Historical Thinking and Teacher Discourse in Secondary Education: An Exploratory Observational Study

Abstract

With the aim of analyzing the teaching discourse in history classes and its relationship with the development of historical thinking skills, an observational study was carried out in 28 social science classes taught by 14 trainee teachers with master’s degrees in teacher training secondary education students between 15 and 18 years of age. Lag sequential analysis and polar coordinate analysis techniques were used to identify patterns in the teaching discourse and its relationship with teaching strategies and student activity. The results show a predominance of historical contextualization discourse to the detriment of activities that promote critical historical thinking. The sequential lag analysis revealed significant relationships between interpretive discourse and the use of case studies, as well as between historical contextualization and the use of the press as a resource. Polar coordinate analysis showed a mutually inhibiting relationship between the exploration of prior knowledge and the development of historical thinking skills and a mutually activating relationship between interpretation and historical thinking, especially as it relates to the evaluation of sources. The implications of these findings for teacher education and the improvement of secondary history teaching are discussed.

1. Introduction

In recent years, history education research has identified two categories of historical content: substantive (first-order) and strategic (second-order). Substantive content encompasses both concepts or principles and specific historical dates and events. Strategic content pertains to the skills historians use, such as searching for, selecting, and analyzing historical sources, as well as fostering empathy or adopting historical perspectives, all of which contribute to defining historical thinking (Sáiz & Gómez, 2016).

If we go back to the process of developing this teaching approach which aims to give pupils a more complex understanding of the past, a milestone in this change took place in the UK in 1972 with the launch of the History Project 13–16, which later became known as the Schools History Project (SHP). The idea behind this project was that pupils should “do history” rather than simply memorize facts from the past. Thus, a line of research linked to so-called historical thinking was initiated (Martínez-Hita & Gómez, 2018). Subsequently, the project Concepts of History and Teaching Approaches (Lee et al., 1996), which investigated the historical concepts that students should acquire, also stood out.

In the United States, this line of research has given rise to studies influenced by cognitive psychology and expert and novice analytical techniques (Wineburg, 2001). This research generated studies in which the use of historical sources and the work of the historian play a key role (Cooper & Chapman, 2009; Monte-Sano et al., 2014; Reisman, 2012; Wineburg et al., 2013). In Canada, the work done at the Centre for the Study of Historical Consciousness, led by Peter Seixas, has worked hard to define historical consciousness and historical thinking and to adapt these ideas to the reality of the classroom in practical ways through projects such as the historical thinking project and the historical thinking Assessment (Lévesque, 2008; Seixas & Morton, 2013; Lévesque & Clark, 2018).

These studies have had a great impact on academic production in other countries, such as Australia (Parkes & Sharp, 2014) and the Netherlands (Wansink et al., 2018; Van Boxtel et al., 2020). Meanwhile, in Latin America, Spain, and Portugal, works such as Domínguez Castillo (2015), Gómez et al. (2020), Ibagón et al. (2021), Sáiz and López-Facal (2015), and Schmidt (2017) show how proposals from England, the USA, and Canada have been adapted to research on history education.

Historical thinking does not emerge naturally; instead, it requires direct instruction in the classroom (Wineburg, 2001). This necessitates a transition from the predominant use of expository teaching strategies to a greater emphasis on inquiry-based approaches, which foster students’ independence, critical thinking, and autonomous learning. This methodological shift is already under discussion in countries such as Portugal (Gago, 2018), Spain (Navarro & De Alba, 2015), and the United Kingdom (Smith, 2019). Despite the high value that secondary school students place on working with historical sources (Prieto et al., 2013), such activities remain relatively scarce in Spanish classrooms. The overuse of lectures and the passive role assigned to students often result in them merely studying the material presented in class without seeking additional information or engaging in critical analysis, relying instead on memorization (Sáiz & López-Facal, 2015). As a result, fostering critical citizenship becomes challenging, as students who are not exposed to inquiry-based learning may accept teachers’ statements uncritically (Guirao, 2013; Miralles-Sánchez et al., 2024).

Therefore, teaching discourse, defined by Quintero Gutiérrez (2019) as the “communicative process that regulates teacher-student interaction through a coherent sequence of statements that are adapted to the contextual situation that is experienced in the classroom and that pursues an intentional objective” (p. 233), will also play an important role in this process.

Martínez-Otero Pérez (2005) posits that discourse, due to its verbal nature and its ability to link non-verbal and para-verbal elements, serves as an educational tool that can enhance students’ intellectual emotional, social, and moral dimensions. Moreover, since discourse reflects the teacher’s worldview, it shapes the dynamics of teacher-student relationships and interactions. Consequently, it can be employed either to manipulate or to foster openness to new perspectives and interpretations. Thus, there are explicit messages, which are clearly perceptible and primarily conveyed through language, as well as implicit messages that are difficult to identify and often transmitted through non-verbal and para-verbal means, along with intermediate or semi-hidden messages.

