The Effect of Using Counterfactual History Approach on Teaching Social Studies to Develop Historical Understanding Skills and Neural Branching Thinking among Preparatory School Pupils

            The current research sought to examine the effect of using counterfactual history approach on teaching Social Studies to develop historical understanding skills and Neural Branching Thinking among preparatory school pupils in the school year 2018/2019. The research sample comprised of (100) first year pupils who were divided into two groups as follows: an experimental group comprised of (50 pupils) and taught using the counterfactual history approach as well as a control group comprised of (50 pupils) and taught using the regular teaching method. The research used the experimental approach for checking the research objectives and developing the research instruments represented in the following: test of the historical understanding skills and test of the Neural Branching Thinking skills The research results showed that there were statistically significant differences at 0.05 level among the mean scores of the experimental group and the control group in the post –application of the historical understanding skill test and the Neural Branching Thinking skill test in favor of the experimental group. Furthermore, the result shoed a large big size for employing the counterfactual history approach in teaching history and in developing the Thinking Neural Branching skills and the historical understanding of the experimental group. The research concluded with providing a host of recommendations most important of which are the following: necessity of providing a safe educational environment free of threats, tension and full of various challenges appropriate for the pupils' levels, necessity of holding training workshops for training pre-service teachers on how to teach with the counterfactual history approach. In addition, the research provided a number of the suggested research related to employing the counterfactual history approach, historical understanding and the Branching Thinking in teaching history.