Developing the Historical Thinking Skill Scale at the Secondary School Level

  • Elif Meral Atatürk Üniversitesi
  • Zeynep Başcı Namlı
  • Türkan Karakuş Yılmaz
Keywords: Historical thinking skills, Time and chronology perception, Historical inquiry, Historical empathy, Scale development

Abstract

This research aims to develop a set of scales that will allow the measurement of historical thinking skills of secondary school students. Expert opinion was used for the content and face validity of the scale, Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) were used for the construct validity. A total of 817 students participated in the study, 497 of which were in the EFA study and 320 in the CFA study. As a result of EFA, a three-factor structure was obtained for each subscale which explained 55.57% of the total variance for the time and chronology perception (TCP) subscale; 52.04% of the total variance for the historical empathy (HE) subscale; and 49.01% of the total variance for the historical inquiry (HI) subscale. Findings from CFA showed that the subscales had sufficient fit indices and their reliability coefficients were within acceptable limits. Findings reveal that the scale can be used as a valid and reliable tool in determining students' historical thinking skills.

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How to Cite
Meral, E., Başcı Namlı, Z., & Karakuş Yılmaz, T. (2022). Developing the Historical Thinking Skill Scale at the Secondary School Level. International Journal of Curriculum and Instructional Studies (IJOCIS), 12(2), 413-440. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.31704/ijocis.2022.017