CHW3M Historical Thinking Concepts*
Peter Seixas of UBC’s Centre for Historical Consciousness and The Historical Thinking
Project has identified six ways that we “do” history in order to better understand the past.
The approach is not one of merely studying the content of history. His six ways involve
focusing on:
-
Historical significance
Evidence
Continuity and change
Cause and consequence
Historical perspectives
The ethical dimension of history
This may be different from what you’re used to:
- History is a complex thing, with much interpretation required.
- It requires that students develop critical thinking skills; history is not just about
memorizing dates and events.
- This approach also encourages us to go well beyond textbook reading.
This course will, whenever possible, focus on using these six historical concepts. The
pyramid below suggests how the four achievement categories relate to the HTC skills.
*All of the material in this package was adapted from the Historical Thinking Project Summer Institute, OISE, Toronto, July, 2012.
All credit goes to Peter Seixas. Additions have since been made based on Peter Seixas’ and Tom Morton’s book, The Big Six.
You must be able to express what
you have learned, either orally or in
writing.
You’ll make a lot of connections
between events and historical
thinking concepts. You’ll use
what you’ve learned.
Critical thinking and analysis are
the essential skills of historical
thinking. Research will likely be
involved as well.
Everything begins with learning
details about what happened.
communication

application
thinking

knowledge
Historical Significance
How we select what/who should be taught, remembered, researched and learned about
the past by using criteria. We don’t accept that everything that ever happened is
significant. We attach significance to certain people and events by using criteria.
Guideposts for Historical Significance:
1. Does it result in change?
- With deep consequences (profundity – how?).
- For many people (quantity).
- Over a long period of time (durability).
2. Is it revealing?
- Does it help us understand the past?
- Historiography (the study of how history has been written and interpreted over
the years) has changed a lot over the decades. Now we study ordinary people
(e.g., lower classes, peasants, slaves, women) who didn’t necessarily cause
change themselves but who experienced change. So events chosen as historically
significant reveal this unrecognized impact.
3. Does it occupy a key place in a meaningful narrative?
- Resonates with people today by shedding light on issues or problems of today.
- History is constructed, meaning significance is attributed to events; not
everything that ever happened is considered significant.
4. Different people (groups) at different times have different views of what is
considered to be significant.
In Your Life
Sketch out the most significant events in your life so far. Then analyze how you came to
your answers. This is how you develop criteria for assessing significance.
CHW3M
The 100 objects from the British Museum were chosen because they are significant in
some way. The author’s choices are an interpretation with which some people and
historians may disagree.
Dragon’s Den Mesopotamia is an exercise to help you understand why certain
innovations are considered to be significant.
Evidence
Students must be taught directly how to use evidence from the past by learning the skills
of how to work with original material, beyond just determining the bias in a primary
source document. To do this they must ask good questions and make inferences. The main
question is: “how do we know what we know about the past?”
Guideposts for Evidence
1. We interpret history based on the inferences we make about primary sources from
the past. They can range from the most minute traces, such as sherds of pottery, to
written records.
2. A source alone isn’t evidence. We need to ask questions about it for it to become
evidence.
3. Students have to source a piece of evidence when they study it.
- Ask questions about when it was created, who created it.
- What is the purpose of the author in creating this document (or
object)?
- What values and worldview do they hold?
- The author of the document may be aware of these factors, or he/she
may not be aware of them (conscious or unconscious).
4. Sources have to be considered within their own historical setting.
- What is the context from which the evidence comes?
- Under what social/economic/political, etc. conditions was it created?
- In simple language: what historical events were occurring when it was
created?
5. When we ask questions about a source these allow us to make inferences. Since
we can’t know these answers are necessarily correct we have to corroborate them,
meaning we have to check other sources to see if our inferences are “correct”.
In Your Life
Identify everything you have done in the last 24 hours. Make a list of traces left over
from these actions. Which are purposeful, which are accidental? Are these traces likely to
be preserved?
CHW3M
Make a list of all the primary evidence sources in the course so far, not just written.
Continuity and Change
History is more than a list of events. How do we organize its complexity and its flow?
One way is by looking at the relationship between events/developments in terms of
continuity (what remains the same) and change (what changes).They can both exist at the
same time; they are not opposites. Seixas has developed guideposts for students to
analyze these relationships.
Guideposts of Continuity and Change:
1. Continuity and change can occur at the same time and are often closely
interwoven. It helps to begin by examining chronologies, events listed in an order
from earliest to latest. However, the list alone is not to be memorized. It is to be
analyzed.
2. The pace of change isn’t always the same.
- How fast or slow does change occur?
- Turning points are especially interesting to look at.
- Rivers of change and road maps are useful analogies because we can
consider speed, depth, obstructions and other things that both hinder and
encourage change.
3. Progress and decline
- These are ways of evaluating change over time.
