Historical practices in school through photographical reconstruction

Small groups of 4th-grade school children worked autonomously on the analysis of a photograph, guided by a set of questions ranging from particular issues to more general ones. Transcripts of the recordings show that children's talk deals with key issues of historical methodology: Reliability of the source, manipulations transforming findings into a "source," generalizability from single cases, and interpretation and comparison with present times. In addressing the latter point, children are also drawn to a prospective view of the present time, social organization, scientific progress, and the like. The depth of the discussion was the result of the nature of the stimulus material, the group situation, and the structured format of the task.