What Events in Canadian History Are Most Significant? A Survey of History Teachers

Abstract

Historical significance is one of the most fundamental and inescapable aspects of history and history education. History teachers make countless decisions about the historical significance of events in their daily practice, but little research has focused on the criteria that history teachers use to decide which events in Canadian history are historically significant, the events in Canadian history teachers rate as most historically significant, and the demographic factors that influence their historical significance ratings. This article focuses on the results of a survey in which English- and French-speaking teachers currently teaching Canadian history in a Canadian K–12 school, Collège d’enseignement general et professionnel (in Quebec), or college or university (n = 270) rated the historical significance of one hundred events in Canadian history, selected three factors that most influenced their ratings, and answered various demographic questions. The results suggest that teachers utilize historical and educational criteria to assess the historical significance of events, that their historical significance ratings were temporally and theoretically diverse, and that demographic factors have more influence on their historical significance ratings than the intellectual criteria they identified.