Using the Question Formulation Technique to Guide Primary Source Learning

Primary source learning can be a rich, engaging way for students to develop their historical thinking skills. Whether the primary source documents are photos, cartoons, letters, maps or newspaper articles, they can be a springboard for students to dig into different perspectives, analyze and read closely, make connections, infer and — perhaps most importantly — ask questions. As historian David Hackett Fischer eloquently wrote in his 1970 book Historians’ Fallacies Toward a Logic of Historical Thought, “There can be no thinking without questioning — no purposeful study of the past, nor any serious planning for the future.”