Abstract:

In an increasingly complex world—with new communications technologies, proliferation of “fake news”, increasingly diverse societies, commitments to and demands for reconciliation, reparations, and national status for minoritized groups, and inflamed debates over public commemoration of historical figures—citizens face a level of political, social, and cultural complexity that demands a critical understanding of the past and present. Although curriculum developers in Canada are drawing on recent theoretical and empirical research on historical thinking to develop new approaches to history education, the Canadian research base consists largely of small-scale studies and therefore presents a piecemeal view of the state of history education in Canada. There has been no systematic, pan-Canadian research done to assess the state of history education since A. B. Hodgetts’ (1968) landmark National History Project study more than fifty years ago. In his report, Hodgetts offered a scathing critique of the state of history education in Canada and lamented the “bland consensus version of history,” (p. 24) the emphasis on memorization rather than deep learning, and the failure to help students establish connections between the past and present. In recent years, many history/social studies curricula throughout Canada have been revised to include frameworks of historical thinking (Lévesque & Clark, 2018) and Indigenous Knowledges (McGregor, 2017), however these changes have given rise to many important and pressing questions about what is actually happening in K–12 classrooms and what impact, if any, such curricular changes are having on student learning. Thinking Historically for Canada’s Future is a national research partnership that brings together 30 co-investigators and more than thirty partner organizations from across Canada to investigate K-12 history education. In a National Youth Survey conducted by the partnership, 2007 students aged 10-18 completed an online questionnaire about their perceptions and experiences learning history in schools. In this presentation, survey results will be explored through the lenses of the three themes of our research partnership: historical thinking, Indigenous Knowledges, and civic engagement. Implications for curriculum design and teacher training will be discussed.

Keywords:

History education, historical thinking, students.