Profiles of teaching and learning moments in the history classroom

This paper reports on the main results of research carried out in Portuguese history classrooms (Grades 7–9, age 12–14), with the aim of providing further understanding of how historical thinking is being developed and assessed by teachers. Although history education research in Portugal appears to have fostered some fruitful experiences in this area, this study is intended to identify practices of teaching and learning. This work also tries to highlight good practices with relevance to the development of historical thinking. In the main study, data were collected through direct observation of classroom interaction (followed by interviews with teachers) and paper-and pencil tasks (performed by students) focusing on change in history learning and meta cognition. Inductive analysis and triangulation of the data helped to understand possible relationships between questioning in the classroom and thinking in history, and to highlight some features of how students’ historical thinking is being developed, namely what kind of temporal orientation they construct. Teachers revealed different kinds of teaching practices during a lesson, producing different kinds of learning experiences: a model of the development of competencies in history emerged from the data, and also a set of profiles of teaching and learning moments. Although seven profiles emerged, this paper will focus on Profile 7, as it could be the most inspiring for history education