Historical Thinking Skills

    History is a sophisticated quest for meaning about the past, beyond the effort to collect information. Historical analysis requires familiarity with a great deal of information, including names, chronology, facts, and events. Without reliable and detailed information, historical thinking is not possible. Yet historical analysis involves much more than the compilation and recall of data; it also requires several distinctive historical thinking skills. 

The four historical thinking skills presented below provide an essential structure for learning to think historically. These skills not only apply to AP United States History; they also represent the type of skills required in all college-level historical scholarship. The interaction of skills and content found in this course is an approach that emphasizes historical scholarship’s reliance on diverse sources, each of which may reveal a different facet of the past.

• Analyzing Historical Sources and Evidence

  • Analyzing Evidence: Content and Sourcing (Primary Sources)

  • Interpretation (Secondary Sources)                                                      

• Making Historical Connections

  • Comparison

  • Contextualization

  • Synthesis

• Chronological Reasoning

  • Causation

  • Patterns of Continuity and Change over Time

  • Periodization  

• Creating and Supporting an Argument

  • Argumentation

  • Argumentation: Using Evidence to Support an Argument