Teaching historical thinking in Indonesia: Can students cross the threshold portal?

Abstract

Teaching Indonesian students to have historical thinking skills is not an easy task. The main predicament is that students were used to learning history passively. They were only used to receiving historical knowledge through teacher explanations delivered through lectures. Meanwhile, the ‘student textbook’ is usually used as the only learning resource by both teachers and students. Moreover, this textbook tends to present the past in a single perspective, which must be in line with the official version of the state. As a result, students tend to think that history does not have multiple perspectives. Therefore, this fact complicates the teaching of historical thinking in Indonesia. This article aims to discuss the opportunities and challenges of teaching historical thinking in Indonesia from the perspective of the threshold concepts. The main conclusion of this article is that teaching Indonesian students to have historical thinking skills is still possible but many difficulties will be faced by students. Based on this conclusion, this article suggests that history teachers utilize historical primary sources as an alternative learning resource.