Historical Thinking Skills

Continuity and change

• Over time, some things stay the same and

some things change
• Continuities are things that stay the same
and changes are things that become
different
• An example of a historical continuity is that
barber shops (hairdressers) are as common
today as they were in medieval times
• An example of historical change is that
barbers (hairdressers) were permitted to
perform medical operations and this is no
longer the case
Cause and effect
• Cause and effect examines the
reasons that certain events occur
• We can think of cause and effect as
the why and what of history
• Cause and effect aims to examine,
identify and analyse the why and
what to figure out the chain of
events
• It helps to understand an event if
we understand why it happened in
the first place
Empathy
• Thinking with empathy means
that we can better understand
the impact of certain events on
individuals or groups
• Empathy is the ability to “walk in
someone else’s shoes”
• Empathising helps make history
relevant for us no matter how
much time has past. We are
capable of connecting as humans
Significance
• Put simply, significance helps us
determine how important
something is
• In order to determine if
something is of historical
significance and therefore worth
studying, historians ask
themselves a number of
questions:
Contestability
• To contest something means to
open it up for debate
• Historians across the world have
access to different information:
sometimes there are errors in
writing, fragments of artefacts are
missing or things were changed
after they were written
• This can cause disagreement
among historians about how and
why events occurred
Evidence
• This historical thinking concept relates to the analysis of historical
sources
• These things can include letters written by people in the past, diaries,
films, maps, newspapers, buildings, paintings, photographs and so
much more
• Evidence is split into two different categories:

Primary Sources Secondary Sources

Primary Sources
• A primary sources is something
created or written at the time of
the event or very shortly after

• These can include but are not

limited to: official documents
like written laws, letters and
photographs
Secondary Sources
• Accounts or reports on a past
event that were created after the
time that the event occurred
• Secondary sources often relate to
or reference primary sources to
present a particular interpretation
on the past
• Examples of this kind of sources
include: historian writings, history
textbooks and websites