The “How to Develop Young Historians?” program kicked off on January 13, 2017 with a group of 36 teachers from all the Lebanon regions. The first institute “From historical thinking to building causal reasoning in history classrooms” was facilitated by Nayla Hamadeh, Bassel Akar, Amira Hariri, and Amine Elias. In part I, participants engaged in activities to identify why we teach history, the role of historians, and issues facing history education in Lebanon, and what are the advantages of using a disciplinary approach versus a one narrative approach. In Part II, they engaged with how to build causational thinking and how to develop a good causational inquiry around a main question “How did centuries of feudalism end in our country?”
Working with this dynamic group was a great learning experience for both facilitators and participants. We are looking forward for the future steps as this workshop is the only first in a series of six that will be offered over two academic years coupled with a mentoring process.