Fostering Historical Writing in Upper Secondary School Students: Results of an Intervention Study

• In Event: Moscone Center West Roundtable Session 6
  In Roundtable Session: Teaching and Learning History Within Classroom Contexts

Abstract

History educators highlight the significance of writing to support students’ historical thinking. In con-junction with this, epistemological beliefs about the nature of history could be influenced. Several German-speaking scholars conceptualize the skills people need to write histories as narrative compe-tence. Preliminary findings on the notion of argumentative writing in the Anglo-Saxon tradition show that writing instruction may foster historical reasoning and writing skills. Based on this work, we de-veloped a writing intervention for upper secondary school students aiming to foster participants’ nar-rative competence and historical thinking skills. Our empirical findings indicate a large effect of the writing intervention on students’ development of narrative competence in the experimental group. Thus, we found no significant effects for the beliefs scales.

Authors

• Monika Waldis, University of Teacher Education Northwestern Switzerland

• Martin Nitsche, University of Applied Sciences of Northwestern Switzerland

• Kristine Gollin, University of Applied Science of Northwestern Switzerland