Promoting historical thinking using the explicit reasoning text

Abstract

Current trends in history education emphasize using disciplined inquiry to teach history. Scholars and teachers promote historical thinking as a classroom practice, arguing that teachers should help students “do history.” However, history textbooks, which are the most widely used instructional material in history classrooms, stand in sharp contrast to the emphasis on historical inquiry because of the use of an omniscient voice and a didactic tone that is characteristic of the genre. This study reconsiders the value of textbook narratives as vehicles to promote and encourage historical thinking and suggests an innovative way of developing texts that would serve the instructional purpose of improving students' historical thinking. Drawing from the scholarship on considerate and voiced texts, this study presents a new model for textbook narrative that embeds historians' reasoning into the narrative, Explicit Reasoning Text (ERT). Based on interviews with 12 high school students, this study argues the effectiveness of the ERT to engage students in historical investigation.