Writing to learn history: intertextuality in secondary school and university students in Chile

Abstract

The objective of this article is to identify and compare some features of intertextuality in texts written by secondary school and university students in Chile. Employing the perspective afforded by historical literacy, academic discourse analysis, and expert-novice studies, we analyzed 17 written texts based on questions and historical evidence. The two groups were found to differ in terms of evidence usage and writing quality. Intertextual resources are much more commonly used in university-level expert writing than in secondary education. However, surprisingly, they also appeared in a significant part of the texts produced by secondary school students through elements such as paraphrasis, direct and indirect discourse, and integral and non-integral citations. These findings provide a comparative and situated perspective of historical writing across two educational levels, posing some challenges to literate practices in Historical Education and their modeling for learning.