Tensions,articulations,and novelty in the ontogenetic development of historical thinking: Contributions of cultural

Abstract

To analyse or experience history, to argue or narrate it, two approaches define and explain the phenomenon of thinking about history. In recent decades, thinking about history has become especially relevant because of its relationship with citizenship, either to evaluate evidence of the past or to guide present and future action. The contributions of psychology are diverse and come from traditions that refer to apparently antagonistic psychological processes, such as narrative and argumentation. The objective of this article is to address this discussion from a cultural–historical approach, specifically Vygotskian. We propose that argumentation and narrative are psychological processes that can be developed separately in ontogeny. Both processes, under certain conditions and socially mediated action, are stressed and articulated to give way to historical thinking, a higher psychological process.

Keywords

argumentation historical thinking narrative thinking development Vygotsky

Thinking about the history of groups, of societies, and of subjects is something that transcends the boundaries of any single discipline. It is no longer, and perhaps never was, an exclusive field of historians. Social and cultural psychology have contributed in recent years to the problem of building, rebuilding, remembering, or thinking about history. Although the disciplinary bias has set as an object of study the individual subjectivity, the phenomenon cannot be understood by marginalizing the social activity that constitutes it (Hammack, 2008; Haste & Bermúdez, 2017; Wertsch, 1997a, 1997b, 2002). Generally, without taking charge of this social constitution, the concept of historical thinking has emerged strongly in recent decades to describe how people think about history; how students think about the content of the history course; how citizens think about history in the context of social conflict; how this way of thinking changes over time; and, especially, what undermines and underpins these changes. Thinking about history involves several psychological processes and shapes the projection of future action, considering the past and present (Blanco & Rosa, 1997). Future action that is projected consciously and voluntarily is part of the deliberation or citizenship exercise (Rosa, 2004).

There are two major approaches to the psychological processes involved in thinking about history, both associated with different traditions. These traditions diverge at several points, among which is the tension between argumentation and narrative, which will be the core of this article. There are some explanations for this tension and its place in historical thinking, but, as we will describe later, they are insufficient to understand the phenomenon’s development. Addressing this problem by proposing a coherent explanation of the development of historical thinking could contribute to both the theoretical field of thinking about history and the applied field of teaching and learning history.

The purpose of this article, then, is to explain the conditions of possibility of historical thinking in light of the psychological processes involved from a cultural–historical Vygotskian perspective. The aim is to illustrate how narrative and argumentation, thanks to a socially mediated action at a certain point in ontogenetic development, are articulated and historical thinking emerges as a new higher psychological process. To this end, we will review the background to epistemological discussions about history, the traditions that address thinking about history, the social conditions and activities that mediate its development, and the psychological processes that are articulated there.

Historical knowledge and its disciplinary nature

History as an account of objective facts is a definition often rejected in historiographical discussions and whose main criticism is based on the epistemological character of historical knowledge (Carr, 1978; Kosso, 2009; Mink, 1973). The conception of history as a set of events of the past is even considered naïve (Kainulainen et al., 2019); in contrast, a more sophisticated conception assumes that history is a production and that the past does not translate directly into history. History is, instead, a product of specifically human action (Kainulainen et al., 2019; Lévesque, 2008).

For our purposes, it is necessary to discuss the place that human action has in history in two ways: history as past human actions; and history as a product of human action. “The past itself is not yet history; it becomes history by the activity of the human mind” (Rüsen, 2012, p. 47). From a historicist perspective, Giambattista Vico affirmed that the becoming of the world and its history are the product of the human mind, since it is the mind that gives intelligibility to that world (Noland, 2010). Vico also stated that history only exists as long as humans begin to think humanly (Mali, 2009). If we consider that Vico is recognized as the first historicist, we can assume that his idea of history as a product of the mind refers not to a mentalist explanation but rather to questioning the idea of a de-subjectivized history. In a similar vein, Mink (1973) asserted that history has a doubly subjective character by including, on the one hand, the historian’s concepts when interpreting the data and, on the other, the concepts and beliefs of the historical agents that perform in those data. Collingwood (1946/1976), besides, stresses the imagination in the historian’s work, who must reconstruct history by filling in the gaps of evidence by imagining the absent; only in this way could history be told.

A more general critique of the naïve history conception is the problem of history as a representation of the past. According to this conception, the history that reaches scientific criteria could reflect the facts of the past (Ricoeur, 1994). Including the mind, the subjectivity, and the imagination in making history, however, does not exclude the recognition of material historical realities—much less historical evidence. The activity of thinking and narrating history, as a social process involving individuals as social beings, is a constant interaction between events and interpretations (Carr, 1978; Kosso, 2009), a debatable tension between the facts, objectivity, and the historian’s subjectivity (Ricoeur, 1955/2015).

