The Use and Evaluation of Hypothetical Questions in History Teaching

Hypothetical thinking is defined as the exploration of possibilities and outcomes of different states of the world which are not actually present in the real life. Hypothetical questions are used in the development of high-level thinking skills. They reinforce reasoning and historical meaning. The aim of this study was to develop a rating scale for assessing hypothetical questions with history teachers. The study was conducted within action research design in the qualitative approach, and interview and group interview were used as data collection tools. The study conducted with five history teachers who worked in different schools of MONE in Trabzon and Rize. The study was carried out in two stages. At the end of the study a rating scale was prepared to evaluate hypothetical questions in history lessons. At the beginning of the study, the hypothetical question which would be asked to students was determined. The teachers were requested to ask these questions to students, to evaluate students’ responses and to determine the criteria they used when evaluating students’ answers. A rating scale consisting of 8 criteria was established as a result of the first stage implementation. For each criterion, the dimensions as very good, good and weak were set separately. Afterwards, the evaluation scale was tested with a second application and the evaluation scale was finalized by subtracting one of the criteria. As a result of the study, a rating scale consisting of three dimensional seven criteria that teachers could use to evaluate hypothetical questions in history lessons was prepared and it was determined that this scale was functional