CONSTRUCTING CRITICAL HISTORICAL ANALYSES TO CULTIVATE CRITICAL HISTORICAL LITERACY: COLLEGE STUDENTS’ PERCEPTIONS

To address learning needs and learning interests among college level history students, a curriculum reliant on critical pedagogical and critical thinking and historical thinking exercises was explored. These exercises combined to form critical historical analyses. Critical historical analyses are reports on current and relevant sociological problems influenced from historical factors. Such reports reflect developed historical literacy. In this research, six critical historical analyses exercises were combined into a curriculum and instructional toolbox that was utilized to strengthen the historical literacy of two groups of college students enrolled in separate sections of an American history course. Once students engaged with critical pedagogical and critical thinking and historical thinking exercises featured in the critical historical analyses exercise toolbox, new learning emerged that gave students opportunities to develop critiques and conduct
dialogic and writing activities using history content.
Pedagogical exercises involved the history instructor engaging students initially in dialogic exercises and then moved to writing content. The history curriculum prompted non-history major college students, divided into advanced dual enrolled high school students and traditional state college students, to learn how to think in depth about societal issues linking the past and the present. Students then strengthened habits in how to identify relevant problems rooted from history and how to practice constructing modern solutions to problems.
The aim was to help students establish their critical voices and enhance their historical literacy to ultimately cultivate critical historical literacy. Critical historical literacy among these students reflected abilities to interpret historical data through critiquing lenses that focused on social justice and societal progression while developing skills to construct defensible critical narratives with historical evidence. In the process, students cultivated critical historical literacy on the foundation of engaging with the six critical historical analyses toolbox exercises on which this study centered.