Historical Skills in Compulsory Education: Assessment, Inquiry Based Strategies and Students' Argumentation (original) (raw)
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This paper makes a reflection on the assessment of historical thinking in compulsory education. First, the article reflects on the type of knowledge that is being evaluated (memory or understanding). According to current thinking, assessment should meet the teaching aims set out by the teacher, it should be another means of monitoring and improving students' learning, of correcting mistakes made during the process and of taking relevant decisions. Secondly, there will be an analysis of the cognitive model of learning history proposed by international studies. The application of educational competences to assessment processes needs to be adjusted to the epistemological, pedagogical and cognitive fundaments of each subject. Finally, the article will make some proposals for evaluation, firstly by using methods of inquiry, problem-based learning and related teaching strategies, in addition to the use of tools to assess more complex skills of historical thinking with students´argumentation. Historical thinking requires a variety of assessment tools that are able to capture the different capacities of the students in their interpretation of the past and their historical skills.
Article, 2022
The aim of this paper is to identify the most suitable activities and exercises for the development of historical knowledge and skills and their subsequent evaluation. On this basis, a quantitative study has been carried out among primary and secondary school teachers in several Spanish regions in which their perception of what types of exercises and activities (of those proposed in their History or Social Science classes) are most suitable for assessing the historical knowledge and skills that students are expected to acquire has been extracted. The results show that exercises involving the interpretation of texts and images which require students to think about and apply the historical knowledge acquired are very useful, as are questions which seek historical explanation and causal reasoning; however, objective tests (multiple-choice tests, linking dates with events, etc.) or short questions about historical events or characters are not considered to be very suitable for the adequate development of historical knowledge and, therefore, of historical competences. Broadly speaking, it is recommended that this line of research be continued so that other authors can replicate these findings, deepening their knowledge of these instruments, whose didactic commitment could serve as an argument in the face of the excessive time pressure faced by today's teachers.
Historical Encounters, 2021
This paper presents the theoretical framework, application and final outcomes of a pilot test designed as a possible model for assessing students' historical thinking in Secondary Education. It is based both on widely accepted historical thinking concepts and on the assessment framework developed by PISA. The test tries to assess what could be named as the three major competences in history: "explain historically", "use of sources as historical evidence" and "understanding the features of historical knowledge". It includes several stimuli (texts, images…) and a total of 39 items. The field trial of the test was applied to a convenience sample of 893 10 th and 11 th grade students, aged 16 to 18 years. Their answers were analysed statistically according to the Item Response Theory (IRT), and the results uphold the validity and reliability of the test instrument. The IRT analysis also enables us to take a first step towards defining levels of achievement and progress for the learning and acquisition of those competences. One implication of note of this research is the possible adoption of this model for assessing history, based both on applied content knowledge and historical thinking concepts and skills. Such a model of assessment would also stimulate more active, problem-based and motivating teaching approaches.
Paper presented at the 14th HEIRNET meeting History Education in Challenging Times: Meeting ‘the Other’ Across Time and Space, Dublin, Ireland., 2017
The research we present here today analyses the results obtained from a test developed in a sample of Spanish Secondary Schools, which focuses its attention on the assessment of the Historical Thinking Skills among young students. This test was designed under two main ideas. First of all, there are different international surveys as PISA, TIMMS or PIRLS, that assess learning in reading, mathematics and science, with the aim of improving the possible gaps existing in the educational systems of each country. But there is no attempt to develop any specific survey in the case of history, despite the complexity of the reasoning and thinking skills that such as discipline requires, among them the so-called historical thinking skills.
Competence based History teaching (2010)
The pivotal difficulty in learning history is the fact that this subject is mainly language based and therefore demands symbolic representation from students from the very beginning. In Bruner’s theory this is the highest level of thinking after the action-based enactive representation and the so called iconic representation which one is image-based. But, despite these differences, Bruner also suggests that all children are capable of learn any material, the only question being the method of teaching. Therefore this challenge mostly is addressed to the teachers and not to students. And of course the educational system is put to a test as well In the Hungarian educational system children first encounter History in third grade; students are approximately eight years old at that time. It is still not a regular, well – structured History learning at that time, but pupils work mostly with legends from different periods of the Hungarian History as a prelude of curricular History classes. It is a major difference from the American practice because they start learning History already in nursery through the history of their town, institutions, family. This method seems to combine the different levels of thinking mentioned above with more efficiency than the Hungarian system. It was an interesting question whether under such different circumstances, are the Hungarian children capable of handling symbolic representations to understand cause and effect and to exercise source critics. Can they reach the same level of historical competencies found in American schools? The diagnostic session is mainly based on CHATA (Concepts of History and Teaching Approaches) project established by Alaric Dickinson and Peter Lee to measure the Historical knowledge of the students living in English speaking countries. Pupils were given discrimination tasks of cause and effect with English historical events exchanged for contextually equivalent alternatives. Results showed that despite the different teaching methods, the difference between the achievement level and the test standards are not significant therefore nine years old children demonstrate similar competency levels as the American contemporaries. The thesis also gives a critical review of three well – known Hungarian History books used in primary schools. It seeks answers to questions like: What reasons do they mention that make History worth learning? How do they attempt to involve different levels of thinking? To what extent do depict the complexity of life in past eras? Do they try to develop competencies like cause and effect, critical view or empathy? No perfect book exists, but the qualities of Hungarian History books are good. Recently they gave priority to improvement of competencies rather than lexical knowledge. For further research it would be desirable to give a review for schoolbooks used in the last centuries and compare to those of today.
