Teaching high school students to use heuristics while reading historical texts.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to test the effectiveness of different types of instruction and texts on high schools students' learning of (a) history content and (b) a set of heuristics that historians use to think critically about texts. Participants for the study were 128 male and 118 female students, ages 16 and 17 years, from 2 high schools in the western United States. Eight history classrooms were randomly assigned to 1 of 4 interventions: (a) traditional textbooks and content instruction, (b) traditional textbooks and heuristic instruction, (c) multiple texts and content instruction, or (d) multiple texts and heuristic instruction. The heuristic instruction explicitly taught sourcing, corroboration, and contextualization. Students were administered pretests on their content knowledge and their use of heuristics. After an intervention of 3 weeks, students were readministered the content knowledge and heuristics posttests. A mixed-model analysis of covariance indicated that across all conditions, students who read multiple texts scored higher on history content and used sourcing and corroboration more often than students who read traditional textbook material. Findings highlight the importance of reading multiple texts to deepen content knowledge and facilitate the use of heuristics that historians typically use.