"But I Wouldn't Recommend Basing an Entire Study on the School Food" : A Qualitative Study About Swedish Students' Expressions on Historical Thinking

The Swedish curriculum for history is based upon ideas from both the German and British historical didactic traditions. The subject's purpose is to develop students' historical consciousness which stems from the German tradition. The model historical thinking, whose primary theorist is Peter Seixas, is an attempt to incorporate both the German, British and North American historical didactic tradition. Previous research indicates that students who present good knowledge for the historical thinking abilities also possess good knowledge for abilities related to the German tradition. A study which analyses student responses from the national test in relation to the model historical thinking could give some insights on what abilities students need to develop to expand their historical consciousness. This study sets out to find out if and how Swedish ninth-graders express the concepts cause and consequence and evidence from the model historical thinking in the national test from 2018. The study's research method is mixed as it uses quantitative data to draw conclusions on how often abilities are demonstrated but uses a qualitative method to draw conclusions on how students express these abilities. The study concludes that most students are, in relation to the competencies of evidence, most proficient in asking the right questions, reasoning about the author's intentions and corroborating sources. The results, in relation to evidence, suggest that fewer students show the abilities on how the society might have impacted the author, contextualising and drawing conclusions about the society of which the source is based in. Regarding cause and consequence, the results suggest that most students possess the ability to reason regarding actors and structures. Regarding the competency to reason if a consequence was intended or not, the result suggests that around half of the students possess the ability to reason around it.