Exploring differential effects of an intervention on historical inquiry tasks: a qualitative analysis of 12th-grade students’ progress

The aim was to show that clinical assessment and serial Dopplers could be used to exclude deep venous thrombosis (DVT), and also that clinical assessment in combination with D-dimers could...

The word essay means ‘to lay out an argument’. All writing revolving around the laying out of argument in the form of an essay has a disarmingly simple structure: (a) An introduction laying out the brief details of the argument, describing succinctly the issues the essay will discuss (and why) and hinting at the conclusion. It is important to ‘begin

‘Historical thinking’ has a central role in the theory and practice of history education. At a minimum, history educators must work with a model of historical thinking if they are to formulate potential progression in students’ advance through a school history curriculum, test that progression empirically, and shape instructional experiences in order to maximize that progression. Where do they look, and where should they look, in order to construct such models? Over the past several decades, three major strands have developed, one based in the empirically minded and instruction-oriented British Schools Council History Project, a second through the more philosophically oriented German field of history didactics and historical consciousness, and a third in the US. All three had roots in the historiography and philosophy of their own national traditions. Canadian history educators have been working with a pragmatic hybrid defined around six ‘historical thinking concepts.’ While this model has both been highly influential in the reform of Canadian history curricula and prompted adaptations elsewhere, there has been only minimal theoretical discussion exploring the relationship of these concepts to each other or to the three traditions which helped to shape them. This article is a contribution towards filling that gap.

This article discusses the false dichotomy between criticality and historical inquiry. We argue that adding “critical” to “historical inquiry” can be interpreted as something distinct, instead of integral, to historical inquiry. It can normalize the idea that historical thinking is not critical, which, in turn, upholds the illusion that historical inquiry research is not inherently ideological or political. It inadvertently reifies a false dichotomy that silos historical inquiry scholarship into two camps: one that is deemed political because it directly engages in criticality and another that is deemed apolitical because it claims objectivity. We make three assertions: historical inquiry is already critical; history education research and critical scholarship share common commitments; and historical thinking should embrace the tension and other forms of knowledge as necessary to developing as a field. We conceptualize this tension as a space of possibility that repairs the marginalization of and centers Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and Asian American knowledge.

Historical thinking skills are fundamental for enabling students to engage critically with the past, yet their connection to local history awareness remains underexamined in the Philippine context. This study explores the relationship between undergraduate students’ awareness of two pivotal resistance movements in Bohol – the Tamblot Revolt (1621–1622) and the Dagohoy Rebellion (1744-1829) – and their self-reported proficiency in three core dimensions of historical thinking: time and chronology perception, historical inquiry, and historical empathy. The research surveyed 275 students enrolled in the Readings in Philippine History course at a state university in Central Philippines during the first semester of the 2024-2025 academic year. The Historical Thinking Skills Scale (HTSS) measured self-perceived competencies via a Likert-type instrument covering temporal ordering, source analysis, and affective perspective-taking. Awareness of the local movements was assessed through a tailored multiple-choice test, calibrated via pilot-item analysis to ensure adequate difficulty, discrimination, and reliability. 61.1% of participants fell into the “Completely Unaware” category, while only 22.5% demonstrated “Excellent Awareness.” Conversely, a majority of students reported “Good” to “Excellent” skills in historical inquiry (87%) and time perception (69%), though fewer (68%) achieved comparable levels in empathy. Spearman’s Rho correlation coefficients indicated negligible, non-significant associations between awareness scores and each historical thinking dimension (ρ ranging from –0.024 to 0.002, p > 0.05). Although students may self-report general historical thinking abilities, they often lack specific knowledge of locally significant events. The absence of a significant relationship underscores the compartmentalization of local history within the broader narrative of Philippine history education.

Fostering historical thinking and democratic citizenship? A cluster randomized controlled intervention study

How can history pedagogy account for racialized experiences impacting historical thinking in the present? In contrast to a more universalized set of historical thinking skills, this article asserts a framework for historical inquiry through students’ racialized experiences. What does historical inquiry through racialized experience look like? Rather than merely make room in the curriculum to validate racialized experience, students require tools to confront and historicize their experiences in a racialized world. Through three essential questions addressing the relationship between historical thinking and racialized experience, I emphasize historical scholarship that centers racially marginalized experiences. These essential questions lead into a framework for reorienting historical inquiry in the classroom, complimenting rather than replacing mainstream historical thinking pedagogy.

