Fostering Secondary Students' Historical Thinking: A Design Study in Flemish History Education

Area of Science:

• History Education
• Curriculum Design
• Cognitive Apprenticeship

Background:

• Flanders' curriculum reform emphasizes historical thinking, a complex skill involving substantive and second-order knowledge.
• Existing research offers guidelines but often lacks a holistic approach and teacher relevance.
• Teachers face difficulties designing effective historical thinking instruction.

Purpose of the Study:

• To gain insight into designing instructional practices for holistic historical thinking.
• To ensure these practices are socially valid and useful for teachers.
• To develop and evaluate a lesson series based on cognitive apprenticeship principles.

Main Methods:

• Design research methodology.
• Development of a 12- to 14-hour lesson series on "decolonization after 1945" for 12th graders.
• Iterative revision based on a pilot study, expert review, and intervention study.

Main Results:

• The lesson series applies cognitive apprenticeship principles to history education.
• Historical thinking is approached holistically within the curriculum.
• The iterative evaluation process informed revisions for effectiveness and teacher relevance.

Conclusions:

• The designed lesson series offers an effective and socially valid approach to fostering historical thinking.
• This research provides valuable insights for designing history curricula that align with disciplinary thinking goals.
• The study addresses the need for holistic and teacher-validated instructional practices in history education.