Thinking Skills and the Learning of Primary History: Thinking Historically through Stories

Abstract This paper derived from a piece of research undertaken in an Oxfordshire primary school in the summer of 2002. Part 1 introduces the question of thinking skills. Part 2 examines how thinking skills might enhance children’s learning of history via a case study of a project in an Oxfordshire primary school. The project’s focus was on the potential of narrative, and in particular counterfactuals, in this respect. PART 1 Thinking about thinking The perceived usefulness of thinking skills as instruments for curriculum development has fluctuated over the years, usually as a result of the stance of any one particular government at the time. The importance given to them is inclined to occur when more formal approaches to learning are perceived to have failed and, in this respect, it has become something of a holy grail. I was reminded of this recently when reading the DfES’s evaluation of the literacy and numeracy strategies which asserted that too much time in a maths lesson was being dedicated ‘to test practic