This article reports part of the findings of a research project involving Maltese school children working with historical sources. In the actual research project there were various sessions each time involving different types of historical sources: artefactual, pictorial and written evidence. However this paper focuses on the findings involving children’s thinking with the artefacts only and is based on the Vygotskyian assertion that instruction can go ahead of maturational development. This research sees an “interventionist’ role on the part of the teacher as crucial in the intellectual development of pupils and tries to show how correct is the assumption that teaching methods can stimulate the pupil along the road of intellectual development. The article strongly suggests that in a social learning context conventional views of differences in pupil performance linked to IQ are mistaken.