Contingency is an important concept in understanding and investigating history and helping students develop historical thinking skills. Crudely defined, it is the opposite of inevitability.
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So contingency is deeply intertwined with understanding change over time—a framework many state standards and K-12 teachers use to focus and cohere their history courses. Resources for explicitly teaching K-12 students this concept can be relatively sparse.
The purpose of an issues-based historical report is to provide select historians the opportunity to discuss fewer issues in greater depth, relegating routine matters to the chronology, appendices, and the supporting document collection. 2.2.5.2.
Historians attend staff meetings, briefings, planning sessions and policy-making gatherings as a way to gain familiarity with the organization’s activities, increase visibility, establish contacts, and build relationships with unit members. 3.3.1.8. Research Interviews.
Contingency is an important concept in understanding and investigating history and helping students develop historical thinking skills. Crudely defined, it is the opposite of inevitability.
Their fourth "C" is contingency and they suggest it may be the most difficult to teach, but their description can help clarify the concept. UCLA's National Center for History in the Schools also includes contingency in the historical thinking skills that students should be learning.