Nevertheless, why is history a discipline that is susceptible to the subjectivity of who tells it? According to Blanco and Rosa (1997), history is an inexorable condition for the configuration of identity because it endows social groups with a sense of future and personal life. At the same time, identity appears as a condition for the history of social groups (Rüsen, 2004). As a consequence, affection and emotions are involved in the process of thinking history; these are impossible to marginalize (Goldberg et al., 2008; Hammack, 2010; López et al., 2014). Also, as a result of the mutual constitution between history and social groups’ identity, often in conflict with other groups, the activity of making and writing history becomes eminently political and ideological (Ruin, 2019). This political and ideological dimension is not only in the origins of historical activity; it is also in its consequences, in the possible effects of historical narratives and how those narratives are told with perspectives that are sometimes in conflict (Topolski, 2004).

In epistemological terms, a hallmark of the nature of historical knowledge is multiperspectivism. Multiperspectivism emphasizes the coexistence of different narratives about particular events rather than a single objective and true narrative (López et al., 2014). Still, the important thing in making history, rather than the mere presence of multiple perspectives, is the weighing of these diverse perspectives in light of the evidence and its interpretation to answer specific questions. Thus, historical knowledge has an interpretative and subjective character that does not necessarily imply falling into a relativization of the different narratives, assuming that all historical interpretations are equally valid (Wansink et al., 2018). On the contrary, in the face of multiple narratives, disciplinary tools, and criteria, including a more sophisticated historical thinking mode would allow the evaluation of perspectives considering ethical, memorial aspects and a commitment to the present and future society (Seixas, 2017a). This consideration allows historical thinking as a complex phenomenon to be redefined, so that it is not exclusively a product of disciplinary knowledge or second-order concepts.

For all of the above, addressing historical thinking as a psychological phenomenon with a social origin challenges any idea of thinking about history that is fixed, that is free of conflict, politicity, and transformation. Now we will review the main trends that have embraced this topic.

The two souls of historical thinking as an object of psychology

The conceptualization of thinking about history as a complex phenomenon and as an object of psychological inquiry is recent if we compare it to thinking about other disciplines, such as sciences or maths (Carretero & Montanero, 2008; Fogo, 2014). Unlike other domains, as in the case of mathematical thinking, in which abstract logic predominates, in historical thinking, the object of knowledge is alive, is a constitutive part of the identities of social groups; this represents a specificity concerning other higher psychological functions. In that sense, it is even possible to consider how the object itself shapes thought (Larraín & Haye, 2014). Furthermore, this psychological phenomenon faces the absence of a unified vocabulary, and different perspectives dispute its definition.

Seixas (2017b) distinguished two traditions addressing the problem: the Anglo-American tradition and the European tradition. According to the Anglo-American tradition, historical thinking is “a disciplined way of thinking about the past. It is what separates history from mere storytelling” (Wineburg, 1998, pp. 233–234). Wineburg’s distinction between thinking about history as a disciplined activity and telling will be crucial in this article. In other words, historical thinking would indicate a turning point between thinking of history as a static and dogmatic past (Fordham, 2017) and thinking of history with a higher level of sophistication, assuming the specific character of historical knowledge and integrating disciplinary criteria and concepts (Maggioni et al., 2009). The Anglo-American tradition has emphasized history as a discipline of knowledge (Miguel-Revilla & Sánchez-Agustí, 2018). It defines historical thinking based on specific domain abilities or second-order concepts (Carretero & Lee, 2014; Lee & Shemilt, 2003; Rodríguez-Moneo & López, 2017; van Drie & van Boxtel, 2008). Among these second-order concepts are the evaluation of evidence, change and continuity, causal reasoning (Carretero & Montanero, 2008; van Boxtel & van Drie, 2018), historical understanding, and historical empathy (Lee & Ashby, 2000), or heuristics such as contextualization, sourcing, and corroboration (Wineburg, 1991).

The field of cognitive psychology is a significant contributor to the study of historical thinking in the Anglo-American tradition. The focus of these authors is the cognitive processes operating when thinking of history as a discipline. They investigate, for example, historical reading, historical writing, historical literacy, and expert thinking in history. Despite the emphasis on cognitive processes, the overall purpose of the Anglo-American tradition is to promote the development of subjects’ ability to understand history critically (Bermúdez, 2014; Freedman, 2015). These abilities are linked to the historian’s practices and, especially, the treatment of historical evidence, which includes its analysis, evaluation, and communication.

One of the specific practices of history as a discipline is historical writing, which considers interpretations, different narratives, the use of evidence, and critical summaries; more importantly, historical writing considers arguments (Henríquez & Muñoz, 2017; Kosso, 2009; Nokes, 2017; Nokes & De la Paz, 2018). Argumentative practice in history requires the construction of statements, the integration of evidence, and logical development to support those statements (De la Paz et al., 2014; Goldberg et al., 2008). In this framework, evidence is central (Lee & Shemilt, 2003; Maggioni et al., 2009). After all, this is how the historical discipline is defined as “a deliberative process of constructing arguments grounded in the available evidence” (De la Paz et al., 2014, p. 229). The argumentation and use of properly historical concepts, such as time, change, continuity, causality, and context, define the historian’s work (Kainulainen et al., 2019).

