Structures of Explanations in History Textbooks or So What if Governor Stanford Missed the Spike and Hit the Rail?

Theory and research in reading comprehension have confirmed the important role of text structure in learning from written materials.Text structures that are commonly found in informative, textbook-like prose are just beginning to be identified.In the absence of prior work on structures for history texts, this report proposes generic structures, or frames, that can accommodate explanations of many historical events.Suggestions are made for using the frames as tools in evaluating historical explanations in textbooks, writing historical explanations, and teaching historical explanations.