Thread by @ls_gibson

I am a great admirer of @samwineburg’s research and the contributions that he and @SHEG_Stanford have made to #historyed in the US and internationally cannot be understated, but there are a few conceptual issues with the #historicalthinking chart below.

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https://twitter.com/SHEG_Stanford/status/1263506601887006722

HT is defined in terms of analyzing primary sources, but does not include other important 2nd order HT concepts including historical empathy, cause and consequence, continuity & change, progress & decline, historical significance, and the ethical dimension (amongst others).
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The chart doesn’t differentiate between written sources and visual sources such as maps, photographs, paintings, oral history that utilize many of the same questions, but also requires different questions, contextual knowledge, and methods of analysis.

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The chart doesn’t differentiate between primary and secondary sources and traces and accounts, which are essential distinctions for developing a deeper understanding of historical evidence.

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Classifying a source as primary or secondary depends on the ? asked. A 1950s US history textbook is a primary source if the ? focuses on what students learned about in history class in the 50s, but it’s a secondary source if the ? focuses on what happened in US history.
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Traces are remnants of the past created for some other purpose that provide evidence about the question being asked, whereas accounts are intentional efforts to “account for” an aspect of the past by describing, explaining, or assessing it.
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Traces and accounts can be primary or secondary. A primary trace could be natural records, like tree rings, fossils, or soil samples, or they can be constructed artifacts or documents, such as a child’s toys, train schedules, or newspaper ads.
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A secondary trace is a reconstruction or simulation of an original artifact or document using other types of evidence. /8

A primary account is a deliberately created narrative from someone who had direct or access and proximity to the event such as diaries, eyewitness reports, trial transcripts, or news reports created at the time the event occurred.
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A secondary account is a deliberately created narrative such as a textbook, a graphic novel, a historian’s book, a feature film, a documentary that is produced from evidence drawn from other primary and secondary sources.
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The distinction between primary & secondary sources and traces & accounts is important b/c different types of sources require different types of ?s. For e.g., you can’t ask whether a primary source trace like an artifact is reliable, but you might ask if it is authentic.
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Also, asking whether a primary source account is reliable is problematic b/c it assumes that a reliable account is possible.
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In history, sometimes the most interesting & relevant primary accounts are from unreliable narrators, but these accounts provide a great deal of evidence about the question being investigated.
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Perhaps the better question is to ask students to identify what evidence the primary source account provides about the question being asked, and how relevant it is to that question.
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Also, the chart doesn't deal specifically with secondary source accounts or what @ArthurJChapman calls interpretations. Asking whether secondary source accounts are “reliable” or "trustworthy" doesn’t make sense, but we might ask if the account is justifiable or plausible.
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Lastly, we need to ask whether thinking like historians is a worthy educational goal? Should students think like historians, or should they use historians' tools to make sense of the different historical narratives they encounter in their daily lives?
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Post-script: one of the main issues with this chart is that it assumes that most of the primary sources students will encounter are accounts. The reality is that it is extremely rare to find a primary source account that responds to the historical question being asked.

The vast majority of primary sources are traces not accounts, so asking whether they are reliable is at best unhelpful, and at worst provides students with misconceptions about the nature of historical evidence.

Furthermore, asking students to corroborate evidence to find the most reliable account reinforces the notion that there is an account that is reliable and historians discard unreliable evidence, both of which are untrue.