This chapter explores the role of questions and sources in promoting historical thinking. The distinction is problematic, however, because historical inquiry is reliant on sources. Questions and sources are fundamental to historical inquiry, and teachers can plan learning and teaching sequences around selected sources. The potential scope of historical inquiry is immense. To engage in research, historians select some aspect of the past to explore. Teachers and students also make choices that shape historical inquiry. A teaching and learning sequence that includes questions and source material is an important foundation. A range of cooperative learning activities will provide students with opportunities to use historical thinking concepts. To acquire a nuanced understanding of the past, it is necessary to consider the perspectives of different people and groups. Teachers facilitate this by presenting students with sources that enable them to explore more than one perspective.

The study investigated the thematic structure and thematic progression in students’ written narrative texts. Specifically, it analysed types of themes and identified types of thematic progression patterns employed in students’ written narrative texts. It also examined the implications of the theme and thematic progression pattern’s predominance in students’ written narrative texts. 85 participants were selected from among Form Three and Form Four students. Data was collected using the closed test and documentary reviews. Data was coded and analysed using Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) and Thematic Progression (TP) theories by Halliday, Mathiessen, and Danes respectively. The findings indicated that students employed the taxonomy of four types of themes in their narrative texts: topical theme, textual theme, interpersonal theme, and macro theme. The topical theme was predominantly used followed by textual theme and interpersonal theme. The findings also revealed the taxonomy of seven types of thematic progression patterns in students’ written narrative texts, namely: constant pattern, zigzag pattern, and multiple patterns, constant-zigzag or zigzag-constant, constant-zigzag-multiple, zigzag-multiple, and constant macro pattern. The constant pattern was predominantly used followed by a zigzag pattern and then multiple patterns. The predominance of topical themes and constant thematic progression patterns implied that students tended to rely on thematic selections like topical themes and constant which seem simpler to use rather than textual themes, interpersonal themes, zigzag patterns and multiple patterns, all of which seem complex for students since they need advanced and sophisticated knowledge and skills to apply these thematic structures and progression patterns in their texts. Thus, students’ dependence on simple thematic selections indicates a lack of knowledge or ability to use complex thematic structures and thematic progression patterns in their written narrative texts while these thematic structures have a crucial role in their writing. Therefore, a systematic approach to teaching thematic selections is crucial. The findings of the current study contribute to the body of knowledge on thematic structure and progression in academic writing due to the detailed taxonomy of thematic structure and progression patterns revealed in this study. The study recommends that educational planners and implementers ensure that the theory of thematic structure and thematic progression are systematically integrated into the teaching and learning of writing activities from lower levels of education, specifically secondary education. Further, the study recommends further research in this area to use different approaches, genres and respondents from different settings such as advanced-level secondary school students

A recent curriculum reform in Flanders (Belgium) has introduced historical thinking as a central goal for history education. Historical thinking aims to introduce students to the methods of historians and disciplinary ways of thinking. It is a complex act, requiring the application of substantive and second-order knowledge, and is difficult to foster among students. International (intervention) research has provided several guidelines for the design of instructional practices that are effective in promoting specific aspects of students’ historical thinking. However, these studies do not approach historical thinking in a holistic manner, are often vague about how general design principles were adapted to history education, and rarely report on whether the designed curricula were considered relevant and useful by teachers. Taking into account the many difficulties that teachers encounter in designing practices aimed at historical thinking, this design research aims to gain more insight into the design of instructional practices that are both effective in fostering historical thinking in a holistic manner and that are considered socially valid by teachers. The designed artifact is a 12- to 14-h lesson series on the theme “decolonization after 1945,” for students in the 12th grade. It applies the model of cognitive apprenticeship’s (Collins et al., 1991) general design principles to the specific context of history and approaches historical thinking in a holistic manner. The initial lesson series was evaluated and revised in two rounds based on a pilot study, an expert review and an intervention study.

This intervention study compared the efficacy of small-group tutoring on the mathematics learning of third-grade students at risk for mathematics difficulty using either a school-provided standards-based curriculum (SBC) or a schema-based instruction (SBI) curriculum. The SBI curriculum placed particular emphasis on the underlying mathematical structure of additive problems to represent and solve word problems. At-risk students ( N = 136) from 35 classrooms scoring below a proficiency level on their district accountability assessment were assigned randomly to treatment groups. Results indicated interaction effects on the word problem-solving (WPS) posttest and retention tests such that SBI students with higher incoming (pretest) WPS scores outperformed SBC students with higher pretest scores, whereas SBC students with lower pretest scores outperformed SBI students with lower pretest scores. No effects were found on number combinations automaticity, and mathematics and reading achievement. Implications to improve the problem-solving performance of at-risk students are discussed.

