ABSTRACT
In some cases, the knowledge covered is little more than a body of factual information to be reproduced on objective examinations. More often, it also includes a set of themes and concepts to be demonstrated in more analytically sophisticated exercises, such as papers and essay tests. Historians have been talking seriously about teaching for many years—since the professionalization of the discipline more than a century ago, in fact. Over the past decade, the coverage model has been subjected to increasing challenge in pages of some of the discipline’s most influential and widely read professional publications. Recent scholarship suggests many possible ways to teach students to think historically, but it also points to several challenges that must be recognized and addressed. Nevertheless, in many ways both history SoTL and potential new signature pedagogy informed by it remain in their infancy. The systematic investigation of student learning must begin with a clear definition of what the people want their students to learn.