Another key aspect of discourse is its appropriateness for learners. The teacher’s discourse must be based on a thorough knowledge of the learners: maturity level, age, needs, interests, circumstances, culture, and pace of learning. Pérez Gómez et al. (2019) differentiate three types of teaching discourse in History teaching as follows:

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Informative Discourse: This involves an initial engagement with primary social historical sources and the factual elements of knowledge, including historical settings, figures, and their actions within specific contexts of time and place. It emphasizes not only temporal and spatial accuracy but also a genuine contextualization of information.

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Comprehensive Discourse: This entails the productive activity of meaning-making, reorganizing information, and logical understanding. Theoretical thinking operates at the level of concepts and variables, necessitating their conceptualization within social development.

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Critical Discourse: This focuses on evaluating processed information and making inferences, characterized predominantly by synthesis. It involves productive and expressive activities aimed at generating, testing, and validating criteria by specifying what is learned and felt.

From a methodological perspective, developing and implementing observation instruments can be highly beneficial for effectively designing training programs and assessing classroom interventions. However, most existing instruments prioritize teachers’ general competencies rather than subject-specific skills (Miralles-Sánchez et al., 2023). As a result, some researchers have emphasized the need for specialized observation tools in studies on teacher education and competencies (Desimone, 2009; Schoenfeld, 2013). Observational instruments tailored to evaluating history teachers’ instructional strategies could help identify specific needs, thereby supporting the development of teacher training plans and programs. This is an important and innovative contribution to history teacher education. Huijgen et al. (2017) noted that the use of standardized observation instruments in history education research remains underexplored, particularly regarding tools designed to observe strategies for fostering historical thinking in the classroom (Miralles-Sánchez et al., 2023).

Regarding observation instruments in history education, one of the earliest contributions was by Nokes (2010), who examined history teachers’ decision-making concerning the use of texts. A particularly significant instrument for assessing historical thinking was the Protocol for Assessing the Teaching of History (PATH), developed by Van Hover et al. (2012). PATH offers a structured approach to observing history instruction in secondary schools, aiming to enhance teaching quality, though it does not prescribe specific methods for teaching and learning history.

However, Gestsdóttir et al. (2018) pointed out that PATH was still in development and, while valuable in defining key dimensions, it did not fully capture teacher behaviors that support students’ historical thinking and reasoning. To address this, they designed and evaluated the Teach-HTR (historical thinking and reasoning) observation instrument. Another notable tool was introduced by Huijgen et al. (2017), from which some categories were incorporated into the observation instrument used in this study. They developed and tested the Framework for Analyzing the Teaching of Historical Contextualization (FAT-HC), a domain-specific observation instrument centered on four teaching strategies for historical contextualization. Lastly, the more recent work of Oattes et al. (2022) is noteworthy, as they employed three different instruments for data collection.

In conclusion, as we have seen, the growth of research in the field of history education has led, in recent years, to the publication of several studies showing that historical thinking and awareness are two fundamental axes of research in recent decades. These studies have focused mainly on the curriculum, textbooks and, to a lesser extent, on interviews, learner perceptions, observation, and records for the evaluation of intervention proposals and case studies (Epstein & Salinas, 2018; Gómez-Carrasco et al., 2022). Our work approaches the subject from an observational methodology, a scientific procedure that reveals the occurrence of perceptible behaviors, in order to proceed to their systematized recording and analysis, both qualitative and quantitative, by means of an appropriate instrument and suitable parameters, making it possible to detect the relationships of various kinds existing between them and to evaluate them (Anguera, 2003). In contrast to the instruments mentioned above, the observation instrument used here focuses on a single but very important competence for history teachers, namely the development of historical thinking skills. Thus, following the guidelines of Sáiz Manzanares et al. (2019), a hierarchy of scientific methods has been pursued as the research has been subordinated to a research objective, it has been systematically planned, the qualitative data have been optimized for quantitative analysis, and it is subject to validity and reliability checks.

The main objective of this article is to detect how the 14 teaching units that sought to foster the learning of historical thinking skills through active teaching methods have been implemented. This study focuses on the analysis of teaching discourse in the teaching of social sciences at the secondary school level. To this end, several research objectives were set out as follows:

O1: To find out the predominant patterns in teaching discourse;

O2: To discern significant differences in teaching discourse according to the teaching strategies employed;

O3: To find out what relationship exists between teaching discourse and the development of historical thinking skills in students;

O4: To know how the different dimensions of teaching discourse relate to each other.