Similarly, van Boxtel and van Drie (2018) link historical thinking and argumentation through historical reasoning. The authors proposed a model in which “the historical reasoning attempts to reach justifiable conclusions about processes of continuity and change, causes and consequences, and/or differences and similarities between historical phenomena or periods” (p. 151). This cognitive activity is influenced by the interest in history, historical knowledge, knowledge of metahistorical concepts, and epistemological beliefs. Although historical reasoning is a cognitive and sociocultural activity, its sociocultural character is scarcely included in this model. The sociocultural character is rather a challenge for the historical thinking field.

In short, within the Anglo-American tradition, the development of historical thinking would result from the learning of abilities linked to historical discipline. From this perspective, historical thinking could be defined as second-order concepts or conceptual memory in history, insofar as it exceeds first-order or substantive knowledge. These abilities or concepts, mainly cognitive, might contribute to the formation of citizens who participate critically in their society (Barton, 2012; Bermúdez, 2014; Fordham, 2017; Lévesque, 2008; Van Straaten et al., 2016). Conceptual memory in history could be understood as a higher psychological process. However, as we will discuss below, there is a fundamental difference between historical thinking and second-order concepts in the specific sense of the Anglo-American tradition.

The second tradition, the European one, refers to historical consciousness to address sophisticated thinking about history, and its conceptual matrix comes from disciplines such as history and the philosophy of history. Historical consciousness has roots in the ideas of the historicity of Gadamer and the historical time of Koselleck. Both ideas break with temporality as a constant, and they stress discontinuity and acceleration as a way of understanding the past, present, and future (Seixas, 2017a). For Rüsen (2004):

[Historical consciousness] functions as an element in the intentions guiding human activity, our “course of action” . . . . Historical consciousness should be conceptualized as an operation of human intellection rendering present actuality intelligible while fashioning its future perspectives. (p. 67)

Historical consciousness is a properly human activity, where action and future projection acquire greater prominence than they do in historical thinking as disciplinary knowledge (e.g., Wineburg, 1998). Unlike in the Anglo-American perspective, historical consciousness points not to cognitive abilities to evaluate historical evidence (Miguel-Revilla & Sánchez-Agustí, 2018), but to an operation of intellection to place oneself in history through psychological processes, such as narration, social identity, and moral and political reasoning (Rüsen, 2004).

Narration is the form in which historical consciousness is displayed (Rüsen, 2004). The narrative structure allows the flow between past, present, and future, the individual and collective agency in the complex historical causation, and the articulation of moral questions about past and present (Haste & Bermúdez, 2017). Causality appears in the narrative: that historical relationship between the possibility of agency, on the one hand, and the conditions and limitations of human freedom, on the other (Seixas, 2017a). The narrative form would also have the potential to integrate personal and collective identity, history, and memory (Hammack, 2010) and, at the same time, to account for the internalization of cultural tools that mediate the development of historical thinking in a Vygotskian sense (Barton & Levstik, 2004; Wertsch, 2002).

For Rüsen (2004), the narrative competence progression that characterizes historical consciousness has four types of deployment. In the traditional type, history represents a temporary whole in which the past is relevant for the present and future as a continuity of patterns of life and culture. Tradition, permanence, and stability define the moral component of historical consciousness at this level.

In the second type, the exemplary one, the norms drawn from past experiences become moral mandates and convey teachings. This morality is independent of time, since it is based on the application of abstract principles to specific situations.

In critical consciousness, the third one in the Rüsen (2004) progression, there is a change from previous levels. With critical consciousness, the counter-narratives emerge and problematize the value systems present in history. In this way, moral and universal values are questioned, presenting the counterpoints and historical evidence of their consequences.

The last level of consciousness is the genetic type. Unlike the previous ones, in which permanence is by nature static, in the genetic type the pattern of historical significance is development and change. Permanence has an internal temporality, and it is dynamic, that is, the change itself is what gives meaning to history.

Besides the emphasis on history rather than disciplinary abilities, the conjunction of psychological processes, such as identity and moral and political reasoning, which adopt a narrative form, are the main forms of divergence between the European and Anglo-American traditions (Miguel-Revilla & Sánchez-Agustí, 2018). Although the division seems irreconcilable, some authors set a dialogue between historical thinking and historical consciousness (e.g., Nordgren, 2019; Seixas, 2017b).

In an attempt at conceptual integration, Seixas (2017b) proposed six dimensions to define historical thinking: (a) historical meaning, which allows narrative articulation of what it is relevant to know about the past; (b) the use of sources of evidence through the dynamic interaction among text, context, and its interpretation; (c) continuity and change in history, which coexist and make sense of the narration of the past and present; (d) cause and consequence, which, in this case, refer to the relationship between agency and historical condition; (e) historical perspective, interwoven with the previous dimensions, which points to the contextualization of the decisions, intentions, emotions, and beliefs of the past in its historical moment, overcoming the presentist bias; and (f) the ethical dimension, which includes reasoned historical judgements and responsibility for past actions.

