Although we often say in history education that historical questioning is the 'engine' of historical thinking (van Drie and van Boxtel, 2008, 2018), surprisingly little research has explored how people actually develop historical questions. While teachers encourage students to ask questions about the past, relatively little is known about the cognitive operations involved and how the questioning process could be improved. In our systematic literature review, we examined German- and English-speaking studies from history education and related disciplines published between 1991 and 2024, to gain a better understanding of how historical questioning works, and to identify possible quality criteria. Our review revealed three main operations in this process: experiencing perplexity, expliciting perplexity, and expressing historical questions. In other words, historical questioning often begins with a moment of irritation, un-certainty, or curiosity, continues through reflection and clarification of what exactly feels puzzling, and finally results in the formulation of a question that connects the past and the present. What fascinated us most was the extent to which historical questioning depends on (meta-)reflection. Compared with novices, historians ask not only in a more structured and conceptually connected way but also reflect more deeply on their own questioning process.

We chose to write this paper because we believe that, if students are expected to think historically and reflectively, and to actively explore the past rather than merely memorise facts, learning how to formulate meaningful historical questions becomes essential. Our review shows that historical questioning is not only a spontaneous act of curiosity and discovery, but also a meta-reflective process. Based on these findings, we recommend that history teachers should pay closer attention to the structure behind historical questions. By understanding how learners experience uncertainty, connect prior knowledge, and engage in historical thinking operations such as sourcing and contextualisation, teachers can gain a deeper insight into students' historical thinking and their conception of the past.

We have decided to publish in the ‘History Education Research Journal’ (HERJ) as the journal provides an important forum that bridges the sometimes theoretical world of history education research with the practical world of history teaching, in the hope that the findings of our systematic literature review will find their way into the classroom. Moreover, we hope to foster stronger dialogue between English- and German-speaking discourses in history education, and HERJ, as an international journal, offers an ideal platform for this exchange.

The process of historical questioning: a systematic literature review by Jonas Schobinger (University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern, Switzerland) and Martin Nitsche (University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern, Switzerland) is published in History Education Research Journal, volume 23

Jonas Schobinger is a research fellow at the Centre for Citizenship Education and History Education, Institute for Research and Development, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern (Swit-zerland) since 2021. His research focuses on historical questioning and cognitive processes.

Martin Nitsche, Dr. phil., has been a research fellow at the Centre for Citizenship Education and History Education, Institute for Research and Development, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwest-ern (Switzerland) since 2013. His work focuses on history education theory, empirical research and pragmatics.

historical thinking history education historical questioning historical learning questioning processes quality characteristics literature review