Author:

Keywords:

Cognitive skills, history, Reasoning, Secondary education, Teaching/instruction

Abstract:

Working with sources in secondary school history education is generally considered as an important exercise to foster students’ historical thinking. Research suggests that teaching approaches play an important role in promoting students’ understanding of sources, and that the instructional practice accompanying sources raises difficulties. This paper reports on an empirical study, involving 88 classroom observations with 61 teachers, and focusing on primary sources. The kind of primary sources, and especially the instructional practice accompanying them, were examined for Flemish history education. An analytical research tool was built, based on both literature and experiences from previous research into the use of sources. How were primary sources used, and thereto provided with context information? Were they only used as illustration, purely questioned for their content, or also to foster students’ historical thinking? The analysis includes the differences between the grades. Almost 2/3 of all 322 primary sources touched upon in the classroom, were visual sources, whereas 1/3 were textual. Most primary sources were contextualized to a certain extent. They were especially used as pure illustration or questioned for their content, and far less to foster students’ historical thinking. The latter questions occurred more frequently in the lower grades. Besides a quantitative analysis, the paper will present an in-depth qualitative analysis of the use of sources, and explanations for the relative lack of attention paid to their role in fostering students’ historical thinking. Starting from the classroom practices, it will suggest strategies to use sources in ways going beyond a content-related approach.