Historical Thinking Skills Student Work Rubrics (S1-S6) for assessing historical thinking in student products¶

Element · All elements
Evidence · 4 claims (2 for, 1 mixed, 1 against) · 1 study (1 design), q2 · 0 of 1 report an effect size · 4 claims rest on one study

Description¶

A companion set of six rubric dimensions (S1-S6) meant to study the extent to which high school world history student work exhibits historical thinking skills. As with the activity rubrics, "EacK GLPHQVLrq KaV IRXU OHYHOV (0-3)", where 0 generally indicates absence of a historical thinking practice or skill, 1 emergence, 2 solid presence, and 3 rigorous presence. The dimensions mirror the activity rubrics: historical argumentation claims and evidence, causation, comparison, contextualization, continuity and change over time, and sourcing. The rubric was piloted on 54 samples of student work associated with the scored assignments.

Design Implications¶

Context¶

Requirements¶

• The assignment collection process was tightened to include only assignments requiring individual students to express themselves through prose, written or oral; non-verbal maps, figures, artwork cannot be scored

Constraints¶

• Only one of the World History Project assignments had student work associated with it, limiting comparative analysis of student work rubric scores

Target Learners¶

• High school world history students in on-level or pre-AP 9th/10th grade classes

Target Learning Goals¶

• Historical thinking skills including argumentation, causation, comparison, contextualization, continuity and change over time, and sourcing

Affordances¶

• Historical Thinking Skills Six Dimension Taxonomy

Claims¶

• Trained scorers applied the historical thinking skills rubrics with good overall inter-rater consistency [+W]
• Two rubric dimensions (claims and evidence, comparison) showed low inter-scorer consistency in the pilot [-W]
• Scorers found all rubric dimensions important, with feedback bearing mainly on the scoring and training process rather than rubric design [+W]
• Scorers had difficulty distinguishing rubric scoring from everyday grading and AP scoring, and training took longer than expected [~W]

Related Elements¶

• Historical Thinking Skills Activity Rubrics (A1-A6) for assessing learning opportunities in world history assignments
• Rubrics for Examining Historical Thinking Skills in High School World History Activities and Student Work

Examples¶

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Key Sources¶

• Iwatani, E., Means, B., Seylar, J., and Hardy, A. (2021). Rubrics on historical thinking skills for assignments and student work: Initial validity evidence. Digital Promise. https://doi.org/10.51388/20.500.12265/112