The last two dimensions—historical perspective and ethics—are not strictly cognitive abilities; they are rather reasoned judgements about past actions, questions about those actions’ legacy in the present, and the memorial obligation to recognize the historical actors. In this way, Seixas (2017a) integrated an ethical–moral dimension into historical thinking, typical of the European tradition but less relevant in the Anglo-American one.

We could say that the differences between the Anglo-American and European traditions exist because we are addressing two different phenomena: one linked to critical thinking about historical evidence; and the other related to the experience of being in history. We hold that it is not so. On the contrary, we assert that within the historical thinking field, it is possible to find two approaches with different emphases, two souls that face each other about the same phenomenon and diverge on several points, for example, on the role of argumentation and narrative.

The issue of argumentation and narrative will be key to sustaining the article’s thesis, whereby we propose, from a Vygotskian perspective, that the tension between both is necessary for historical thinking development. The articulation of argumentation and narrative, psychological processes that, before being articulated, operate separately, would promote a new higher psychological process: historical thinking. Considering historical thinking as a higher psychological process or function, in a Vygotskian sense, implies that it does not develop naturally and that it is the product of internalization of cultural tools according to the general law of cultural development (Vygotsky, 1931/2012). More importantly, considering historical thinking as a higher psychological process implies that, on an ontogenetic level, it has a specific social history, which is properly human and endowed with meaning and will (Vygotsky & Luria, 1930/2007). To support this thesis, it is necessary to review how the phenomenon of thinking about history changes on such an ontogenetic level. In other words, it is necessary to analyse the history of historical thinking development and how, in this history, the psychological processes in tension are articulated and rearticulated.

Education and historical thinking development: Contributions to explain the change

To Wineburg (2001), historical thinking is an unnatural act; therefore, it does not emerge automatically and needs to be guided. Different means can guide historical thinking, such as education. A great deal of the empirical background to the changes in historical thinking comes from educational interventions that try to promote it (Epstein & Salinas, 2018).

Although the social practices that promote historical thinking can be diverse—for example, social situations of conflict could meet the conditions to accentuate social identities and argumentation in the context of political disputes—education is a space with the explicit intention of promoting historical thinking. That is to say, participation in a timely and appropriate teaching–learning process in history would favour historical thinking development. Based on this premise, many countries consider the promotion of historical thinking to be a curricular objective within their educational policy, especially for its contribution to identity formation and citizen participation (Van Straaten et al., 2016). Wineburg (2001) said, “History holds the potential, only partially realized, of humanizing us in ways offered by few other areas of the school curriculum” (p. 5).

In general, the history teaching practices that have had effects on the sophistication of historical thinking are based on historical inquiry (Fogo, 2014) and simulate the historian’s work; use historical questions; select and adapt historical sources; explain and connect historical content; model and support historical reading and writing skills; use historical evidence; and use historical concepts.

Among these methodologies, one of the most studied in historical thinking is argumentation and argumentative writing (Monte-Sano & De la Paz, 2012; Reisman, 2012; Voss & Wiley, 2000). As mentioned above, historical argumentation is a fundamental part of disciplinary performance in general and historical writing in particular (De la Paz et al., 2014; Nokes, 2017; Nokes & De la Paz, 2018; Seixas & Morton, 2013). Accordingly, van Boxtel and van Drie (2018) proposed that dialogical teaching that privileges the discussion is relevant to the development of historical reasoning, so exploration of different perspectives, without unique responses, would enhance historical thinking (van Boxtel & van Drie, 2017).

Previous research has shown, for example, that students achieve better results in historical understanding when they work with multiple historical sources instead of working with a single source (Nokes & De la Paz, 2018); and when teachers involve students in critical reading of the texts, they are asked to infer causal relationships and understand the perspectives of the authors of multiple historical documents (Monte-Sano & De la Paz, 2012).

The multiple sources and argumentation in the group discussions of students have also had positive effects on historical reading (Reisman, 2012). On the other hand, argumentative writing has been effective for the historical understanding of students with different levels of achievement (De la Paz, 2005). Students also present better results in reading and historical understanding when they write argumentative essays than when they write narrative essays (Voss & Wiley, 2000).

Goldberg (2013) noted how students in heterogeneous groups made their argument more sophisticated as they discussed conflicting issues in their sociohistorical context. The author showed that the higher the vitality (the more relevance in the present) of the historical topic, the more prone the students were to identify bias, and it was more difficult for them to change their narratives (Goldberg et al., 2008). However, the interesting result from Goldberg’s research is that group argumentation methodologies helped to change historical narratives, even though the issues were controversial and threatening to group identity (Goldberg et al., 2011).

So far, in a brief evidence review on teaching methodologies and historical thinking, two elements have been distinguished: first, the use of multiple sources versus the use of unique sources; and, second, argumentation versus narration. The multiple sources—perspectives and argumentation—were already mentioned as attributes of historical knowledge. Both elements are interwoven in the historian’s work and also in thinking about history.

