This essay critically examines the so-called 'unnaturalness' of historical thinking. I identify and analyse three lines of argument frequently invoked by historians to defend the validity of historical inquiry in response to scepticism, which is often couched in postmodern terms. In doing so, I highlight that these lines of argument are predicated…

This article reviews the educational writings of historian Edwin Judge, particularly by providing a wider context for his paper "The Undesirability of Christian Universities." It discusses differences between formal education and the churches in the Roman world and considers implications of these for modern Christian higher education.…

The idea that children need to be exposed to stories of patriotic heroes has again surfaced in recent legislative activity surrounding education. Often, this impulse aligns with a conservative, moralizing vision of teaching history: the flaws of past historical figures should be minimized for the purposes of national pride and traditional virtues.…

"'To Make History the Living Force': The Professionalization of Public History, 1880- 2000" challenges how we often distinguish public history education from "traditional" history education and shows how debates about public history teaching reveal a larger and more dynamic story about all historians' professional identity,…

This study examines the legacy of ancient cultures by comparing the logical principles of Chinese and Greek mythology. Using the structural analysis method of Levi-Strauss and a narrative literature review methodology (based on a review of 69 articles), we identified seven factors, including fate, heroism, gods, nature, ethics, symbolism, and…

Creativity has been identified as an increasingly important graduate attribute for employment in the 21st century. As sites of significant development of disciplinary specialization, universities seem to be the natural place for creativity to be fostered. However, there remain contestations and ambiguities in the ways creativity is theorized, and…

This study explored expertise in searching for online information on a contentious historical and political question. Fact checkers, historians, and college students thought aloud while conducting online research on the question, "Did Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, support euthanasia?" Analyses of screen recordings…

For historians studying socially and historically marginalised groups, archives of disciplinary institutions often contain a range of valuable sources, some of which are autobiographical in nature. However, when using these intimate sources, researchers must fulfil legal requirements to comply with various norms on privacy protection. This…

A special place belongs to the historical thought of the late 19th-early 20th centuries in the spiritual heritage of the Tatar people. In a short time, Tatar historians have achieved significant results in the reconstruction and study of the national past. Their successes were appreciated by Russian and European scholars and orientalists, and…

Historical thinking, a term that encompasses a diverse set of definitions and competencies, calls on students to replicate the work and cognitive processes of historians by analyzing and interpreting evidence and making logical conclusions based on this evidence. Given this emphasis on discipline-specific skills, "sources" (especially…

This study explores how undergraduates, as historical thinkers, learn to interact with history and construct their understanding of the past, and examines the role that primary and secondary sources play in narrative construction and revision. Using the African American civil rights movement as a content focus, participants used images to create…

Some writers connected to the Peace Movement, many of whom were Quakers, expressed conflicting views on history's value to society and its ability to prevent unnecessary wars. These writers, mostly opponents to the United States' War with Mexico, argued that history education sometimes contributed to war by romanticizing militaristic government…

Teaching economic history requires the study of how to combine the economists' modeling and statistical methods with the methods used by historians and the other social sciences. It often involves learning how to search for quantitative data from a variety of sources and then building panel datasets that match the data found with existing…

Much has been written in recent years about how historical scholarship can be used to shape practice in the classroom. As an historian of the medieval period now working as an history teacher, Dhwani Patel offers a fresh perspective on these debates. During her PGCE year, Patel found herself reflecting on how the lenses and methodologies that…

Do GCSE and A-level questions that purport to be about consequences actually reward reasoning about historical consequences at all? Molly-Ann Navey concluded that they do not and that they fail to encourage the kind of argument that academic historians engage in when reaching judgements about consequences. Navey decided that it was important to…