ABSTRACT
Sometimes people characterize alternatives to traditional approaches to history as throwing open the gates to the barbarians. They fear that where there are multiple “right” answers there are no “wrong” ones, that history becomes a complete fiction or simply a chronological arrangement of ungrounded opinions arrived at by group consensus and used to bolster spurious causes. Further, historical thinking and the construction of historical knowledge is a dynamic process that always takes place in a social context. Students’ historical understandings develop in and are shaped by this community. And their understandings will be different than those arising from more lecture- or textbook-based history instruction precisely because they developed in a context where students are responsible for putting their understanding to work for striving to be an “interested other” to their peers, and for keeping an open mind in regard to new evidence and alternative perspectives.
