Operationalizing Historical Consciousness: A Review and Synthesis of the Literature on Meaning Making in Historical Learning

Abstract

In response to the growing need for more relevant school history, the notion of historical consciousness has come to represent a way to help students understand the links between past, present, and future. However, translating the construct into practice in an ongoing puzzle in the field. Recently, efforts have been made to operationalize historical consciousness via a competency-based approach, but this is arguably problematic, because its proponents view historical consciousness as a hermeneutic quest for meaning yet operationalize it as a set path of mental processing. This article explores a different approach based on meaning-making practice. It does so through an extensive review and synthesis of the relevant literature, and based on the results, it suggests operationalizing historical consciousness through negotiating the presence of the past, inquiring about the past with the help of disciplinary and everyday habits of mind, and building a sense of historical being.