It is worth deepening the problem of the contrast between argumentation and narrative. While argumentation seems to have a positive effect on historical thinking, narratives, which tend to have a unitary and coherent perspective, seem to be difficult to change, especially when it comes to controversial historical issues. Narrative has been a typical format, both criticized (Hobsbawm, 1980) and advocated for (Ankersmit, 2004; White, 1980) in history as a discipline; it is also a way of history transmission and identity constitution that tends toward coherence (Hammack, 2008, 2010). On the other hand, it has also been claimed that argumentation is a format for making history that tends toward contradiction (Ricoeur, 1994). The tension between them in historical thinking acquires particular nuances, given the nature of historical knowledge and its relation to social identities and morality and its intrinsic politicity (Ankersmit, 2004; Kosso, 2009; Mink, 1973). Next, we address this tension by proposing a theoretical explanation.

Argumentation and historical thinking development: A Vygotskian explanation

The key processes, when we talk about history and historical thinking, are narrative and argumentation. They have been opposed in both history and psychology: while narrative is associated with a way of telling whereby verisimilitude prevails over truth as objectivity (e.g., Bruner, 1986), argumentation is often associated with formal logic (Billig, 1987). The literature on historical thinking also seems to reproduce this antagonism: on the one hand, narrative is presented as a way of making history by “storytelling” and displaying an associated identity (Rüsen, 2004; White, 1980); and, on the other hand, argumentation is a rational, logical exercise that allows for a more sophisticated evaluation of historical evidence (De la Paz et al., 2014; Reisman, 2012). Beyond the antagonisms and their caricatures, when thinking about history, narrative and argumentation are two elements that are always present, either in the foreground or in the background.

Thinking about history necessarily supposes thinking about historical narratives, versions of history built on evidence and its interpretation (Carr, 1978), about testimonies, past events, and their reconstruction. According to Topolski (2004), historical narratives have three levels: (a) an informative or superficial level, composed of all the narrative sentences, which must be consistent in a time–space framework and their content; (b) a second persuasive or rhetorical level, which transmits the historian’s (or whoever tells the history) beliefs, which prioritizes the information, uses rhetorical resources, and takes a position in the history; and (c) a third theoretical–ideological level, on which the two previous levels depend, and which includes the conscious and nonconscious ideology of the historian (or whoever tells the history). The informative and the theoretical–ideological levels in Topolski’s organization are in most of the definitions of history (e.g., Ankersmit, 2004). The relatively new level is the second rhetorical level, which accounts for conflict and negotiation. That is to say, historical narratives are not factual accounts (Kosso, 2009); they always have a space for dispute, for persuasion, for a dialogue between the historian and the receiver, whether real or imagined, but this space is never passive. Similar ideas were already present in discussions about the constructed character of historical knowledge, its rhetorical and narrative structure, and the action that historian and receiver exert when thinking about history (Ricoeur, 1994).

Two meaningful concepts to understand how historical narratives operate are the master narrative (Hammack, 2010) and schematic narrative templates (Wertsch, 2002). Both refer to socially shared narratives or dominant scripts that shape coherent stories. These dominant narratives permeate social life, its cultural products, and its discourses, but they are not free from contradiction. How people reproduce them is variable, especially in cases of social groups in conflicts that produce their counter-narratives facing the dominant narratives (Wertsch, 1997b).

In that sense, social life provides the subject with different narratives, which can be more or less totalitarian, more or less closed, and with more or less space for dispute and negotiation (e.g., Wertsch, 2002). At the same time, those historical narratives can be cultural tools that subjects internalize and reconstruct in order to develop their personal narratives (Hammack, 2008, 2010) and thus to participate in social life (Barton & Levstik, 2004; Haste & Bermúdez, 2017). In other words, it is an internalization as a dialectical process; historical narratives are available, but it is the subject who appropriates them in ways that are not socially determined (Álvarez-Espinoza & Sebastián, 2018). The cultural tools, also called mediational means by Wertsch (1997b), would allow an indirect relationship to be set with the events of the past, a relationship mediated, in this case, by ways of telling the history, which include identity and conflict. These tools would allow new functionalities in the subject, albeit also a certain limitation or “affordance” (Wertsch, 1997a).

From a cultural–historical Vygotskian perspective, the internalization of cultural tools means that what is available first on an interpsychological or social plane is reconstructed on an intra-psychological plane. Often, internalization of the cultural tools has been understood in a deterministic way, in which the subject passively receives what the social environment provides them with (e.g., Matusov, 2011). This interpretation, which recognizes the social as a structure that is alien to the subject, could be deemed within the “split philosophy” that divides the subject from its environment (Castorina, 2002). On the contrary, the perspective we propose conceives the subject to be in a dialectical relationship with the social environment in which cultural tools are available. Following Azeri (2020), consciousness is understood as a constituent part of social relations, not as its product in mechanical terms. In this sense, consciousness is a historical product that adopts the form of language. From this perspective, which Azeri borrows from Ilyenkov, thought appears as an ideal reconstruction of human activity in the form of language and is therefore subject to transformation and intervention by the subjects who deploy it.

