Antiquated methods of teaching history.

Antiquated methods of teaching history do not equip today’s students to think critically about the past, the present or the future. Library and Archives Canada

The Benchmarks Idea

What should students know after 12 years of studying history in school? What should they be able to do with their knowledge? Surely they should have more than an accumulation of memorized facts to show for years of study.

The Benchmarks Project combines the research of historians and educators with the experience and skills of classroom teachers to create practical ways of encouraging promoting and assessing students’ historical thinking in classroom settings.

Benchmarks defines historical thinking by identifying its key components (the historical thinking concepts that appear in the right column on this page). The project provides teaching tasks which that promote historical thinking through the development of those concepts, and publishes tools to assess students’ ability to demonstrate historical thinking.

In so doing, Benchmarks also aims to provide social studies departments, local boards, provincial ministries of education, publishers and public history agencies with models of more meaningful history assessment teaching and learning for their students and audiences.

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What is a Benchmark?

<p>John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising &amp; Marketing History,<br />Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections</p>

A surveyor cut a "benchmark" into a stone or a wall when measuring the altitude and/or level of a tract of land. A bracket called a "bench" was secured in the cut to mount the surveying equipment, and all subsequent measurements were made in reference to the position and height of that mark.

The term "benchmark" was first used around 1842 to refer to a standard of quality by which achievement may be measured.

The foundation documents available through the Benchmarks site attempt to help teachers establish standards for assessing student learning of the modes of thought that constitute historical thinking.

John W. Hartman Center for Sales, Advertising & Marketing History,
Duke University Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections