Understanding History naturally relies on developing a strong foundation of historical knowledge, but it has never simply been about learning facts. At its heart, historical thinking requires students to evaluate evidence, interrogate sources, identify perspectives, recognise assumptions, and corroborate claims. Historians understand that no source should be accepted uncritically, and that historical knowledge is constructed through the careful comparison and evaluation of multiple sources.

Far from being made less relevant by the emergence of AI, these skills are increasingly essential for life in a world where information and claims can now be generated at unprecedented speed. They also form the foundation of AI literacy, equipping students with the ability to critically evaluate what they are presented with, and make informed judgements about its use.

A Year 8 lesson on the Black Death this week provided an opportunity to make the connections between engaging well with various types of sources explicit; whether a medieval chronicle, a modern website, or a large language model.

In the lessons leading up to this activity, students were exploring medieval explanations for the causes of and treatments for the Black Death. Through the concept of historical perspective-taking, they considered how people in fourteenth-century Europe understood the disease based on the knowledge available to them at the time. Students examined different treatments, evaluated their effectiveness, and considered why such approaches may have appeared reasonable to medieval people even when we know today that they were ineffective or even harmful.

This evaluative work was important because it prepared students for a later focus on corroboration: the historical practice of checking claims against multiple sources of evidence.

Students were learning that historians do not simply accept information at face value. They compare sources, identify agreements and disagreements, and make judgements about what is most likely to be true.

At this point in my planning, I saw two benefits of incorporating AI in a very specific way. The first was to promote deeper reflection and analysis, enabling students to further strengthen their historical skills and understanding. The second was to demonstrate the broader relevance of these skills beyond the History classroom to a world where they will be increasingly engaging with AI.

For a short section of one lesson, students evaluated an AI-generated response to a historical question. Importantly, students did not have access to their own devices. Laptops remained closed, students took handwritten notes, and the AI interaction was controlled by me, projected onto the screen. This allowed the class to move slowly through the process and discuss each step together.

Students were shown the following prompt:

"You are advising a town in Europe during the Black Death in 1348. Recommend the three best treatments or actions people should take, using only treatments that were available at the time. Explain why each would help."

Before viewing the response, students discussed how they might evaluate the quality of the AI output. To keep the task manageable, we focused on two questions:

- Was the response historically accurate? And how would we check?

- Was the AI relying on knowledge that a person living in 1348 could not have known?

The first step was to compare the AI response with evidence students had already encountered in class. Students were able to rapidly cross-check the output against their class notes and confirmed that many of the recommendations aligned with their existing historical knowledge.

A rich discussion emerged when we slowed down and interrogated the AI output as we would any other historical source.

Although the prompt explicitly limited recommendations to the knowledge and treatments available in 1348, we noticed that parts of the explanation appeared to rely on modern medical understanding. This provided an opportunity to discuss assumptions. Students began to recognise that generative AI does not simply retrieve information. Like the historical sources they had been studying, AI outputs are constructed accounts rather than objective accounts. They reflect decisions about what information to include, what to leave out, and how a question should be interpreted.

Having identified these assumptions, students then turned to the historical practice of corroboration. Where the AI output introduced unfamiliar information, they considered how those claims might be verified. Some could be checked against evidence already encountered in class, while others required consulting additional sources. In doing so, students were applying one of the central practices of historical inquiry: evaluating, and corroborating claims rather than accepting them without question.

Interestingly, when students examined the sources linked to the AI response, they found that some information could be traced back to sources such as Wikipedia, while other claims were not clearly supported. This opened a broader discussion about reliability, sourcing and trust. Students considered who produced different sources, how sources are constructed, and what makes evidence persuasive. Through engaging in the disciplinary practices that historians routinely employ, students were strengthening historical and AI literacy simultaneously.

This highlights an important point about how to respond to AI in education. While generative AI introduces new technologies, it does not necessarily require entirely new pedagogies. Often, it asks us to return to the fundamental purposes of our disciplines and crystallises the importance of the thinking that we are already nurturing.

History's most enduring practices already equip students for an AI-rich world. Generative AI simply provides a new context in which those disciplinary habits can be applied.

Claire Butler

Claire is a Research Fellow (AI in Education) with the Barker Institute, with a focus on developing research-informed, classroom-ready approaches to AI that strengthen thinking, assessment integrity, and teacher capability. She holds a Master of Education (Educational Studies) with Excellence from UNSW, with research centred on effective teacher professional learning. Claire has extensive experience in the classroom and in leadership roles across Sydney independent schools, including Pymble Ladies’ College, Abbotsleigh, and most recently as Head of History at The Scots College. A Modern History and History Extension teacher and HSC Senior Marker, Claire is a regular contributor to professional journals and has presented at state and national education conferences. Her current work sits at the intersection of AI literacy, assessment design, and instructional routines that help students use AI ethically and effectively.