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Intermediate Cognitive Processes
From: Sam Wineburg, "Reading Abraham Lincoln."
Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts, 91.
Observing contextualized thinking is more complicated than it might seem.
We can try to infer it from historians' written accounts, but this approach
discloses few clues about the crucial decision points that allow sophisticated
reasoning to emerge. Historians edit out from their published works their
hunches and faltering first steps, their miscues and fruitless pursuits
down blind alleys. Yet it may be such homey and unshorn aspects of historical
thought that provide the best clues about how sophisticated historical
thinking emerges. If this is the case, some way has to be found to capture
people in the act of contextualized thinking--in the moments of confusion
before an interpetation emerges, while indecision and doubt reign and
coherence remains elusive. Here is where the cognitive task come in, an
environment that allows us to study under controlled conditions phenomena
that are irritatingly hard to grasp in the field.
See also Cognitive
Apprenticeship
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