The epistemological concept of perspective meets all the conditions set by Meyer and Land (2003, 2006) to be considered a threshold concept for history learning. Following this initial hypothesis, this paper analyses the concept and the ways in which it constitutes a threshold: grasping perspective not only transforms one's understanding of…

The study investigates upper secondary school students' use of counterfactual reasoning when engaging in a task concerning historical explanation. The study analyses student answers to a prompt asking them to evaluate the causal importance of a historical actor for a historical event, aiming to characterize the counterfactuals used, as well as…

Historical significance is a historical thinking concept. Being able to identify historical significance is viewed as important for understanding change and continuity in the past, and for understanding the way 'history' is constructed by present society. This article discusses how Swedish students in Grade 5 (age 11 years) perceive and understand…

In history education, the deconstruction of narratives is an important skill for students. The skill teaches them to look critically at the offered texts. In this study, we investigated the extent to which students are able to critically analyse the narratives in their history textbooks. To answer this question, we asked 106 students in…

In 2018, the toy manufacturer Playmobil launched a 'History Class' as an addition to its 'Furnished School Building'. The materiality of this toy, and the selection of teaching media represented in coloured plastic (a blackboard with timeline, magnifying glass, parchment roll, stone axe, posters and other sources), convey an idea of history…

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…

The Ghanaian senior high-school history curriculum encourages teachers to guide students to explore, question and construct historical interpretations, rather than accept established historical narratives. This study investigates how those teachers conceive and implement the curriculum intent by exploring their pedagogical reasoning and classroom…

This qualitative case study research explores the discursive practices of three White secondary US history teachers while teaching about the "Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka" Supreme Court decision. Using critical discourse analysis as a methodology, this study examines teachers' use of naming, verb tense and presupposition to…

Historians collect and verify evidence and then interpret it in an acceptable way. A general consensus is that history does not present us with an absolute truth -- the most we can hope for is historians' reliable, evidentially based interpretations of the historical topic. History not viewed as interpretation has long raised alarm bells in…