本文主要探索一九六○年代至一九九○年代期間，英國在兒童歷史思維實證研究的重要發展，希望透過此一回顧式的研究，了解英國自六○年代受到Piaget學說的激發後，如何在兒童歷史思維的領域內逐步開鑿探勘，並達成哪些具體成就。基本上，英國學者從揭櫫歷史是一門頗為困難的學科為始，繼而證明兒童的歷史思考確能夠借助教學而提昇。另一方面許多實驗又紛紛披陳兒童學習歷史的推論時，會面臨重重的障礙與困難，由此提醒教師授課之餘，應該顧及兒童的吸收力。最後，英國學者試圖建立起兒童理解歷史與思維能力上的進程（progression），不但可作為各階段教學目標的參考，並能為歷史考評提供較為客觀的依據

This paper reports some important investigations in children’s historical thinking in England from 1960’s to 1990’s it begins with examining how the research into children’s ideas about history started to develop under the impact of Piaget’s theory in 1960’s in general, after thirty years’ exploration, scholars in England have found that history, as a complex subject, is difficult to learn for most of the students. There is a big gap existed between children’s historical thinking and historians’. Even the reasoning of adolescents is always reasonable, but unhistorical. Nevertheless, children’s ideas about history reveal some kind of procession related to age. What the researchers of England have made efforts to do in the past two decades is constructing models for the development of children’s historical understandings.