To The Past

Join us on the beautiful UBC campus for the UBC Social Studies Education Winter Professional Development Conference

Friday, February 13, 2026 | 9:00– 3:30 (PST)
edcp.educ.ubc.ca/social-studi...

Registration opens January 5, 2026.

#socialstudies #education

Read the recent publication by members of Thinking Historically for Canada's Future titled: Never the two shall meet? Connecting historical and democratic consciousness in Canadian K-12 history textbooks.

DOI: doi.org/10.14324/HER....

@carlapeck.bsky.social
@ualbertaed.bsky.social

If you are in the Lower Mainland on November 21st, you are invited to join To The Past for a workshop on designing effective formative assessments of historical thinking @ Eric Hamber secondary: Registration link for teachers outside of the VSB: addins.sharepointsapiens.com/training/enr... #bced

Taking in the keynote from Andrew Coyne at the BCSSTA fall 2025 conference. #bced #bcsocialstudies #bcssta

What a useful process! I think we often assume that telling/reading about historical thinking and possible classroom strategies is sufficient. It takes expertise, practice, and reflection!

You may.

Is there a link I can follow up on without scanning a QR code and continuing with my phone?

Events Stay up to date with the upcoming events organised or hosted by the Institute of Historical Research

History curious? You don't need to be in London (or the UK) to attend many Institute of Historical Research seminars, although if you're in Bloomsbury you'll enjoy doing so. Most are hybrid (online/in person). They're free, usually fortnightly and open to the public.

Starting this week:

The 2025-2026 Social Studies cohort is fortunate to have you!

“It’s about recognizing how the past is used and how that impacts society today"

Grateful for this feature of an excellent teacher guiding students towards a deeper understanding of history as a discipline. I've learned a lot from Carly and use some of the lessons she developed and describes here.

Teaching history means asking tough questions and uncovering new perspectives. This fall, NCHE is offering back-to-school webinars to put those ideas into action.

Please share so history educators in need of great PD can find the support they deserve.

Learn more and register here: buff.ly/WhembxH

Canadian Social Studies Educators Network of Canada has released their Fall 2025 Salon Newsletter! @actioncanada.bsky.social shares their Public Policy 101 resources on why policy matters, how it gets created, and the role of citizens in the process: ssencressc.ca/publications... #sschat #bced

Good thinkers having good discussions. As we gear up for another year in the classroom, how can we make our classrooms hubs of rich discussion? #sschat #cdnhistory #historyeducation #historicalthinking #bced

Sometimes when conducting research, you get a glimpse into the imaginations of former readers. The legacies of shared textbooks. #Kilroy, bookworms and pencil imprints of pennies❤️.
archive.org/details/hist... #cdnhistory #historicalthinking #sschat

Shortlist: Best (English-Language) Scholarly Book in Canadian History Prize | Canadian Historical Association | Société historique du Canada The CHA is proud to announce the books that are shortlisted for this year’s Best (English-Language) Scholarly Book in Canadian History prize. (In alphabetical order). Crystal Gail Fraser, By Strength,...

The CHA is proud to announce the books that are shortlisted for this year’s Best (English-Language) Scholarly Book in Canadian History prize! #cdnhist #prize

Shortlist: Wallace K. Ferguson Prize | Canadian Historical Association | Société historique du Canada The CHA is proud to announce the books that are shortlisted for this year’s Wallace K. Ferguson prize. (In alphabetical order). Jacob Blanc, The Prestes Column: An Interior History of Modern Brazil. D...

The CHA is proud to announce the books that are shortlisted for this year’s Wallace K. Ferguson prize! #cdnhist #prize

Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts (Wineburg), Why Won't You Just Tell us the Answer? (Lesh), New Possibilities for the Past (Clark), Knowing, Teaching, and Learning History (Stearns, Seixas, Wineburg).

Social Studies Field Guide Foundational evidence, inquiry-based instruction, & edtech tools

For the #FIELDGuide primary sources are the heart of Foundational Evidence. How do you use them to bring history to life? Share your favorite primary source and how you use it in your classroom and check out socialstudiesfieldguide.com to learn more
#PrimarySources #Inquiry @glennwiebe.bsky.social

Contextualization: Stalag XI - To the Past Stalag XI Topic: Canadian History, WWII Historical Thinking Skills: Contextualization Time Period: 1939-1945 Contextualizing a primary source is the process of utilizing an understanding of historical...

Working with primary sources is not a "spot the bias" game. Encourage students to attend to source metadata and contextual information to better understand why sources don't always agree with one another: tothepast.ca/contextualiz...

Support Heritage Fairs in schools

“I always tell my visitors that history is not the past — it is an interpretation of the past…It is fine to have good-faith disagreements about historical figures and events; that is what the historical process is about”

But for me the episode revealed that what allows grandmasters to play with such tactical acumen is not only skills, and practice, but as you note, knowledge. How have historians approached similar problems in the past, how does their produced work help me better understand my current inquiry?

When games do finally go out of book, it's a real dramatic moment, wonderfully illustrated in the podcast episode.

Both players have already consulted the database, and have so much of "The Book" memorized that whole portions of the game are played in a noticeably rote manner, not dissimilar to the way a child who has played too much tic-tac-toe. Sometimes, whole games are played “within The Book”.

The Rules Can Set You Free Play is something we all do--it seems so natural, it feels a little bit ridiculous to ask why we need it.

For years afterwards he is booed booed by chess fans at major tournaments. For now, when two players face off in a major tournament, a certain phenomenon occurs:

The Rules Can Set You Free Play is something we all do--it seems so natural, it feels a little bit ridiculous to ask why we need it.

Hi @lightningjay.bsky.social, @radiolab.bsky.social has a particularly memorable episode in which they describe how Frederic Friedel convinced the Russian Chess Federation in the 1980s to upload their database of games played onto an online database. www.radiolab.org/podcast/1538...

Blog: What is Sourcing? And why are we doing it again? - To the Past In our previous post, I described how typical historical thinking assessments such as DBQs might just be assessing too much at one time, and that we would do well to break down the component skills, h...

10 years in and I'm still figuring out what sourcing means in the context of historical inquiry. Thinking about assessment often means a rethink of our pedagogy as well: tothepast.ca/blog-what-is... #sschat #canadianhistory #bced #socialstudies

A little louder for the people in the back! Sourcing, close reading, and questioning without robust historical knowledge is unlikely to generate robust demonstrations of historical thinking. @lightningjay.bsky.social directing us appropriately towards "skills, practice, AND knowledge".

Includes an image of a bookshelf in the background and the following text: Are you a historian or history teacher in Canada? We'd love to hear from you to learn more about your beliefs about history and its relationship to the present. Click the above link to take the survey.

Advertisement from the University of Alberta and UBC that features an image of a bookshelf in the background adn the following text: We're conducting a survey and interview research study at the University of Alberta focused on how teachers and historians thinking about the problem of presentism. University of ALberta Research Ethics ID (Pro00144497) Please be aware that interacting with the social media post via "liking" or "following," will publicly identify you with the study. Dr. James Miles, Principal Investigator, jamiles@ualberta.ca Dr. Lindsay Gibson Co-Investigator, lindsay.gibson@ubc.ca

We're looking for historians and history teachers in Canada to share their beliefs about history and presentism.

If you're interested in participating in this study, please click the following link:

ualbertauw.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_...

"...a lack of pedagogical supports to help teachers use them effectively."

That checks out. I remember collecting a few as a new teacher ...and then not knowing what to do with them.

Read about the "Rise and Fall of Jackdaws" from the man who has them all (or nearly) @lsgibson.bsky.social