To respond to these objectives, a series of hypotheses were formulated as follows:

H1. 

Teaching discourse in secondary school history classes is characterized by an emphasis on the transmission of factual information and historical contextualization to the detriment of the promotion of historical thinking skills.

H2. 

Teaching strategies that encourage active student participation, such as the use of case studies or the analysis of primary sources, are associated with a richer and more complex teaching discourse that promotes the development of historical thinking.

H3. 

There is a positive relationship between the use of a teaching discourse that promotes the interpretation and analysis of sources and the development of historical thinking skills in students.

H4. 

There is the possibility that there is an interdependent relationship between the different dimensions of the teaching discourse so that the presence of one type of discourse (e.g., interpretation) may influence the frequency of other types of discourse (e.g., contextualization or the promotion of historical thinking).

2. Materials and Methods

2.1. Participants

An observational study was carried out in a total of 28 classes, covering the subjects Geography and History in Compulsory Secondary Education, History of the Contemporary World, and History of Spain in the Baccalaureate in the municipality of Murcia (southeast Spain). They were taught by 14 trainee teachers of the master’s degree in Teacher Training, two classes per teacher. These teachers ranged in age from 22 to 40 years old, and the two classes observed were part of the didactic units implemented during one month of their internship. In each class, there were an estimated 25–30 secondary school students between 13 and 18 years of age.

2.2. Research Design

This study employs a single-case observational methodology with a nomothetic, cross-sectional, and multidimensional design (Anguera et al., 2001), utilizing an ecological approach to analyze and compare social interaction patterns among secondary and high school history teachers, instructional materials, teaching strategies, and methods, and student participation through polar coordinate analysis. Observational methodology, often combined with other data collection methods and various designs, is particularly advantageous in research conducted within natural settings, as it enhances ecological validity (Bakeman & Gnisci, 2006; Rodríguez-Medina et al., 2018).

2.3. Instrument

The History Class Observation Tool (HCOT) was used; this tool is composed of three dimensions: teaching discourse (verbal), teaching materials, and student activity. The first dimension, teaching discourse, is subdivided into four sub-dimensions: exploration and activation of prior knowledge, contextualization, interpretation, historical thinking, and teaching methods, strategies, and techniques. This gives a total of 38 items as follows:

Dimension 1: Teaching discourse (verbal)

Subdimension 1.1. Exploration and activation of prior knowledge

1.1.1. Recourse to the social frame of reference (allusions to related current social events).

1.1.2. Recourse to the specific frame of reference (previous contents of the subject)

1.1.3. Information demand (questioning students on prior knowledge)

Sub-dimension 1.2. Historical Contextualization (Huijgen et al., 2017)

1.2.1. Provides temporal indicators (year, century, historical period).

1.2.2. Indicates the duration of a historical phenomenon or event.

1.2.3. provides spatial indicators

1.2.4. Indicates the causes and consequences of historical events

1.2.5. Indicates the socio-cultural characteristics of the historical moment

1.2.6. Indicates the economic characteristics of the historical moment

1.2.7. Other …

Subdimension 1.3. Interpretation (Van Hover et al., 2012)

1.3.1. Creates opportunities for students to understand that there are different conflicting accounts of history and to recognize the role of historians in constructing narratives or explanations of the past.

1.3.2. Examine the historical context and recognize that the values, attitudes, beliefs, and intentions of people in the past were a product of the times in which they lived.

Sub-dimension 1.4. Historical Thinking (Gestsdóttir et al., 2018)

1.4.1. Contextualizes the events or actions of people in the past.

1.4.2. identifies and describes processes of change and continuity

1.4.3. compares phenomena and/or historical periods

1.4.4. Evaluates historical sources

1.4.5. Identifies multiple perspectives and interpretations

1.4.6. Compares information from diverse sources

1.4.7. Evaluates the reliability of various sources

Sub-dimension 1.5. Teaching methods, strategies, and techniques

1.5.1. Classical lecture

1.5.2. Use of historical sources and commentary on text and images.

1.5.3. Interrogative method. Motivational, behavioral, synthesis, reinforcement, extension, etc. questions.

1.5.4. Inquiry strategies. Search work, selection, and processing of information. PBL, case studies, flipped classroom.

1.5.5. Group work

1.5.6. Use of debates and colloquiums to critically analyze historical facts and processes.

1.5.7. Use of empathy, drama, or simulation.

Dimension 2: Instructional Materials (Nokes, 2010; Huijgen et al., 2017)

2.1. Textbook

2.2. Presentations (PowerPoint or similar)

2.3. Audiovisual resources (films, videos, music, except presentations)

2.4. Digital Resources

2.5. Primary Sources

2.6. Press

2.7. Maps

2.8. Others (indicate which)

Dimension 3: Student Activity

3.1. Respond to a direct question from the teacher (This could be broken down according to the type of response (e.g., compare a current situation with a historical situation).

