Listening like a historian? A framework of ‘oral historical thinking’ for engaging with audiovisual sources in secondary school education

Abstract

History education in many parts of the world is increasingly integrating the practices and sources of oral history. This rapprochement between the field of history education and the field of oral history presents an opportunity to allow students to engage with and develop the particular ways of thinking used by oral history practitioners and theorists. This study investigates how ‘oral historical thinking’ might be captured in a framework designed for educators, much like the various existing models of historical thinking, to support secondary students to analyse and interpret audiovisual interview sources in a way that emulates experts in the field. The study presents a prototypical ‘oral historical thinking framework’ and explores its possible applications to classroom teaching.