Putting critical thinking at the center of history lessons in primary education through error- and historical thinking-based instruction

•History teaching today must use active methodologies and promote historical thinking.•Historical thinking and EBL foster critical thinking in primary school.•Historical thinking and EBL can be used with elementary students.•EBL either in isolation or combined with historical thinking improves students’ knowledge.•The use of EBL and historical thinking does not affect students' motivation or interest compared to traditional methodology. The teaching of history is often characterized by lecture-based lessons, where the student is a passive recipient of information, and the exams are based on memorization. However, many authors point out the importance of renewing its didactic in order to be critical of the information presented to them, so that students are actively involved. This quantitative and quasi-experimental study presents the results of an intervention with 134 pupils in the 6th grade of Primary Education with the aim of studying the impact of three methodologies on performance, motivation, perception and interest in history. For this purpose, 32 students followed an "Error-Based Learning" methodology, in which they had to solve activities with controlled errors; 33 followed a historical thinking model, working on its six dimensions; 33 were taught using a combination of the two former methodologies; and 36 followed a lecture-based methodology. The results show significant improvements in academic performance when working with errors, demonstrating that reflection on the veracity of the information shown has an impact on the result obtained. However, there are no significant differences in motivation, perception and interest in history.