Why Ethical Judgments Are Important for Teaching Students to Think Historically

• In Event: 16.055 - Interrogating Practices and Purposes of History Education

Abstract

The research paper examines the debates amongst historians, philosophers of history, and historiographers about the acceptability of ethical judgments in the discipline of history in order to show that ethical judgments are an important part of "doing history", it outlines the characteristics of historians' reasoned ethical judgments to provide a framework for teaching students how to make historical ethical judgments, and it proposes that ethical judgments are an important part of historians' work and should be included in any conception that attempts to teach students to think historically.

Author

• Lindsay S. Gibson, University of Alberta