3.2. Perform a proposed task individually.

3.3. Work in pairs

3.4. Work in small groups

3.5. Participate in a debate

Validation of this instrument has been essential to ensure that the data collected are accurate and reliable, being carried out through review by experts in the field and through pilot testing on a small group of participants to assess the effectiveness and relevance of the questions and observation procedures (Miralles-Sánchez et al., 2023).

2.4. Procedure

Classroom observations were carried out in two courses, 2022/2023 and 2023/2024, working with eight and six master students, respectively. The relationship with these students has its origin in having been tutored in both periods of practices that they have, the first one of previous observation of the classroom, and another one of implementation of the training units designed, which was the one observed (April–May). The design of the training units was the result of several factors: the knowledge acquired in the subjects of the master’s degree in teacher training at the University of Murcia, the tutoring by both the tutor of the secondary school and the tutor of the Faculty of Education; as well as the attendance of the students to a voluntary training seminar apart from the master’s degree where during 18 h they attended a series of lectures given by expert teachers in Didactics of Social Sciences with the aim of helping the students in the realization of a Master’s Thesis based on the implementation and evaluation of a didactic unit on historical thinking and active methods during the internship period of the master’s degree.

All the classes observed were attended with the prior authorization of the center’s tutor and the trainee teachers, observing a total of two classes per teacher in non-consecutive practices, i.e., leaving a variable time margin between both sessions with the same group to see different phases of the units. Neither the observer nor the center’s tutor hardly intervened during the classes beyond a few brief indications during or after the classes. The information-gathering process was carried out using the instrument described above with the observer’s mobile device, and the classes lasted an average of 50 min. Direct observation was therefore carried out where the behaviors were directly perceptible through the relevant sensory channel, with a very low level of inference, and where the perceptual component predominates over the interpretative one. It resulted in concurrent data as the behaviors can overlap with each other, and the order of the behaviors is available (Rodríguez-Medina, 2019).

2.5. Data Analysis

The overall analysis strategy was implemented in two stages. The first stage—global and descriptive—allowed us to obtain general descriptive measures, taking into account the occurrences of behaviors at each response level.

The second stage of the analysis—microanalytical and diachronic—consisted of the application of the techniques of delay sequential analysis and polar coordinate analysis to detect regularities in the sequence of behaviors. Delay sequential analysis was used to investigate temporal relationships between discrete behaviors. This technique allows the identification of temporal patterns and associations between observed behaviors and reveals possible associations between these behaviors by calculating observed and expected probabilities (Bakeman & Quera, 2011).

The search for associations between focal behavior and conditional behaviors was both prospective (lags of 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5) and retrospective (lags of −1, −2, −3, −4, and −5). To perform this analysis, data recorded with HCOT (Anguera et al., 2001) were transferred to the software package SDIS-GSEQ, v. 5.1 (Bakeman & Quera, 2011).

We used the polar coordinate technique (Cochran, 1954) as a data reduction technique to obtain a complete graphical representation of the relationships between behaviors. This technique, applied by Sackett (1980) and subsequently optimized with the genuine retrospective proposed by Anguera (1997), allows data reduction by using the Zsum statistic (Zsum = Σz/√n), where Z represents the independent values obtained from the fitted residuals found for the respective lags from −5 to −1 and 1 to 5, with n as the number of lags. The values of Zsum, therefore, allow for the estimation of the type of relationships that can be established between focal behavior and all other behaviors included in the observation instrument (conditional behaviors). To carry out this analysis, we used ObseRtools (https://jairodmed.shinyapps.io/ObseRtools_2023_beta/, accessed on 1 March 2025) (Rodríguez-Medina et al., 2019), a software package that allows working with all the data types proposed by Bakeman and Quera (2011) and plotting polar coordinates. The program supports data exchange with specific programs used in observational methodology, such as SDIS-GSEQ.

The polar coordinates analysis provides, as a result, a graphical representation of the relationships between the behaviors that constitute the observational instrument to be interpreted, as shown in Figure 1.

3. Results

3.1. O1: To Find Out What Are the Predominant Patterns in Teaching Discourse

Descriptive Analysis of the Observational Records

Table 1. Teaching discourse frequencies.