History teachers’ epistemological beliefs are considered to be greatly influential on their instructional practice and a necessary requirement to foster their students’ historical thinking skills. In examining this relationship, two issues arise. First, adequately capturing teachers’ epistemological beliefs remains a challenge as existing instruments appear not to be always valid and reliable. Some researchers suggest to distinguish between formal and practical epistemologies, which requires different measuring instruments. Second, it remains unclear how teachers’ epistemological beliefs influence their teaching practice as several studies found there is no straightforward relationship due to the influence of other beliefs. At the same time, the role of teachers’ own understanding of historical thinking in fostering this thinking among their students has not been extensively studied. Through a qualitative research with 21 history teachers, this study examines the relationship between teachers’ formal and practical epistemologies, their understanding of historical thinking and their instructional practice. It thereby reflects on methodological issues related to mapping teachers’ epistemological beliefs. Data analysis shows that teachers’ epistemological beliefs remain difficult to capture, due to inconsistencies in and between measuring instruments. It could be concluded, nevertheless, that, while most teachers acknowledge the interpretive and constructed nature of history, they generally do not include this in their own descriptions of historical thinking. The research supports the idea that nuanced epistemological beliefs are required for interpretive history teaching, but are not a sufficient precondition. While other beliefs and contextual factors are indeed at play, it also appears necessary to support teachers’ competence in designing materials to foster their students’ historical thinking, including epistemological reflection. The article reflects on the implications for teaching training and professional development programs.

This article makes use of information gathered through questionnaires and documents that were conducted as a part of a bigger study and specifically describes students' perspectives and experiences of project-based learning and collaborative essay writing in the Essay Writing Course and investigates students' perspectives and experiences of peer feedback use in collaborative essay writing. The study used a classroom action research (CAR) design and involved a group of 42 English Language Education Study Program students from Khairun University who were enrolled in the "Essay Writing" course during the academic year 2021–2022. The findings show that all the students were enthusiastic and active in collaborative essay writing. The findings also show that in collaborative essay writing, the students prefer group members and essay topics determined by their lecturer. The students viewed that peer feedback is important to improve group essays and the same is the feedback from their lecturer. In the introductory essay writing collaboratively, for instance, they experienced difficulties in providing peer feedback on focus, purpose, and thesis statement. This was revealed in their essay task completion that two of nine groups of students had the completed elements of the essay introduction (initial sentence that indicates the general topic, background information to the topic, thesis statement, and sub-topics to be included) throughout the seven tasks. Four other groups lacked thesis statements and subtopics to include in their essay introductions. The remaining three groups missed the thesis statement and sub-topics to be included in one or some of the seven essay tasks.

Universities and even high schools are moving more and more to online instruction as a cost-effective way to reach more students with fewer resources. This naturally raises the question: Can online learning be effective? (The question is not “Is online learning effective?” because just like face-to-face instruction, online instruction includes a diverse array of techniques.) In this paper I compare online and flipped face-to-face versions of an introductory astronomy course. Both versions were designed around student-centered learning principles, but the specific implementation of these principles varied according to the strengths of each type of instruction. Normalized Hake gains on the Star Properties Concept Inventory (SPCI) were quite similar for both classes: 56% and 58% for the online and flipped face-to-face versions, respectively. The gains obtained by students with low pre-test scores were as good as the ones achieved by students with high pre-test scores.

This study investigates the impact of ethics instruction in communication courses on students’ moral reasoning competence. Using a quasi-experiment, participants in interpersonal conflict courses and communication ethics courses were exposed to different levels of ethics instruction through a variety of instructional methods. Results indicate that students who completed conflict courses demonstrated significant gains in moral-reasoning abilities, whereas students in communication ethics courses demonstrated small but insignificant gains in moral reasoning. Additionally, significant differences in gains in moral-reasoning competence occurred between students who had high pretest scores and students who had low pretest scores. Instructional methods significantly affected students’ reports of the degree to which ethics had been addressed in courses.