Rubrics for Examining Historical Thinking Skills in High School World History Activities and Student Work

These Historical Thinking Skills rubrics were created and validated for use in the evaluation of Gates Ventures’ World History Project (WHP) curriculum. The set of rubrics for scoring teacher lessons were designed to evaluate the potential of teacher-assigned activities (e.g., an essay prompt) to provide opportunities for students to learn historical thinking skills, while the set of rubrics for scoring student work were designed to assess the extent to which students successfully used historical thinking skills in the work these activities produced (e.g., a written essay). The categories of historical thinking skills identified for measurement are aligned with widely accepted national frameworks and standards, making these rubrics applicable for use by researchers, educators and professional learning experts to study historical thinking skills learning in high school world history classrooms.