Category	Code	Freq.	Rel. Freq.
Exploration and Activation of Prior Knowledge Recourse to the social frame of reference Recourse to the specific frame of reference Information Demand	DD1 DD2 DD3	46 13 19 14	0.18 0.05 0.08 0.06
Historical contextualization Provides temporal indicators Indicates the duration of a phenomenon or historical event Provides spatial indicators Indicates the causes and consequences of historical events Indicates the socio-cultural characteristics of the historical moment. Indicates the economic characteristics of the historical moment	DD4 DD5 DD6 DD7 DD8 DD9	107 27 16 14 23 21 6	0.42 0.11 0.06 0.06 0.09 0.08 0.02
Interpretation Creates opportunities for students to understand that different conflicting accounts of history exist Examines the historical context and recognizes that the values, attitudes, beliefs, and intentions of people in the past were a product of the times in which they lived		26	0.10
	DD11	12	0.05
	DD12	14	0.06
Historical thinking Identifies and describes processes of change and continuity Compares historical phenomena and/or periods Evaluates historical sources Identifies multiple perspectives and interpretations Compares information from diverse sources Evaluates the reliability of various sources	DD13 DD14 DD15 DD16 DD17 DD18	74 7 11 20 13 18 5	0.29 0.03 0.04 0.08 0.05 0.07 0.02

shows the frequencies of appearance of each of the categories recorded with regard to the teaching discourse. As can be seen, the most frequent category was DD4 (Provides temporal indicators), which appeared on 27 occasions (6%) and in all the sessions recorded. It is also observed that the most frequent dimension was the one related to Historical Contextualization (42%), while the least frequent were interpretation (10%) and exploration and activation of prior knowledge (18%).

Regarding the strategies related to historical thinking, the most frequent were the evaluation of historical sources (8%) and comparison of information from various sources (7%), while the evaluation of the reliability of various sources (2%) and identification and description of processes of change and continuity (3%) were the least used.

Table 2. Frequencies of teaching methods, strategies, and techniques.

Category	Code	Freq.	Rel. Freq.
Classical master class Interrogative method Inquiry strategies Project-based learning Case studies Flipped classroom Dramatization or simulation	ME1 ME2 ME3 ME4 ME5 ME6 ME7	21 11 3 0 2 2 2	0.51 0.27 0.07 0.00 0.05 0.05 0.05

shows the frequencies of the categories related to the dimensions of teaching methods, strategies, and techniques.

It was found that the most frequently used method was the classical lecture (51%), followed by the interrogative method (27%). Project-based learning was not used in the observed sessions, while case studies (5%), flipped classrooms (5%), dramatization or simulation (5%), and inquiry strategies (7%) were applied sporadically.

Table 3. Frequencies of didactic materials.

Category	Code	Freq.	Rel. Freq.
Textbook Presentations (power point or similar) Audiovisual Resources Digital Resources Primary Sources Press Maps	MD1 MD2 MD3 MD4 MD5 MD6 MD7	1 25 13 5 16 5 3	0.01 0.37 0.19 0.07 0.24 0.07 0.04

shows the frequencies of the didactic materials used. It can be seen that the most frequently used resource was presentations (PowerPoint or similar) (37%), followed by primary sources (24%). However, the infrequent use of the textbook (1%), maps (4%), or the press (7%) stands out. Other audiovisual resources (other than presentations) were also used (19%).

Finally,

Table 4. Frequencies of student activities and groupings.

Category	Code	Freq.	Rel. Freq.
Student activity Respond to a direct question from the teacher Ask Listen Debate Copy Analyze Groupings Individual Pairs Small groups Large group	AE1 AE2 AE3 AE4 AE5 AE6 A1 A2 A3 A4	23 7 20 1 0 16 3 3 12 24	0.34 0.10 0.30 0.01 0.00 0.24 0.07 0.07 0.29 0.57

presents the frequencies of activities performed by the students as well as the type of groupings.

As can be seen, the students responded to direct questions from the teacher on 23 occasions (34%), and work in large groups was recorded on 24 occasions (57%). They only asked the teacher questions on seven occasions (10%), and debate was recorded on only one occasion (1%).

3.2. O2: To Discern Significant Differences in Teaching Discourse According to the Teaching Strategies Employed

A series of analyses were then carried out to identify patterns of behavior that occur more frequently than would be expected by chance. Sequential delay analysis was used for this purpose. First, the sequential relationship between the different subdimensions of the teaching discourse and the teaching methods, strategies, and techniques employed by the observed teachers was analyzed. A statistically significant relationship was identified between the teaching discourse related to Historical interpretation (creating opportunities for students to understand that there are different conflicting accounts of history, Examining the historical context, and recognizing that the values, attitudes, beliefs, and intentions of people in the past were a product of the times in which they lived) and the use of case studies in lags 1 (Z = 2.98, p < 0.01) and 2 (Z = 3, p < 0.01), which indicates that teaching discourse related to interpretation is often accompanied by teaching techniques or strategies related to case study.

