Intertextual integration skills for the development of historical reasoning in secondary education students
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.62697/rmiie.v5i4.437Keywords:
Intertextual integration, high school, sources of information, historical reasoningAbstract
The development of historical reasoning requires students to move beyond the isolated comprehension of individual texts and become capable of analyzing, contrasting, and integrating information from multiple sources. In this context, intertextual integration constitutes an advanced reading skill that is essential for interpreting historical events from different perspectives and constructing well-supported arguments. This article aims to present a proposal for assessing and developing this competence among secondary education students through the use of complementary sources related to the debate surrounding the colonial past and its manifestations in the present. The proposal involves an essay-writing task based on multiple documents, designed to promote the selection of relevant information, evaluation of source credibility, comparison of perspectives, and establishment of connections across texts. Different forms of instructional support are also presented to facilitate these processes, including explicit prompts for establishing relationships among texts, summarizing and note-taking strategies, and the use of graphic organizers. Previous evidence indicates that adequately understanding each document separately does not guarantee students’ ability to integrate information from multiple sources, highlighting the complexity of this competence. It is concluded that the systematic development of intertextual integration can contribute to strengthening historical reasoning and critical and reflective reading. However, acquiring this competence requires specifically designed tasks and sustained instructional support from teachers.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Javier Rosales-Pardo, María García-Serrano, José Ricardo García-Pérez, Rubén Delgado-Álvarez

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