This dialectical relationship allows development of both higher psychological processes in general (Álvarez-Espinoza & Sebastián, 2018) and historical thinking, in our case. The reconstruction process in the intra-psychological plane is critical to discarding the deterministic view in the development of historical thinking. Because the internalization consists of a reconstruction of cultural tools, it is not a mere reproduction but a process leading to voluntary, human action, which varies through groups but also individuals. In other words, the subject is always active in their process of internalization of cultural tools, which allows development in idiosyncratic trajectories but also of human will and freedom as a horizon of Vygotsky’s human development (Vygotsky, 1931/2012). The cultural tools available in the social environment are not mechanistic determinants of human behaviour since they only have an effect when subjects use them (Azeri, 2020; Wertsch, 1997b). This relationship between the subject and cultural tools would allow the appearance of authentic novelty, a new process that does not follow a natural continuity but results from qualitative transformations in development (Castorina, 2010).

The relationship between subject and cultural tools adopts singular paths; therefore, it is impossible to evaluate it using standard measures (Wertsch, 1997a, 1997b). However, these unique paths can be learned and developed when they are triggered by teaching and learning. In our case, historical thinking would develop through the internalization of historical narratives in conjunction with the internalization of forms of argument that can strain those narratives. Narratives and argumentation function, in this framework, as cultural tools. These cultural tools, available in the history itself, are internalized not only as abilities to evaluate and position oneself in the face of the history but also in the development of the social and personal identity of the subjects. In this sense, cultural tools allow the subject to enter not only a shared history but also their own path of individuation, singular and constructed. Historical thinking, insofar as it is the achievement of a stable form of relationship between narrative and argumentation, represents a stability, but in movement, since it is changing according to social identities, conflicts, and, finally, history in a nondeterministic way. Thus, historical thinking as a higher psychological function is not simply conceptual memory in the sense of the Anglo-American tradition; neither is it solely historical imagination or empathy (Collingwood, 1946/1976), because thinking historically is not only constructing a reality (Retz, 2017).

The relationship between the subject and historical narratives in a teaching–learning space, as we noted before, timely and pertinent, with dialogue and multiple perspectives, would favour the development of historical thinking—a pedagogical space that makes these cultural tools available but also emphasizes its conflictive aspects from a multiperspective view. This multiperspectivism has an implicit form of argumentation, which can also be considered a cultural tool. The development of these cultural tools will allow the development of a way of facing history and being in history that includes historical action in the present and the future. As previously stated, these conditions are not exclusive to the educational field; they can also be specific historical conjunctures, but the educational field can promote historical thinking, through its own tools, such as the choice of specific teaching methodologies. In the educational field, our two psychological processes can intersect. In this space, a particular interaction and tension would allow more sophisticated ways of thinking about history, also promoting a transformation in personal terms, a process of subjectivation. In this space, cultural tools can be internalized, and future action can be projected from analysis of the past in the present.

Now, how does this internalization take place? How are argumentation, narrative, identity, and history articulated in the development of historical thinking? It is worth remembering the first tension of psychological processes outlined above, the relationship between argumentation and narrative when thinking about history. On the one hand, argumentation plays a fundamental role: the learning devices based on argumentation promote the development of different historical thinking abilities. Argumentation and, more broadly, rhetoric are also part of the historical practice (Reisman, 2012; Ricoeur, 1994; Topolski, 2004). Argumentation, social activity produced around opposing points, for Billig (1987) and Larraín and Haye (2012), has a rhetorical dimension that structures thinking. The endless chain between argument and counter-argument, between logos and antilogos, the contradiction itself, fundamental in argumentation, would be typical of the thought. In other words, we think argumentatively. On the other hand, the historical narratives that a subject internalizes to think about history represent a convergence point between history and social and personal identity. These narratives, as noted earlier, are never free of contradiction and can open spaces, small or large, for the dispute (Wertsch, 2002), the core of the argumentation (Billig, 1987). If the historical narratives give minimal space for argumentation, and if the pertinent and timely educational conditions allow the articulation between both psychological processes, the development of historical thinking will begin. Both argumentation and narratives are social practices that occur on an interpsychological level and which are then internalized on an intra-psychological level. In this sense, historical narratives as cultural tools operate by generating a zone of proximal development for the argumentation process. For this specific interaction to occur between narratives and argumentation, as we have said, certain conditions must be met that an educational device can intentionally promote, since the development of historical thinking does not occur naturally or universally.

How does this development start? Through which mechanisms? According to Larraín (2017), inner speech, as conceptualized by Vygotsky (1934/2014), is the fundamental psychological mechanism that operates when the subject participates in spaces for argumentation about scientific knowledge. Inner speech acts in thinking development. It allows “gradual individualisation, arising based on internal social character, which constitutes the main path of child development” (Vygotsky, 1934/2014, p. 310). For Larraín, this mechanism could discover empirical findings that account for the delayed effect of group argumentation in argumentation schemes, disciplinary knowledge, and evaluative thinking. Larraín (2017), following Vygotsky, affirms that inner speech is a form of language directed towards oneself that develops from participation in discursive contexts. Inner speech is “the process through which an appropriated social way of using language is used to regulate and transform the way that persons think, recall, imagine, and so on” (p. 74). This mechanism would then be the link between the interpsychological processes produced on a social level and the intra-psychological processes (Larraín, 2017).