A statistically significant relationship was also observed between the use of historical contextualization (in any of its variants) and the use of the press in lag 2 (Z = 2.15, p < 0.05). Thus, when teachers employed a discourse related to historical contextualization, after using resources such as primary sources (Z = 0.97, p = 0.33) or presentations (Z = 0.70, p = 0.48), they then employed the press as the main didactic resource.

Regarding the relationship between teaching methods, strategies, and techniques and students’ activity, a significant relationship was identified between the use of flipped classrooms and students’ listening in lag 1 (Z = 2.11, p < 0.05). Similarly, a statistically significant relationship was observed between the use of audiovisual resources and students’ listening in lag 1 (Z = 2.22, p < 0.05).

3.3. O3: To Find Out What Relationship Exists Between Teaching Discourse and the Development of Historical Thinking Skills in Students. O4: To Know How the Different Dimensions of Teaching Discourse Relate to Each Other

Polar Coordinate Analysis

Figure 2 shows the result of the polar coordinate analysis, taking exploration and activation of prior knowledge as focal behavior. A mutual activation relationship is observed between the focal behavior exploration and activation of prior knowledge and this same behavior (Quadrant I, radius = 3.83, p < 0.01). On the other hand, a relationship of mutual inhibition is observed between the focal behavior and the development of historical thinking skills (Quadrant III, radius = 2.19, p < 0.01).

In Figure 3, we observe how when interpretation (creating opportunities for students to understand that there are different conflicting accounts of history) is taken as a focal behavior in Analysing the historical context and recognizing that the values, attitudes, beliefs, and intentions of people in the past were a product of the times in which they lived), historical thinking skills (identifies and describes processes of change and continuity, compares historical phenomena and/or periods, evaluates historical sources, Identifies multiple perspectives and interpretations, compares information from diverse sources, evaluates the reliability of diverse sources) are significantly activated (Quadrant I, radius = 2. 79, p < 0.01).

To explore this relationship further, we then analyzed in detail how the use of interpretation relates to each of the historical thinking skills. Figure 4 shows the relationships between interpretation and historical thinking skills: Identifies and describes processes of change and continuity (DD13); Compares historical phenomena and/or periods (DD14); evaluates historical sources (DD15); Identifies multiple perspectives and interpretations (DD16); Compares information from diverse sources (DD17); and evaluates the reliability of diverse sources (DD18).

It is observed that the use of interpretation significantly activates the Evaluation of Historical Sources (DD15), and simultaneously, this behavior also activates the use of interpretation (Quadrant I, radius = 2.06, p < 0.05). On the other hand, it is observed that interpretation activates the Comparison of Different Sources of Information (DD17), while this, in turn, inhibits interpretation (Quadrant IV, radius = 3.43, p < 0.01). As for the Evaluation of the Reliability of Various Sources (DD18), it is observed that it activates interpretation while interpretation inhibits Evaluation (Quadrant II, radius = 2.18, p < 0.05). Finally, a relationship of mutual inhibition is observed between Comparison of phenomena and/or historical periods (DD14) and interpretation (Quadrant III, radius = 3.20, p < 0.05).

4. Discussion

This study, a pioneer in the application of observational data in the field of history teaching, reveals relevant patterns in teacher discourse and its relationship to teaching strategies and student activity. Descriptive analysis of the data shows a predominance of historical contextualization discourse, indicating that teachers focus on providing students with a frame of reference for understanding historical events. However, there is a low frequency of activities that promote historical thinking, such as assessing the reliability of sources or analyzing different perspectives. This finding suggests the need for a change in teaching discourse, encouraging not only an understanding of context but also the development of analytical and interpretative skills, which are essential for the formation of critical and reflective citizens.

This is in line with studies such as Grant and Gradwell (2010), who point out that many history teachers focus on recalling conceptual content, even though history teaching involves more activities such as researching sources and evaluating the past. Many studies presented above found positive effects on the teaching of historical thinking (Reisman, 2012); however, this study is more in line with Gestsdóttir et al. (2018), who hardly found teachers with these strategies. This lack of development of analytical and interpretative skills may be due to a repetition of patterns with respect to a traditional model in history teaching. Monteagudo-Fernández et al. (2020) confirm in their study with secondary school students the existence of this traditional model that excludes cooperative and inquiry methodologies.

We point to the need for a didactic model that prioritizes the students’ competency and active learning in their learning process, highlighting advocates such as Carretero et al. (2017) or Metzger and Harris (2018), who are committed to a methodological change that moves away from the predominant conceptual model for teaching history. As for the teaching discourse, we mainly find the appearance of the informative discourse expressed by Pérez Gómez et al. (2019). A discourse that has a first approach to primary historical sources by contextualizing them through scenarios, characters, and actions in a specific place and time. Ways of improving the intervention would be the development of comprehensive discourse and, above all, a critical discourse that allows the information processed to be evaluated and inferences to be made.

