Kritiskt tänkande genom undervisning i historia?

The training of critical thinking is touched upon in the curricula in Finland. Although the critical aspect is often stressed, little is known about how the teachers actually implement critical thinking in history classes. Indeed it isn´t even known wether teachers consider critical thinking to be important, nor is it ascertained how teachers understand the concept of critical thinking. This article is based on a questionnaire given to Swedish-speakin history theachers (6 persons), history teacher students (7 persons), and primary school teacher students (13 persons). These groups where asked how they understand the concept of historical thinking in history education, and which methods they use (or have experienced) when working with critical thinking. The less experienced group, the primary school teacher students, was the most sceptical to the idea of training critical thinking. Yet every group understood the concept in the same way: critical reading of sources, interpreting the use of history, multi-perspective analysis of historical processes, and interpretations of the historical context. All the gropus were also surprisingly careful to integrate critical thinking more actively in the teaching, with the provisio that they do not want to run the risk of confusing the pupils.