If we take a step further in historical thinking, the mechanism responsible for the changes produced by an argumentation-based learning methodology could also be inner speech. Inner speech allows one to begin to argue with oneself the historical narratives, after being part of social reality and a context that mediates and promotes internalization of the available tools. When talking to oneself, the subject has an active place in the reconstruction of these tools; the subject is not passive in any case. In the case of history, as we have emphasized, other psychological processes, such as identity, moral and political reasoning, and an emotional dimension are involved.

Identity is meaningful when we talk about history. From a narrative approach, identity is realized when telling a life story (Hammack, 2008, 2010). In the activity of telling a life story, the subject uses the available tools, the speeches, the ideology, and also the history or histories. However, how can we combine identity in its narrative way and its implication or bias with sophisticated ways of thinking, when this sophisticated thinking requires recognizing and evaluating multiple perspectives? On the contrary, how do we think about the social group’s history in a sophisticated way, acknowledging the inherent multiperspectivism of historical knowledge without risking the commitment to that group?

The inherent multiperspectivist character of historical knowledge, when meeting the subject’s history and its social group, would have the potential to mobilize the aspects of identity necessary for historical perspective-taking. It is worth remembering that identity not only points to coherence, continuity, and sameness but also includes movement and mutability—what Ricoeur (1996) called ipseity. From a narrative approach, identity takes narrative shape and is constituted as a complex between sameness and ipseity, coherence and conflict. Thus, a substantial and closed self loses sense, just as it loses sense to speak about historical thinking that does not question history, which merely reproduces a (just apparently) coherent set of objective facts that represent past reality.

From a Vygotskian perspective, we propose that the dialectic between sameness and ipseity, at the time of narration and facing the need to take a historical perspective, is set in motion through the mechanism above, namely, inner speech. Inner speech, as a link between the interpsychological plane and the intra-psychological plane, would stimulate the inexorable dialectic of identity when a social activity that promotes it occurs. This social activity would be, in historical thinking, a relevant and timely learning device that meets some conditions, namely, argumentation as a guided activity, as the research has shown, and the presence of historical narratives that have meaning for the subject’s identity, which open up a space for dialogue and multiple perspectives.

At this point, it would be useful to propose a parallel between the relationship among everyday (or spontaneous) concepts and scientific concepts, proposed by Vygotsky (1934/2014), and the relationship between identity and argumentation that we are proposing here. Vygotsky argues that the differences between both types of concept are mostly due to their different developmental trajectories into humans’ ontogenies. Both are specific ways of generalization but developed in interaction contexts that guided the participants’ attention to different aspects of material reality: for everyday concepts, primarily to the objects and their perceptive richness; and for scientific concepts, to the way we think about those objects and, thus, to the more or less systematic relationships between those ways of conceiving. For Vygotsky (1934/2014), each of these two ways of conceiving constitutes a proximal development zone for the other because they have complementary strengths. When its activities demand that the student articulate the two types of concept, the school is fostering their cognitive development. We propose an analogous relationship between the narrative identity processes, mostly lived through storytelling in everyday contexts, and argumentation processes, often learned in artificial contexts when dealing with school-like subjects. As we have seen, both types of process have a conceptual and a somehow rhetorical function (i.e., they serve as ways to convince others and oneself), but they are focused on different aspects of reality. Specific learning devices can demand that people articulate the processes in a most developed, ontogenetically new way to put together the events that we have characterized as historical thinking. Historical thinking is thus distinguished from other higher psychological functions, insofar as it is multiperspectivism articulated with the reasoned taking of a position (or a perspective) among the several that are deemed possible.

Likewise, the timely learning device means that it occurs at precise moments in the subject’s history when historical narratives make more sense and questioning them becomes a necessity. For this reason, in particular historical moments of conflict in which the social group’s history is at stake, the participation of the subject in that group could, from our proposal, accelerate the development of historical thinking. Interestingly, at this point, we find the different times of Vygotskian theory, general history—understood here as history itself—the history of development at the ontogenetic level, and the history of higher psychological functions (Scribner, 1985). As we have indicated, the mechanisms that allow this encounter would be internalization, inner speech, and identity.

Inner speech and sameness had already been pointed out by Penuel and Wertsch (1995) as a meeting point between Vygotsky and Erikson: while inner speech, as a flow in the intra-psychological plane, responds to the contextually situated sense, the sameness displays a sense of self with some coherence and continuity. Both psychological mechanisms would have social origins. Following this argument, Hammack (2008) claims that inner speech changes at the time of telling the personal story and thus becomes social speech.

