Historical thinking is a set of critical literacy skills for evaluating and analyzing primary source documents to construct a meaningful account of the past. Sometimes called historical reasoning skills, historical thinking skills are frequently described in contrast to historical content knowledge such as names, dates, and places. This dichotomous presentation is often misinterpreted as a claim for the superiority of one form of knowing over the other. The distinction is generally made to underscore the importance of developing thinking skills that can be applied when individuals encounter any historical content. History educators have varying perspectives about the extent they should emphasize facts about the past, moral lessons, connections to current events, or historical thinking skills and different belief about what historical thinking involves.

U.S. Academic Standards and Disciplinary Frameworks

In the United States, the National Center for History in the Schools at the University of California, Los Angeles has developed history standards that include benchmarks for both content in U.S. and world history and historical thinking skills in Kindergarten thru grade 4 and grades 5-12. In both of these age ranges, the Center defines historical thinking in five parts:

  1. Chronological Thinking
  2. Historical Comprehension
  3. Historical Analysis and Interpretation
  4. Historical Research Capabilities
  5. Historical Issues-Analysis and Decision-Making

As part of the national assessment effort called “The Nation's Report Card, ” the United States Department of Education also developed benchmarks for student achievement in U.S. history. Their rubric divides history learning into three basic dimensions: major historical themes, chronological periods, and ways of knowing and thinking about history. The third dimension is further divided into two parts: historical knowledge and perspective, and historical analysis and interpretation.

History Textbooks

History textbooks draw much attention from history educators and educational researchers. The use of textbooks is nearly universal in history, government, and other social studies courses at the primary, and secondary levels in the U.S.; however, the role of textbooks in these courses remains controversial. Arguments against reliance on textbooks have ranged from ideological to pragmatic. While textbooks are often presented as the objective truth, they include constructed versions of a selected period in the past.

The construction and adoption of textbooks can be political, with groups fighting over the version of history they think should be presented to schoolchildren. For example, Texas history textbooks did not include slavery as a central cause of the Civil War until 2018, even though slavery has long been understood to be a core issue causing the Civil War.

Historical thinking has been suggested as a way to avoid presenting only one narrative as the truth. In response to the controversy over Texas textbooks, University of Northern Colorado History Department Chair, Fritz Fischer said that "many of these problems could be solved if the school board prioritized making primary documents available to students, rather than deciding on which version of events ought to be taught."

Despite their drawbacks, most textbook critics concede that textbooks are necessary tools in history education. Proponents of textbook-based curricula point out that history teachers require resources to support the broad scope of topics covered in the typical history classroom. Well-designed textbooks can provide a foundation on which enterprising educators can build other classroom activities that develop historical thinking.

Teaching Models

Models for historical thinking have been developed to better prepare educators in facilitating historical thinking literacies in students.

Benchmarks for Historical Thinking

Peter Seixas, a professor at the University of British Columbia and creator of The Historical Thinking Project, outlines six distinct but closely interrelated historical thinking concepts that constitute historical thinking literacy in students. The concepts focus on developing the skills necessary for students to create an account of the past using primary source documents and narratives, or what Seixas terms "traces" and "accounts." Although these benchmarks provide a model to develop historical literacies, Seixas states that these concepts can only be applied with substantial learning about the past

  • Establishing Historical Significance is the ability to identify which events, issues, and trends are historically significant and how they connect to one another. Historical significance varies over time and between groups thus the criteria for determining what to study varies (e.g. Canadians will study Canadian history due to national connections).
  • Using Primary Sources as Evidence involves locating, choosing, understanding, and providing context for the past using primary sources of evidence.
  • Taking a Historical Perspective is understanding different social, cultural, intellectual, and emotional perspectives that formed the experiences and actions of people from the past.
  • Understanding the Moral Dimension of History involves learning about moral issues today by examining the past. This is an important step in historical literacy because it requires reserving present day moral judgments to understand actions from the past without approving of those actions. The SCIM-C strategy focuses on the development of historical questions to be answered when analyzing primary sources. This strategy provides a scaffold for students as they build more complex investigation and analysis practices identified in the "capstone stage". The capstone stage in the SCIM-C model relies on students having analyzed a number of historical documents and having built some historical knowledge about the time, event, or issue being studied.
  • Summarizing is the process of finding information using a primary source. This information can include the type of source (e.g. text, photograph), creator, subject, date it was created, and the opinion or perspective of the author.