- For whom? It depends on who is looking at the evidence.
- In what?
- Progress in something can lead to decline in something else.
4. Periodization
- How we divide time up (bundle it into periods) is interpretative.
In Your Life
Make a timeline of your life. Analyze it by looking at things that remain the same over
time and aspects of your life that have changed.
Think of a car trip you went on once during your life. What events slowed it down? What
events sped it up?
CHW3M
Did the Egyptians themselves label their kingdoms as old, middle and new? Or are those
labels applied by historians studying Egypt?
Cause and Consequence
There is a complexity to the relationship between events, often seen through an
exploration of their causes and consequences. Seixas asks: “Why do events happen, and
what are their impacts?” History is actually more about the why than the what, perhaps
to your surprise.
Guideposts of Cause and Consequences
1. There are multiple causes and consequences, both short- and long-term
Constructing Causal Webs and Questions About Them:
-
What lay behind X?
How did X make a difference?
What kind difference did X make to Y?
Why was X so shocking (surprising, etc.)?
Why did X happen in year Y?
Why did X happen so quickly (slowly, peacefully, violently, etc.)?
2. Causes that lead to a change vary in influence
- Some are more important. Students have to assess or weigh which have
more influence.
Questions on Influence:
-
Did X make Y happen, or did X just make Y more likely?
What was the real cause of X?
Was it only X to blame for Y?
Which person/event/development did most to shape people’s lives in …?
3. Change results from two related types of factors
- Historical actors – people who take actions.
- Social/political/cultural conditions within which actors operate.
4. Historical actors can’t predict the effects of conditions, opposing actions and
unforeseen reactions
- This generates unintended consequences.
5. The events of history weren’t inevitable
- If any single action or condition of an event had been altered it may have
turned out differently.
- Counterfactuals can be constructed: what would have happened if…
In Your Life
Write a personal timeline of all the events that brought you to this class. Make sure to
include not only the most recent things (short-term) that happened but also events, actions
and emotions that are more medium- and long-term.
Have your personal plans always turned out exactly as you wished?
CHW3M
The rise and fall of Mesopotamian states did not just happen. Each rise was caused by
certain factors, while each fall left consequences in its wake. They all need to be analyzed
in order to piece together their meaning.
Historical Perspectives
Understanding the people of the past requires understanding the different social,
cultural, intellectual and even emotional contexts that shaped people’s lives and actions
in the past.
Guideposts for Historical Perspective
1. There’s a big difference between the worldviews of people today (beliefs, values,
motivations) and the worldviews of people in the past.
2. Avoid presentism (imposing our own standards on the past)
o How is their role/position different from a similar person or group today?
o Compared to what we face today, what relevant circumstances were
different for them in the past (e.g., technology, media, economy, religion,
family life, communication, recreation, etc.)?
3. Historical actors operated within a historical context that must be recognized.
4. Taking the perspective of historical actors does not mean identifying with them
o Students do not have to feel what it would have been like to be a person
from the past (often this cannot be known and we shouldn’t try).
o The question is not: how might I feel in a given historical situation. It is
how might they have felt.
5. There are many different historical perspectives on events in the past held by
different historical actors.
o Students need to recognize these and analyze these.
In Your Life
Do you have anyone in your family history that had a name that is no longer popular
today? Would that person’s name have been considered “funny” then?
CHW3M
Don’t quickly dismiss Hammurabi’s laws as unfair because they’d be seen that way
today. Take the time to study how they would be seen in their own time and place.
Ethical Dimension of History
Seixas identifies the following problem with studying history: “we expect to learn
something from the past that helps us in facing the ethical issues of today, but we always
risk anachronistic impositions of our own standards upon the past (presentism).” He
asks: “How can history help us to live in the present?”
Guideposts for Ethical Dimension
1. Making judgments about actors and actions in the past is part of historical writing.
2. Students can only make proper ethical judgments when they consider the
historical context of the historical actors they are reading about.
3. People today cannot make judgments about the past using current standards of
what is right and wrong.
4. People today can think about our responsibility to remember and respond to
injustices of the past, as well as contributions and sacrifices made in the past.
5. Helping make judgments about contemporary issues, informed by history.
Lessons from the past are a very tricky subject.
Caveats About Ethical Dimension (especially regarding controversial events)
-
When studying controversial events, show that they are not isolated from their
context.
Find dissenting voices to supposedly monolithic views of events in history.
Identify how actors were judged by their immediate surroundings.
Ask what information people had at the time.
Beware: the past can become a current political issue.
In Your Life
Think of a movie you’ve seen in which there were heroes and villains. How did the
producer/director/writer get you to sympathize with the hero and dislike the villain? Did
the movie have a lesson or moral message?
Can the same questions be asked of textbooks?
CHW3M
We have a lot of fun studying ancient history. Are we ignoring the more serious nature of
the events that occurred?