Teaching Historical Thinking and Reasoning: Development and Use of an Observation Instrument

• In Event: New Directions in the Teaching and Learning of History

Abstract

Developing students' ability to think and reason historically is a challenging task for history teachers. Although several pedagogies can be used to provoke and improve students' historical thinking and reasoning we hardly know to what extent and how these pedagogies are adopted in the classroom. This study describes the development of the observation instrument Teach-HTR where we operationalized the abstract construct of 'teaching historical thinking and reasoning' in seven categories and 33 items. The inter-rater reliability and internal consistency was assessed in Iceland and The Netherlands. Observations in Iceland (N = 54 lessons) revealed that some form of teaching historical thinking and reasoning was present in nearly all observed lessons but overall the average scores on the subcategories were low.

Authors

• Súsanna Margrét Gestsdóttir, University of Amsterdam

• Carla Van Boxtel, University of Amsterdam

• Jannet Van Drie, University of Amsterdam