Between school and ethical–political everyday action: a comprehensive framework of the development of historical thinking

Abstract

ABSTRACT Historical thinking is a construct approached by different disciplines with a recent proliferation in research interest compared to thinking in other domains. Leading exponents do not agree on its definition and include the two main traditions: Anglo-American and German, and various groups or research centres throughout the Western world. Something problematic happens with the models of progression or development of historical thinking that lack an agreed upon psychological theory as their foundation. We argue that theoretical differences are produced by the split between the psychological, considered individually, and the social, considered external to individual thought. In this article we propose that researchers of the development of historical thinking can benefit from a re-reading of Vygotskian theory, with a focus on everyday concepts, scientific concepts and zones of proximal development. In this paper, we carry out a conceptual systemization of historical thinking based on this literature. We distinguish several dimensions that we group into three ‘macro-dimensions’ according to their psychological dynamics of development, which is dialectically related with history education and the socio-historical conditions surrounding it. These macro-dimensions explain the developmental rhythms of historical thinking and include the disciplinary knowledge macro-dimension, the epistemological macro-dimension, and the ethical–political macro-dimension.