National Center for History in the Schools

Overview

Perhaps no aspect of historical thinking is as exciting to students or as productive of their growth in historical thinking as "doing history." Such inquiries can be generated by encounters with historical documents, eyewitness accounts, letters, diaries, artifacts, photos, a visit to a historic site, a record of oral history, or other evidence of the past.

Worthy inquiries are especially likely to develop if the documents students encounter are rich with the voices of people caught up in the event and sufficiently diverse to bring alive to students the interests, beliefs, and concerns of people with differing backgrounds and opposing viewpoints or perspectives of the events.   

Meaningful historical inquiry proceeds with the formulation of a problem or set of questions worth pursuing. In the most direct approach, students might be encouraged to analyze the document, record, or site itself. Who produced it, when, how, and why? What is the evidence of its authenticity, authority, and credibility? What does it tell them of the point of view, background, and interests of its author or creator? What else must they discover in order to construct a story, explanation, or narrative of the event of which this document or artifact is a part?    

Obtaining needed background information can send students on a search for additional resources. Providing students access to a school library, history books, interviews with experts in the community, knowledgeable parents and community residents, or other documents will sometimes be required. In this process the teacher, too, can join in the search and share in the process of discovery, thereby communicating to students that historical inquiry is a search in which answers are not known in advance, and that finding and interpreting the results is a genuine process of knowledge-building.   

STANDARD 4
The student conducts historical research:
Therefore, the student is able to

1. Formulate historical questions from encounters with historical documents, eyewitness accounts, letters, diaries, artifacts, photos, historical sites, art, architecture, and other records from the past. 
2. Obtain historical data from a variety of sources, including: library and museum collections, historic sites, historical photos, journals, diaries, eyewitness accounts, newspapers, and the like; documentary films; and so on. 
3. Interrogate historical data by determining by whom and when it was created; testing the data source for its credibility, authority and authenticity; and detecting and evaluating bias, distortion, and propaganda by omission, suppression, or invention of facts.
4. Marshal needed information of the time and place in order to construct a story, explanation, or historical narrative. 

>> Standard 5, Historical Issues-Analysis and Decision-Making