How is chronological thinking tested?
How is chronological thinking tested?

Summary/Abstract: Chronological thinking is an indispensable tool to structure a historical narrative and to give meaning to a sequence of events. It is not a natural skill, so the conscious inclusion of tasks stimulating that skill in teaching is crucial. It is important to appropriately test students’ chronological skills by means of well-constructed examination tasks administered at the conclusion of subsequent stages of education. The authors discuss tasks that assess chronological thinking included in contemporary exam papers in Finland, France, the Netherlands, Russia, the USA and the United Kingdom. The tasks included in Polish arts and humanities exam papers at the lower secondary school level in the years 2002–2011 and the first history paper (2012) are then analysed. The final section presents the results of a survey to test the chronological thinking of lower secondary school students carried out by the Educational Research Institute.

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