Delay sequential analysis, a technique for identifying patterns in the sequence of events, has revealed significant relationships between different sub-dimensions of teacher discourse and teaching strategies. It was observed that interpretative discourse, which involves exploring different perspectives and constructing one’s own interpretations, tends to be accompanied by case studies. This highlights the importance of providing students with opportunities to analyze different perspectives and construct their own interpretations of historical events, thus encouraging more active and meaningful learning. On the other hand, historical contextualization was related to the use of the press as a teaching resource, suggesting that the incorporation of primary sources can enrich the understanding of the historical context and bring students closer to the reality of the past.

This can be related to all the research mentioned above that points to the importance of a methodological change in the teaching of history. As Wineburg (2001) points out, historical thinking needs explicit teaching, and it is a challenge that is being addressed in different countries, such as Portugal (Gago, 2018) and the United Kingdom (Smith, 2019), among others. If we focus, for example, on case studies, it is worth highlighting the work of Díaz De Salas et al. (2011) where they state that case studies respond effectively to the current educational environment of changes in educational policy and teaching-learning processes, technological processes, characteristics of the agents of the educational process and content structures and strategies to be developed. This is why researchers, teachers, and administrators are trying out tools, processes, and educational techniques that require a clear and concrete methodological process that allows the foundations to be established so that changes are not randomly made but because of valid scientific construction.

For its part, the systematic and planned introduction of the press in the classroom offers, as in other media, a possibility of opening up systematic and systematized learning to the social reality experienced and felt. The treatment of current affairs continues to be one of the weakest points of history teaching, which devotes practically all its efforts to the knowledge of past times, starting even with the most remote and, therefore, least motivating events for pupils, appealing to criteria of logic and temporality. The use of the press in the classroom, from a plural, analytical, critical, and creative perspective, can favor, as a resource, greater globalization and interdisciplinarity of the different sections or subjects, strengthening the critical sense and reflective opinion of students (Sevillano García, 2015).

Polar coordinate analysis, a technique that allows us to visualize the relationships between different behaviors, provided a deeper insight into classroom dynamics. Contrary to expectations, a mutually inhibiting relationship was observed between the exploration of prior knowledge and the development of historical thinking skills, indicating that, in the classes observed, the presence of one of these behaviors tends to exclude the other. This finding, which contradicts the idea that activating prior knowledge promotes historical thinking, raises the need to investigate further how these two elements are related in the context of history teaching and what factors may influence this dynamic. It is possible that the way in which prior knowledge is explored or the nature of the historical thinking activities proposed may influence this relationship.

Here, we can highlight, for example, what is expressed by Ramos Vallecillo et al. (2021). They state that the activities proposed by means of audiovisual resources during the introduction of the subjects should not only respond to the fact that the students remain active. They should be designed to consider the type of content that will be worked on and the mental processes that will be activated during its implementation in order to promote truly meaningful learning. Therefore, the implementation of observation and the analysis and implementation of learning strategies will help teachers restructure and expand their knowledge to achieve a better teaching-learning process.

The instrument used in this study, like others before it (Gestsdóttir et al., 2018), can be a practical tool for professional development or initial teacher education, providing an option to discuss with teacher trainees examples of concrete teaching activities and sequences. Classroom observations could be used in subsequent conferences with pre-service or in-service teachers who have designed and implemented lessons as seen in work such as that of Halvorsen and Kesler Lund (2013). However, it is also worth noting a UK study of secondary school teachers by Worth et al. (2017), which showed that simply observing or being observed did not translate into better results in English and mathematics, so this observation should be complemented by other training.

However, as expressed by Huijgen et al. (2017), if a teacher scores low on the instrument, attention could be paid to specific items of the instrument in teacher training or professional development programs. Pre- and post-observation interviews could also be structured based on the instrument’s items, resulting in more concrete feedback for the observed teacher. It could also help researchers to examine the instructions and methods used to promote historical thinking. In the literature on history teaching, there is a clear vision of high-quality history teaching and learning. However, history teachers do not use any research instruments (Van Hover et al., 2012). Slavin (1996) pointed out that teachers who explicitly model their lessons contribute to the academic success of their students.

