In this study, the authors sought to understand how students in Northern Ireland make sense of competing approaches to history, and in particular, how they understand the relationship between the approaches they encounter in school and elsewhere. Using qualitative, task-based interviews, the authors interviewed 253 secondary students. The authors found that these students had learned about the past in a variety of formal and informal settings, and they navigated among these multiple sources in a conscious attempt to refine and extend their historical understanding as they followed up on interests initiated in one setting by seeking out information elsewhere.