Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Historical Thinking
    Historical Thinking
    Historical Thinking
    Ebook253 pages6 hours

    Historical Thinking

    By Sam Wineburg

    3.5/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Since ancient times, the pundits have lamented young people's lack of historical knowledge and warned that ignorance of the past surely condemns humanity to repeating its mistakes. In the contemporary United States, this dire outlook drives a contentious debate about what key events, nations, and people are essential for history students. Sam Wineburg says that we are asking the wrong questions. This book demolishes the conventional notion that there is one true history and one best way to teach it.

    Although most of us think of history -- and learn it -- as a conglomeration of facts, dates, and key figures, for professional historians it is a way of knowing, a method for developing and understanding about the relationships of peoples and events in the past. A cognitive psychologist, Wineburg has been engaged in studying what is intrinsic to historical thinking, how it might be taught, and why most students still adhere to the "one damned thing after another" concept of history.

    Whether he is comparing how students and historians interpret documentary evidence or analyzing children's drawings, Wineburg's essays offer "rough maps of how ordinary people think about the past and use it to understand the present." Arguing that we all absorb lessons about history in many settings -- in kitchen table conversations, at the movies, or on the world-wide web, for instance -- these essays acknowledge the role of collective memory in filtering what we learn in school and shaping our historical thinking.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTemple University Press
    Release dateJun 20, 2012
    ISBN9781439903018
    Historical Thinking

    Related to Historical Thinking

    Related ebooks

    Essays, Study, and Teaching For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Trust the Teachers

      Nov 22, 2021

      Trust the Teachers
      5 min read

    • Article

      Reimagining Baltimore: Schools Invite Students To Help

      Jun 3, 2019

      Baltimore is offering a challenging curriculum that speaks directly to students’ lives and may help them write a positive new narrative for the city.

      4 min read

    • Article

      Mary Sanchez: The Problem Isn’t Banned Books, Naughty Words Or Wokeness. America Is Dumbing Down

      Jan 31, 2022

      The crux of America’s looming educational crisis is obvious and it has nothing to do with the books in the curriculum. The lesson is deep into the much-maligned transcript of a Tennessee school board’s discussion before unanimously voting to nix the

      3 min read

    • Article

      How Black Female Teachers Enrich Science With Anti-racism

      Nov 8, 2023

      Black female science teachers find ways to incorporate anti-racist teaching in their classrooms, according to a new study. Examples might include teaching about the practices and systems that led to high rates of diabetes in Black communities or disc

      2 min read

    • Article

      Overtime At The History Works

      Jul 21, 2020

      Overtime At The History Works
      4 min read

    • Article

      Whatever Happened To Teaching History?

      Nov 14, 2019

      According to a report by the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), the teaching of U.S. history to American students lags behind all other subject matters. The latest NAEP survey finds that proficiency levels for fourth-, eighth- and 12th

      2 min read

    • Article

      Where Are We Headed? Answers May Lie In The Past

      Sep 4, 2018

      The Great Recession saw interest in the humanities, such as history, plummet in favor of ‘practical’ college studies. But today’s turmoil may have reawakened interest in just how we got here.

      2 min read

    • Article

      Are Some LGBTQ Histories Being Overlooked?

      Jun 8, 2023

      What challenges are there in charting the experiences of LGBTQ [lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer] people in the periods you study? Florence Scott: I work on England in the early medieval period, and the biggest challenge I have is a lack

      7 min read

    • Article

      Sharing The Lamp Of Experience

      Sep 1, 2019

      Sharing The Lamp Of Experience
      8 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Historical Thinking

    3.5/5

    27 ratings3 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5

      It was a good textbook for my clinical history class. I'm not sure that I would have ever thought to read it, without being induced to do so in a classroom setting. But having done so, I would recommend it to any all secondary and college history teachers.
    • 2/5
      When I picked up Samuel Wineburg’s “Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts” I was expecting it to be a historiography and was more than a little disappointed to find that it was more focused on pedagogy, the art of teaching, than I was comfortable with. By “comfortable with” I mean interested in. I have the greatest respect for teachers, it is a noble profession, undervalued and underpaid but well outside my sphere of knowledge.Historical thinking is an issue in the historiographies i read. But the discussion is on how to develop the skill or if it is even possible, not how to get an entire classroom of students to do it. Even getting a room of teens to imagine a world without smartphones, and how different that would make their lives seems like a daunting task. For a scholastic work the book is very readable. The historiographies Wienburg cites are some of the best I have read. If teaching history in primary or secondary school interests you this is the book you want. But I am no teacher so what do I know about it.
    • 3/5
      The subtitle of this award-winning volume of essays, promises to chart the future of teaching the past. Wineburg’s main point, that the “historical thinking” and close, critical reading practiced by professional historians are very different from the ways students in other fields (and high school students, even in history classes) are taught to read and think. This is a valuable insight, which historians who write for the public (and grad students) would benefit from pondering. Wineburg’s essays, gathered from a decade of articles, conference papers and informal presentations, open a new field of study and outline a number of questions that he and others have begun trying to answer.

    Book preview

    Historical Thinking - Sam Wineburg

    Enjoying the preview?
    Page 1 of 1