The Historical Thinking Movement: Historical Origins and Contemporary Trajectories

• In Event: From Reproachment to Rapprochement: International Research Trends in Curriculum, Knowledge, and Society

Abstract

This paper historicizes the contemporary focus upon ‘historical thinking’ within the curriculum, pedagogy, and research in history education. The author makes the claim that the current scholarly preoccupation with historical thinking is akin to a ‘movement’ and, while becoming dominant within the United States, is also transatlantic in scope. The first third of the paper will provide a larger historical context that starts – in alignment with the 2016 AERA Conference theme—in 1916. It will be shown that the contemporary advocacy for pedagogy that privileges the development of historical thinking skills is not something new, but is instead grounded in long-standing debates over history curriculum and pedagogy since the early twentieth century. Articulated as a focus upon teaching “history skills” or through the curricular application of “depth over coverage,” until recently a focus upon historical thinking was subsumed historically by the pre-eminence of social studies relative to history curriculums in schools. Moreover, within the teaching of American history in particular, there remained a dominant political paradigm that privileged coverage and a ‘progress narrative’ that promoted what Stéphane Lévesque has called ‘memory history’ in the schools – a form of history teaching that was also easily tested within the standards-based and accountability measures that came to predominance at the end of the twentieth century.

Author

• Tim Keirn, California State University - Long Beach