Abstract
This chapter seeks to analyze empirically the abilities of 4- and 5 year-old children regarding historical thinking skills when dealing with symbology and picture-based narratives of the past. It is based on the answers obtained after the development of a specific storytelling strategy where students observe a sequence of images related to a tale written and set in Ancient Egypt, from which they build a narrative to explain their observations. Children’s negotiations regarding their interpretations provide evidence of their capacity for historical thinking when history is presented through stories and narrative-based inquiry. The study was developed in five classrooms with a total of 116 participating students. The chapter concludes that young children are able to deduce information from images, to create complex argumentations, to take some historical perspective and to link the actions in a temporal and causal sequence. Therefore, they are capable of developing some embryonic reasoning, which we consider to be the seed of historical thinking.
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Notes
- 1.
Further information: www.um.es/cepoat
- 2.
The groups were diverse in terms of gender (female/male) and origin (Spaniards, Moroccan and Ecuadorian).
- 3.
P. Berlin 3023 (Bl), P. Berlin 3025 (B2), P. Berlin 10499 (R), P. Butler 527=P. British Museum EA10274.
- 4.
All children’s names have been replaced with pseudonyms to protect their privacy.
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Acknowledgements
This research is part of the funded project “La evaluación de las competencias y el desarrollo de capacidades cognitivas sobre Historia en Educación Secundaria Obligatoria” (EDU2015-65621-C3-2-R) that has been supported by Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad de España/European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and the Programme Jiménez de la Espada of Mobility, Cooperation and Internationalization of Fundación Séneca within the frame of Science, Technology and Innovation Plan of Región de Murcia (Spain).
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Arias-Ferrer, L., Egea-Vivancos, A., Levstik, L.S. (2019). Historical Thinking in the Early Years: The Power of Image and Narrative. In: Kerry-Moran, K.J., Aerila, JA. (eds) Story in Children’s Lives: Contributions of the Narrative Mode to Early Childhood Development, Literacy, and Learning. Educating the Young Child, vol 16. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-19266-2_10
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