Rubrics for Examining Historical Thinking Skills in High School World History Activities and Student Work¶

Element · All elements
Evidence · 8 claims (8 for) · 4 studies (3 design, 1 causal), q1–q3 · 1 of 4 report an effect size · 8 claims rest on one study

Description¶

A two-part rubric toolkit created and validated for evaluating the Gates Ventures World History Project curriculum. The activity rubrics (A1–A6) evaluate the potential of teacher-assigned activities to provide opportunities for historical thinking, while the student work rubrics (S1–S6) assess the extent to which students successfully used historical thinking skills in the work produced. Each dimension is scored 0–3, where 0 indicates absence, 1 emergence, 2 presence, and 3 rigorous presence.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• Scorers evaluate assignments and student artifacts, not students; the rubrics are not designed for everyday grading of students' work and are not meant for student eyes or student use.

Constraints¶

• The rubrics only evaluate historical thinking skills; they do not touch skills such as geography or historical empathy, and do not get at lessons strictly about teaching content knowledge.

Target Learners¶

• high school world history students

Target Learning Goals¶

• historical argumentation
• historical causation
• historical comparison
• historical contextualization
• continuity and change over time
• sourcing

Affordances¶

• Historical Thinking Six Dimension Framework

Claims¶

• The historical thinking rubrics were developed with construct and validity evidence from the literature and teacher/reviewer review [+M]
• Rubric dimensions were revised in 2023 to sharpen argumentation, contextualization, and Level 1 descriptions [+W]
• Rubric scoring supports answering diagnostic questions about opportunities for and evidence of historical thinking [+W]
• Six historical thinking dimensions — historical argumentation, causation, comparison, contextualization, continuity and change over time, and sourcing — were selected as rubric assessment targets based on convergence across U.S. national frameworks and the WHP course guide [+M]
• Trained scorers applied the historical thinking skills rubrics with good overall inter-rater consistency [+M]
• World History Project assignments scored higher on most learning opportunity rubric dimensions than other assignments [+M]
• An evaluation of the World History Project detected no statistically significant difference from comparison students in the other five historical thinking skills [+M]
• World History Project adoption increases learning opportunities for historical thinking in summative activities relative to business-as-usual curricula [+M]

Related Elements¶

• Four-level (0-3) Historical Thinking Skills rubrics for scoring teacher activities and student work
• Historical Thinking Skills Activity Rubrics (A1-A6) for assessing learning opportunities in world history assignments
• Historical Thinking Skills Student Work Rubrics (S1-S6) for assessing historical thinking in student products

Examples¶

• Score only the subset of rubric dimensions matching the instructional focus

Key Sources¶

• Hardy, A., Iwatani, E., Means, B., & Seylar, J. (2023). Rubrics for examining historical thinking skills in high school world history activities and student work. Digital Promise. (Original work published 2021). https://doi.org/10.51388/20.500.12265/111