The Applications of Historical Thinking Skills in Teaching and History Learning: Between Rhetoric and Reality

Abstract

The applications of Historical Thinking Skills in teaching and History learning have become more attention among researchers in Malaysia after the Standard Curriculum of Secondary Schools for History education was launched by the Ministry of Education in 2016. Historical Thinking Skills are consisting five skills such as understanding the chronology, discovering historical evidence, making interpretation, imagination, and rationalization that can help the students cognitively to understand the process of using the historical information, it's including deciphering context, perspective, point of view, and the perceived facts to understand the past or thinking like as historian. Furthermore, Historical Thinking Skills have been more important as the appropriate skills in history learning, especially for students on how to learn the history subject authentically and dynamically than only memorizing historical facts and events. On top of that, Historical Thinking Skills were compulsory skills which are used in teaching and history learning who must be mastered by students and also teachers in Malaysia with desired the students' aspirations in which embodied in the Malaysian Education Development Plan (2013-2025) can be achieved which is to develop thinking skills among them. As a history teacher, the applications of Historical Thinking Skills must be fostered to their students in which also was emphasized in Standard Document for Curriculum and Assessment of History subject. However, the applications of Historical Thinking Skills in teaching and History learning having many issues, problems, and challenges that acquired by researchers whether it becomes more rhetoric or reality which be the points in our discussion.

A Model for Developing Critical Thinking Skills in Teaching History: Lessons from Zimbabwe

“…In the context of history teaching, critical thinking is therefore a process reflecting consistency in history thinking and doing. There are five skills that can aid students in cognitively comprehending the process of applying historical information: finding historical data, comprehending the chronology, interpreting, rationalizing, and using imagination (Maria et al, 2019). To comprehend the past or think like a historian, the process entails interpreting context, standpoint, perspective, point of view, and the perceived facts (Maria et al, 2019).…”

“…There are five skills that can aid students in cognitively comprehending the process of applying historical information: finding historical data, comprehending the chronology, interpreting, rationalizing, and using imagination (Maria et al, 2019). To comprehend the past or think like a historian, the process entails interpreting context, standpoint, perspective, point of view, and the perceived facts (Maria et al, 2019). Students may hold the complexity of the past and present in their hands thanks to the critical thinking abilities that come from developing historical thinking skills like multi-perspectivity (Seixas & Morton, 2012).…”

“…As a guide to belief or action, critical thinking skills are the intellectual processes of actively conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication (Thompson, 2011;Willingham, 2019). When applied to the teaching of history, understanding the chronology, locating historical data, interpreting, imagining, and rationalizing are all examples of critical thinking abilities in historical thinking (Maria et al, 2019).These skills enable history learners to cognitively understand, assess and evaluate, the historical information with the aim to discern their problems in the context of their community.…”

“…Acknowledgment of the importance of the critical thinking skills in the global economy ignited reforms in the history curriculum across the globe. As such, several works from diverse countries for example in Lithuania (Penkauskiene, 2010), South Africa (Godsell, 2022), Mauritius (Goburdhun, 2022) Turkey (Aktekin, 2013;Polat, 2020), Malaysia (Maria et al, 2019) and Zimbabwe (Dombo & Mujere, 2023) concur that many countries started teaching history in a way that prioritises critical thinking abilities over memorisation of dates and names of people and locations. That development was an acknowledgement that with rote learning, students become overloaded with historical facts that they find meaningless or unimportant (Wineburg, 2018).…”

“…While previous studies might have addressed skills based teaching in history elsewhere (Godsell, 2022;Goburdhun, 2022;Maria et al, 2019), very few studies have investigated whether the current pedagogical practices employed by history teachers in Zimbabwe enhance the development of critical thinking skills. Scholarship is also scanty on the availability of models that can be employed to develop critical thinking skills in the teaching of history.…”