Developing historical thinking and reasoning through inquiry

Much research work on history education in recent decades has focused on classroom practices that support active learning in history where students interpret and construct knowledge of the past through historical inquiry. This act of “doing history” (Levstik & Barton, 2015; Lévesque, 2008; Seixas & Morton, 2012) typically involves getting students to come to grips with aspects of the historical discipline (Lee & Ashby, 2000) and guiding them to think, perform, and act (Shulman, 2005) in ways that support disciplinary dispositions and historical practice. History teachers in Singapore are well-acquainted with curricular goals that seek to develop in students the disposition to think historically about the past. Recent efforts to address shortcomings in the teaching and learning of history focused on the use of inquiry-based strategies to support the development of students’ historical understandings (MOE, 2012). This chapter examines the role inquiry plays in Singapore’s history education landscape, offers insights on how the introduction of inquiry-based learning has shaped practices in the history classroom, and highlights potential pedagogical approaches that may support effective inquiry-based instruction and help build students’ reasoning and thinking in history. In so doing, the chapter makes a case for innovative approaches to history teaching grounded in strong conceptualisations of disciplinary practice.