The Hammack (2008) and Penuel and Wertsch (1995) proposals, although pointing to a possible pathway, do not explain how identity and inner speech are articulated in processes of thinking development or what happens when identity aspects face the multiperspectivistic character of historical knowledge. If we consider that inner speech is a mechanism that allows those processes that first occur on an interpsychological or social plane to be reconstructed, then social speech is not the point of arrival. It could be the starting point. If historical narratives are constituted as social speech, then from there the process of internalization of social speech begins, which becomes inner speech, and not the other way around. The subject, based on the availability of historical narratives and engaged in the process of argumentation, internalizes these cultural tools through inner speech, a key piece in the process of making one’s own something that was previously on the interpsychological plane. This inner speech operates as a flow that finally allows the reconstruction, in a singular way, of higher level psychological processes, such as historical thinking, while at the same time transforming the personal narrative and the identity. This route is not obvious; nor is it a biological or maturational need. This route, nevertheless, is socially necessary, to the extent that a given subculture requires its participants to argue their historical narratives in a multiperspective way.

In this context we can identify two tensions linked through the mechanism indicated as central in the historical thinking development. On the one hand, there is the rhetorical aspect within historical narratives (Topolski, 2004), or the narrative aspect in history as an argumentative activity (Ricoeur, 1994). On the other hand, there is the tension within the identity, understood as a sense of sameness that, in the framework of the internalization of cultural tools, coincides with an intra-psychological flow, also characterized by a rhetorical, conflicting, and contradictory dimension (Larraín, 2017; Larraín & Haye, 2012; Penuel & Wertsch, 1995).

Therefore, historical thinking and the internalization of historical narratives, or historical rhetoric, is a process that remains in the middle of a double tension. This double tension in the singular paths that the relationship between subject and cultural tools can adopt (Wertsch, 1997b) is what would allow, under relevant and timely conditions, the development of the higher psychological process that we have called historical thinking. Although these conditions can be met in specific settings, such as historical conjunctures or social movements in which historical narratives are at stake in the present, we argue that education, as a type of social practice, can intentionally guide these conditions.

Conclusion

As we have seen, diverse authors and trends try to explain how the phenomenon of thinking about history occurs and develops. With different emphases, and responding to antagonistic philosophical traditions, the definitions of historical thinking vary between two poles that seem irreconcilable. Those definitions range from a set of abilities to use the evidence for the consciousness necessary for the historical agency. It is difficult in this context to explain, from a cultural–historical perspective, how historical thinking develops, understood as a higher psychological process that gives the specifically human will to historical action.

However, what prevails when we discuss thinking about history is a tension between the detachment necessary for the rational exercise of thought and the identity necessary to give meaning to history, between arguing about evidence and storytelling, and between thinking academically and getting involved politically.

For this reason, facing critical historical circumstances, when history demands historical thinking, opens up the possibilities of deployment, not of abilities free of identity and emotional biases but of a higher way of thinking about history. This thinking constitutes the human action itself, which projects into the present and the future. The projection of action from history is fundamental to, on the one hand, thinking about the horizon of possibility of human action, the exercise of will, and, on the other hand, to conceiving the great historical changes that give the character of historicity and historical time to becoming. Herein lies the politicity and the deliberative and citizen action of historical thinking.

Historical thinking, from this perspective, is defined as the act of thinking of history itself and not as a set of abilities (which, however, can be developed as part of thinking about history). Historical thinking, from this perspective, is defined within the framework of singular paths in personal history in front of historical narratives available in the ever-changing social present, which at the same time, allows the projection of future action.

Footnotes

Funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The author’s received funding from Beca ANID Doctorado Nacional Nº 21170619.

ORCID iDs

Natalia Albornoz

Christian Sebastián

Author biographies

Natalia Albornoz is a psychologist who holds a Master’s in educational psychology from the Universidad de Chile and is currently a PhD student in psychology at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile. She also teaches learning and development at the school of education of the Universidad de O’Higgins. Her research areas are learning and development of historical thinking from a Vygotskian approach, experimental pedagogy, and theoretical psychology. She has worked on various research projects using qualitative methods, such as ethnography and photo-elicitation. Recent publications include (with J. Assaél & J. Redondo), “The Circle of Non-Dialogue: Everyday Interactions at Schools located in Vulnerable Areas and Chilean Educational System” in Ethnography and Education (2021).

Christian Sebastián is an educational psychologist, holds a PhD in psychology from the Catholic University of Louvain, Belgium, and is an associate professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile’s School of Psychology. His research focuses on adult learning from the historical–cultural approach. He has researched cognitive, identity, and motivational aspects of human learning. In recent years, his focus has been on the development of epistemic thinking in student teachers’ initial training through serious games. Recent publications include (with M. Vergara & M. R. Lissi), “The Vygotskian Contribution to the Construction of a General Theory of Human Learning,” in P. Fossa (Ed.), Latin American Advances in Subjectivity and Development: Through the Vygotsky Route (Springer, in press).

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Tensions,articulations,and novelty in the ontogenetic development of historical thinking: Contributions of cultural–historical psychology

Abstract

Keywords

Historical knowledge and its disciplinary nature

The two souls of historical thinking as an object of psychology

Education and historical thinking development: Contributions to explain the change

Argumentation and historical thinking development: A Vygotskian explanation

Conclusion

Footnotes

Funding

ORCID iDs

Author biographies

References