Historical thinking is a set of critical literacy skills for evaluating and analyzing primary source documents to construct a meaningful account of the past.
The distinction is generally made to underscore the importance of developing thinking skills that can be applied when individuals encounter any historical content.
In response to the controversy over Texas textbooks, University of Northern Colorado History Department Chair, Fritz Fischer said that "many of these problems could be solved if the school board prioritized making primary documents available to students, rather than deciding on which version of events ought to be taught.
Well-designed textbooks can provide a foundation on which enterprising educators can build other classroom activities that develop historical thinking.
Although these benchmarks provide a model to develop historical literacies, Seixas states that these concepts can only can be applied with substantial learning about the past[4] Created by David Hicks, Peter E. Doolittle & E. Thomas Ewing, the SCIM-C strategy of historical thinking focuses on developing self-regulating practices when engaging with primary sources.
This strategy provides a scaffold for students as they build more complex investigation and analysis practices identified in the "capstone stage".