How can you tell they’ve got it: Understanding People in Their Own Time?

If they’ve got it, you’ll see things like: Historical Empathy: A Cognitive-Affective Theory (ERIC); Year 4-6 historical empathy research. Or just try it together: If your child learns that people in the past did something that seems wrong today, can they think about why those people might have believed it was normal or right at the time?

History Historical Thinking Ages 8–10

Understanding People in Their Own Time

Your child knows people in the past saw the world in ways unlike ours. They try to judge those people by their own time, not only by what we believe now.

In curriculum terms

Understand that people in the past saw the world very differently from us — judge their actions by the context they lived in, not only by today's values

Ages are typical, not deadlines — follow your child’s pace. How to help at home →

How to tell they’ve got it

Tick these off as you see them — no test required.

Historical Empathy: A Cognitive-Affective Theory (ERIC)
Year 4-6 historical empathy research

🖨 Print this page to keep the checklist — it prints beautifully.

Try this together

If your child learns that people in the past did something that seems wrong today, can they think about why those people might have believed it was normal or right at the time?

Where this sits on the map

Stuck here? Check the skills it builds on first. Confident? Here’s what it unlocks.

Builds on

Different Accounts of the Same Eventages 6–8Contextualising past behaviour requires first accepting that the same event can look different from different viewpoints — contextualisation is the deeper explanation for why accounts differ

Vocabulary: historical thinkingages 6–10Judging historical actions in context draws on era, period, and chronology vocabulary

Connecting New & Old Ideasages 7–8Historical contextualisation requires connecting a person's actions to the world they inhabited — the same connecting habit used across all subjects

Understanding People in Their Own Timethis skill · ages 8–10

Unlocks

Evidence Versus Interpretationages 10–11Recognising that interpretation is shaped by context — including the historian's own time and perspective — builds on the contextualisation habit

Hidden Voices of Greece and Romeages 11–13Understanding historical context/empathy needed before evaluating lives of marginalised groups

solid = must come firstdashed = helps

Curriculum alignment

Where this fits in the official school curriculum — our best automated guess, not yet checked by a person.

Show candidate curriculum codes · 2 ACARA · 2 NSW · 3 VIC

Australian Curriculum v9 candidate

AC9HS2K02low confidenceYear 2 · Knowledge and understanding

how technological developments changed people’s lives at home, and the ways they worked, travelled and communicated

AC9HS2S01low confidenceYear 2 · Skills

develop questions about objects, people, places and events in the past and present

NSW syllabus codes & stages only

HS3-CWT-01medium confidenceHSIE K-6 · Stage 3

HS1-HIS-01low confidenceHSIE K-6 · Stage 1

Victorian Curriculum 2.0 codes & levels only

VC2HH4S04medium confidenceHistory · Levels 3 and 4 · Historical Concepts and Skills strand

VC2HH2S04medium confidenceHistory · Foundation to Level 2 · Historical Concepts and Skills strand

VC2HH4S01medium confidenceHistory · Levels 3 and 4 · Historical Concepts and Skills strand

These are candidate alignments generated by semantic matching — machine-suggested and unreviewed (v0.1), not official or verified mappings. For official curriculum content see australiancurriculum.edu.au, curriculum.nsw.edu.au and f10.vcaa.vic.edu.au. Don’t rely on them for registration or compliance purposes.

Nearby on the map

Checking Sources Against Each Otherages 8–10 Questioning Historical Sourcesages 8–10 Different Accounts of the Same Eventages 6–8 Evidence from the Pastages 6–7

All Historical Thinking skills →