The present study analyzes the development of historical thinking among undergraduate students engaged in the cause and effect instruction model and majoring in social studies at an open-admission university in Bangkok, Thailand. The study participants included 30 undergraduate students enrolled in the course entitled "Current Events for Social Studies Teachers". The research instruments included: Four lesson plans built on the cause and effect instruction model which lasted for 16 hours; and a historical thinking assessment form. Repeated measures ANOVA was employed to analyze the data. The study results reveal that both overall and for each criterion (i.e. historical significance; continuity and change; cause and consequence; and progress and decline) of historical thinking ability progressively improved at the four measurement periods, at a statistical significance level of 0.05.