Designing learning activities to stimulate domain-specific thinking

‘Thinking Skills' have been much discussed in England since, at least, the revision of the National Curriculum in 2000 and have recently morphed, with the 2008 revisions to the curriculum, into ‘Personal, Learning and Thinking Skills'. Often, however, such ‘skills' are discussed in abstract and cross-curricular ways, outside the context of the disciplines that give thinking shape and meaning.

In this article Havekes, Aardema and de Vries make the case for an active focus on historical thinking strategies and explore how structuring students' ‘thinking about thinking' in subject-specific terms can engage students and develop their historical understanding.