Watch this introductory video (or download the transcript) for an overview of ways of thinking inherent in knowing and doing history. Historical thinking is complex and multi-faceted; we focus on five key aspects particularly relevant to the K-12 classroom.

Mar 6, 2025 · In response, we developed an approach we call the “five C’s of historical thinking.” The concepts of change over time, causality, context, complexity, and contingency, we believe, together describe the shared foundations of our discipline.

The Historical Thinking Project works with six distinct but closely interrelated historical thinking concepts. To think historically, students need to be able to: Establish historical significance; Use primary source evidence; Identify continuity and change; Analyze cause and consequence; Take historical perspectives, and

The six “historical thinking concepts” are: historical significance, primary source evidence, continuity and change, cause and consequence, historical perspectives and ethical dimensions. Together, these concepts form the basis of historical inquiry.

Explore Examples of Historical Thinking to see short videos of historians and students actively analyzing historical sources. Browse these to strengthen your understanding of these thinking processes and use them to model the same for your students.

Oct 1, 1995 · The steps to historical thinking all have merits in and of themselves—a capacity to sort out conflicting interpretations, for example, helps students relate historical dispute to contemporary arguments about what kinds of changes are occurring now—but they must lead toward the greater result.

The nine historical thinking skills are grouped into four categories: Analyzing Sources and Evidence, Making Historical Connections, Chronological Reasoning, and Creating and Supporting a Historical Argument.

Historical Significance How do we decide what is important to learn about the past? Guidepost 1 Events, people, or developments have historical significance if they resulted in change. That is, they had deep consequences, for many people, over a long period of time.

Empowered students are able to assess the significance of historical events or processes, and make meaning of evidence across many forms. They ask probing questions of evidence to examine both continuity and change over time, and to assess the causes and consequences of events and actions.

Historical thinking is a set of critical literacy skills for evaluating and analyzing primary source documents to construct a meaningful account of the past. Sometimes called historical reasoning skills, historical thinking skills are frequently described in contrast to historical content knowledge such as names, dates, and places.