Historical Thinking Through the Great War
Teaching and learning history in the digital age requires historical and critical thinking and is a collaborative process between students and professors. Before we immerse ourselves in the study of the Great War, we need to define key terms that are at the heart of the discipline of history.
Primary Source: Materials related to past events; sources that depict the past. Primary sources were created during the time period being studied. An example of a primary source for the Great War is a letter that depicted the events surrounding the Christmas Truce of 1914.
Secondary Source: Materials that interpret a primary source, such as a scholarly book, history textbook, or journal article. An example of a secondary source over the Great War is Paris 1919 by Margaret MacMillan about the 1919 Versailles Peace Conference after the Great War.
Tertiary source: Sources that identify and locate primary and secondary sources. Examples include but are not limited to: bibliographies, indexes, encyclopedias, databases, and library catalogs.
Historiography: The study and methodology of history as a discipline; the body of historical work on a particular subject.
Historical Thinking: Thinking critically about the past and how past events have shaped our present. Identifying different and conflicting points of view to recognize biases and develop empathy for different groups, perspectives, and nations. How to critically judge the past from multiple angles and identify various avenues of truth or recognizing that there is not one single "true" account of historical events. Historical interpretations are changing constantly.
Critical thinking: The analysis and assessment of facts and ideas to solve problems and provide new solutions.
Multiple accounts & Perspectives: Because there is not one single "true" historical account there exists multiple accounts and perspectives that cover a specific event. For example, the ideas surrounding the start of World War I.
Analyzing Primary Sources: Critically reading and studying sources created during the time period being studied to learn more and formulate an opinion about an event, historical figure, action, or result through asking questions. For example, analysis of the sphinxes of the National WWI Museum in Kansas City. How do the Assyrian sphinxes convey the memorial's purpose and the broader extent of how the United States has chosen to memorialize the Great War?
Sourcing: Identify where a source originated from and its intended purpose. How does where the source originated from influence how we analyze the source?
Context: Making sense of historical events by taking into account larger events that occurred before, during, or after an event in question.
Claim-Evidence Connection: The relationship between claims and evidence at the heart of historical thought and discussion.
Historian's fallacy: when someone assumes that decision-makers of the past viewed events from the same perspective and having the same information as those subsequently analyzing the decision.
Periodization: Present-day ideas and moral standards projected into the past.
Historians have a moral duty to look past preconceived biases to judge the past. The above terms will assist students as they explore this website. The above terms were derived from my own ideas as well as the website "Teaching History.org" and Historian's Fallacies: Towards A Logic of Historical Thought by Historian David Hackett Fischer. There are various websites and historical literature that a scholar can explore to learn more about historical thinking, the process of crafting an argument, and how history can be visualized in the digital age. Please feel free to contact me at the "contact us" tab to learn more about sources for further exploration.