Classroom Teachers' Thinking about Historical Texts: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

The scope of this study is teachers' historical thinking with regard to the interpretation of a particular set of historical texts and interpretive tasks. It also focuses on teachers' disciplinary perspectives as factors in their historical thinking. The study takes Wineburg's (1991) research on the historical thinking of academic historians and high schools students as a point of departure. The teachers in this study read and “thought aloud” about the same documents on the Battle of Lexington used by Wineburg, then attempted to construct meaning and to assign credibility to particular sources for portraying the truth of historical events. The emergence of three distinct profiles in this study provides a possible framework for sorting through the experiences of history teachers in order to form a basis for understanding their historical thinking.