A Research On The Cultivation Of Historical Thinking Among Middle School Students

China started educational reform since the early 21^stcentury,based on the cultivation of key competence in various subjects.And whether or not the training of historical thinking goes well is the litmus test of whether or not key competence education in history subject goes down to earth.The status quo,however,the education of key competence in today's middle school history class goes unnoticed and it is because teachers believe that it cannot be taught,needn't be taught or no time to be taught,but the deeper reason is that China still needs to cover a long distance before it figures out what it is theoretically and how to teach it practically.The cultivation of historical thinking is a requirement of history truth-seeking mission,it is also a guiding standard of a good history lesson and furthermore,it is one of the ultimate goals of students'education.Students wouldn't be able to understand history well without gaining historical thinking and it doesn't go with what is happening in fundamental curriculum reform today.Historical thinking ability belongs to a broader concept,historical thinking and historical thinking is much about a thinking method.If one basically focuses on the study of historical thinking abilities,one may be confused about what it means by historical thinking,leaving the education of its ability groundless.For this reason,this essay first will clarify what middle students should gain through history education in terms of historical thinking,with the reference of features of history study and the research fruits of historical thinking so fay by scholars in history education,both China and beyond.This essay selected three aspects of historical thinking,namely time-space contextualization,corroboration through historical materials,critical thinking.These three are interrelated,mutually-assisted and mutually-triggered.Second,this essay would design and plan different teaching processes emphasizing different aspects in order to test how well middle school students get these three aspects through lessons and different teaching contents would be chosen in accordance to different aspects.Finally,put these teaching design into practice in history lessons,including having a lesson of How To See Song Dynasty's Being Poor And Weak,interviewing students and having a reflection afterwards.The essay,different from most previous research work,distinguishes historical thinking from the ability of it and explore the definition of historical thinking,pointing out its three aspects and making them explicit.The essay further provides cases and all these innovations enrich the current theories of history education in middle school and hopefully shed some lights on the future education reforms centering key competence cultivation.