The polar coordinate analysis shows a mutual activation relationship between historical interpretation and the development of historical thinking skills. This means that the presence of interpretive discourse in the observed classes tends to be accompanied by the activation of historical thinking skills in students and vice versa. This finding is relevant because it suggests that interpretative discourse, which involves the exploration of different perspectives, the analysis of context, and the construction of one’s own interpretations, maybe a key factor in promoting the development of historical thinking in students. Further in this relationship, it is observed that interpretation activates the evaluation of historical sources especially. This indicates that when teachers promote interpretation, students tend to develop a greater ability to evaluate the relevance of historical sources.

However, it is also observed that interpretation is inhibited by the comparison of information from different sources. This finding is interesting because it suggests that, while interpretation may promote the evaluation of individual sources, the comparison of different sources may be challenging for students and make it difficult for them to construct their own interpretation. It is possible that comparing sources requires more complex analytical and synthesis skills that students have not yet fully developed or that teachers are not providing the necessary scaffolding to enable students to perform this task effectively.

Ball and Forzani (2009) pointed out that current training programs often focus on teachers’ beliefs and knowledge and argued that they should focus on the tasks and activities of teaching. At the same time, Darling-Hammond et al. (2012) agree that most teacher assessment programs do little to help teachers improve their teaching. Preparing teachers to teach social studies is a complex and dynamic task, and different contexts make it extremely difficult. Although our efforts may be questioned, the attempt is important in an educational context focused on teacher evaluation. This type of research provides specific information to secondary school and pre-service teachers, filling a gap in validated, research-based, and discipline-friendly observation instruments (Van Hover et al., 2012).

In sum, polar coordinate analysis reveals a complex relationship between historical interpretation and the development of historical thinking skills. While interpretation can be a driver for the development of these skills, especially regarding the evaluation of sources, the integration of source comparison into the teaching discourse may require specific didactic strategies in order for students to fully benefit from this activity. As Casas (2003) points out, to learn social sciences, it is necessary to provide the appropriate structures and tools to convert information into knowledge, and it is a fact that the use of primary sources in the classroom is very useful in promoting procedural work and critical and independent thinking in students (Prats & Santacana, 2011).

5. Conclusions

Overall, the results of this study suggest that the promotion of historical thinking requires a more deliberate approach to the teaching discourse. Greater attention should be paid to the development of skills such as evaluating sources, comparing perspectives, and constructing interpretations. History teacher education should incorporate these findings to promote teaching practices that foster the development of historical thinking in secondary school students.

The linear narrative, often ideological in nature, must be overcome in favor of approaches that emphasize student interaction in order to teach competencies, skills, and abilities (Prieto et al., 2013). Santisteban (2008) proposes, for example, presenting students with various possible, probable, and desirable futures through the values conveyed by each of the alternatives to foster the development of a critical conscience. Similarly, the use of primary sources in the classroom is one of the main resources for teaching procedural content in history (Feliu & Hernàndez Cardona, 2011). The use of old documents in the classroom helps to overcome the organizational structure of textbooks through activities on family and local history and procedures relating to the past and present. They also make it possible to learn about local history and establish generalizations and relationships with other realities and other temporalities (Pagès & Santisteban, 2010).

Despite the interesting conclusions obtained, this study has certain limitations that must be considered when interpreting and generalizing the results. Firstly, the number of classes observed is small, which limits the generalizability of the results to other contexts. It would be necessary to extend the sample to include a larger number of teachers and schools in order to obtain a more representative picture of teaching practices in the teaching of history at the secondary level. In addition, the sample is limited to schools in a specific region, so it would be desirable to extend the study to other regions to take into account possible geographical variability in teaching practices. Secondly, the study focuses on the analysis of teaching discourse but does not delve into other relevant aspects of the teaching-learning process, such as interactions between students or the use of different teaching resources. Future studies could broaden the focus of analysis to obtain a more complete picture of classroom dynamics. For example, it would be interesting to analyze how students respond to teacher discourse, what kind of questions they ask, how they interact with each other during activities, and how the use of different resources (such as audiovisual materials, ICT, or primary sources) influences their learning.

As for future lines of research, it would be interesting to explore in greater depth the relationship between prior knowledge exploration and historical thinking. Since polar coordinate analysis has shown a mutually inhibiting relationship between these two variables, qualitative studies are needed to better understand this dynamic. For example, interviews could be conducted with teachers and students to learn about their perceptions of the importance of exploring prior knowledge and its relation to the development of historical thinking skills. It would also be relevant to analyze how teacher training and the use of different pedagogical approaches can influence the development of historical thinking in students. Finally, it would be interesting to replicate this study in other educational contexts, such as primary or university education, in order to analyze whether the observed patterns hold in different realities.

In summary, this study offers a first approach to the analysis of teacher discourse in history teaching through observational analysis techniques. Despite its limitations, the results obtained open up new avenues of research and provide relevant information for the improvement of teaching practices in the area of history.