pictures, painting, images, and archive documents are prevalent in these classrooms across America. Students are encouraged and taught to think like historians to come to an understanding about the past. The United States Department of Education has established five benchmarks in grades K-4 and 5-12. This benchmarks are the following:
- Chronological Thinking
- Historical Comprehension
- Historical Analysis and Interpretation
- Historical Research Capabilities
- Historical Issues-Analysis and Decision-Making
These benchmarks serve as a guide of the type of instruction that should occur in social studies and history classroom across the United States. These benchmarks serve as a guide for educators to teach students how to critically read primary sources and how to critique and construct historical narratives. The process of learning is based on the creation of knowledge by the learner. It is more important that the teacher guide the students in seeing how history is documented and put into narrative format through text, video, or audio through the analysis of primary sources. The emphasis is focused on the artifacts and first hand information that history was documented.
Students must be engaged in processes that they have to use the skills of an historian to analyze and synthesize information to produce knowledge. The process allows students to make informed conclusions about the past. Research using secondary sources including books (historical fiction and non-fiction), magazines, journals, and digital resources are used widely to help the learner to come to a historical understanding about the past. It is the same type of skills that are congruent to skills of the 21st century learner.
