An Investigation of Junior High School Students' Online Historical-Documents Reading Literacy

The purpose of this pilot study was to check the validity issues for an online historical-documents reading literacy assessment (OHDRLA) and an online historical reading attitude questionnaire (OHRAQ). Items of OHDRLA were developed based on PISA 2012 reading aspects and history contents. The former dimension includes the abilities to access and retrieve, integrate and interpret, and reflect and evaluate while the latter one covers two historical reading themes. The sample was drawn from 7th and 8th graders in 4 classes of 2 junior high schools in Taiwan and the total number is 112. The preliminary results revealed that the psychometric quality of OHDRLA and OHRAQ is acceptable and the female students performed better than male students while the difference between grades wasn't statistically significant. The analysis results of correlation pattern not only demonstrated a reasonable validity but also implied the lack of multi-perspective historical thinking teaching in school history classes. In other words, online historical-document reading literacy is reasonably independent from traditional school subjects and the instruction of this innovative construct is urgently needed.