Abstract

Historical thinking, as a sophisticated form of thinking about the past, which allows us to discuss the present and project the future, is a subject that has had significant development in the last three decades. Within historical thinking, different dimensions have been described, which vary according to the authors, such as sourcing, causal reasoning, change and continuity, ethical judgments, and historical empathy. Regarding the learning and development of historical thinking in educational environments, different authors have investigated pedagogical practices that promote it, either by describing real practices in classrooms or with experimental or quasi-experimental designs that test different teaching methodologies. However, there are two problems identified in the literature review. The first one is what happens with those aspects that have demonstrated to be more difficult to develop: contextualization, perspective taking and historical empathy. However, it is not just a problem in empirical terms but also in theoretical terms and is that the authors have not reached a consensus on the distinction of concepts such as taking perspective and historical empathy and on the place of emotions within historical thinking. The second problem that we try to address is the absence of a theoretical psychological explanation that can enlighten how historical thinking develops and why some dimensions are more challenging to develop. Therefore, we propose to understand the problem from a historical-cultural perspective, specifically from Vygotsky's concept of cultural mediation and cultural tool.