Teaching historical thinking and reasoning: Construction of an observation instrument
British Educational Research Journal
For some years, historical thinking and reasoning (HTR) have been important educational goals for upper secondary education in many countries. Nevertheless, teachers are often unsure of how to realise these ideas in the classroom. This article reports on the development of the domain-specific observation instrument Teach-HTR. It is intended for the further professional development of experienced history teachers who wish to foster historical thinking and reasoning, as well as to assist those who are doing their initial teacher training. The observation instrument was developed in several phases. A literature review was conducted to operationalise the dimensions of learning and teaching involved in historical thinking and reasoning. The content validity of this first version was evaluated by experts using a content validity rating form and subsequently revised. The final instrument consists of seven categories of teaching historical reasoning and 33 items. The instrument was piloted in 10 history lessons in Iceland and subsequently in 10 lessons in the Netherlands. Interrater reliability was evaluated using intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) and percentage of agreement. The internal consistency was evaluated using Cronbach's alpha. In the second pilot, the instrument showed acceptable inter-rater reliability and internal consistency. The outcomes of the two pilots are described, and examples are given of lessons with high and low scores. The instrument can help identify concrete examples of teaching historical thinking and reasoning and points for development, which makes it a promising instrument for professional development.
Croatian Journal of Education-Hrvatski Casopis za Odgoj i obrazovanje, 2013
This study was undertaken with the aim to identify the kind of knowledge which primary school teachers in Serbia expect their pupils to show related to the elements of history within the subject Social Environmental and Scientific Education (SESE). The data were acquired by analyzing the pedagogical documentation (373 tasks devised by teachers) and by observing 46 SESE classes devoted to elements of history. The findings show that no matter which technique of testing pupils' knowledge is applied, there is a notable predominance of demands on historical facts, rather than other forms of historical thinking, which appear only sporadically. Key words: elements of history; historical thinking; SESE (Social Environmental and Scientific Education); testing knowledge. --- Sažetak Vrednovanje ucenickih znanja o povijesnim sadržajima utemeljeno na razvoju povijesnoga misljenja pomice fokus s ucenja cinjenica na ovladavanje proceduralnim znanjima. U suvremenim pristupima tim sadržajima uc...
2021
This work presents the results of research whose main objective was to analyze the sources present in Geography and History textbooks used in Spain and Italy in secondary education, as well as how they were designed for use by the teaching staff of this subject. This research was carried out for the benefit of teachers and for the improvement of the teaching-learning process. The sample was configured on the basis of a rigorous analysis of textbooks belonging to relevant publishers in Spain and Italy, whose selection was made using a quantitative and descriptive research method based on the interpretative paradigm, with the help of an SPSS statistical program. As for the main results obtained, the data indicated that the tasks requested from students (based on the use or analysis of sources) are of a low cognitive level, which makes it difficult to learn critical and reflective historical thinking. Finally, it was concluded that for students to strengthen the development and acquisi...
Methodological Assumptions in the Scope of the Teaching of History
The Educational Review, USA, 2021
The exposition of the article in question focuses particularly on the problematic of the teacher relating first to the function of the transmission, then of learning, by the student, of the historical episode momentarily considered, no longer visualized and assumed in the "factum". In itself, as well as in the meaning expressed in it, which goes beyond the event itself, visualizing himself above all through moments of reflection, dialogue and criticism. Inside, we first contemplate the "schematic representation of the pedagogical encyclopedia" by A. Visalberghi, revisited on the occasion by the author, in a didactic historical key, with, in addition, the description of some educational processes contemplated within the methodological structure IHD by R. Cattell. Many projects can be adopted by the teacher: in this circumstance two will be underlined, attributed to Mazzotta M. and Professor Ferrone AM. Both scholars, pedagogues, while differentiating themselves in the different passages, aim to bring out the problematic nature of the topic taken under consideration, also historical in our circumstance, temporally structuring a series of situations that from the dialogue, even casual, between the emerging actors (teachers and students), gradually consolidate into several episodes, later concrete and causal, structured in different topics and nuances. At the laboratory level, numerous activities will be created, even unusual ones, rich in different objectives and particularities, in the proposal of new didactic "opportunities" various in the interdisciplinary composition.