Evaluation of the historical thinking of high school students through the construction of historical narratives about the native peoples of Chile

Abstract

This article analyzes the historical narratives constructed by 115 high school students from a school in southern Chile, in order to evaluate the levels of development of historical thinking that they applied in the analysis of four pieces of evidence related to the history of Chile’s indigenous peoples (1850-2020). Content analysis was used to identify the first and second order knowledge of historical thinking and to explain, based on the typology proposed by Rüsen, the narrative model developed in the stories. It is concluded that most of the students have a weak historical training, since the study of their narratives indicates that 93,1% reach apprentice and intermediate level, that is, they have a superfluous knowledge of declarative contents or have a balanced articulation between these and one or two second-order learning. This profile coincides with the strong predominance of traditional narratives, where 84,4% of the students with an apprentice level elaborated narratives characterized by a superficial, descriptive historical discourse and lacking their own disciplinary epistemology.