The purpose of this study was to analyze and discuss why historical consciousness may be expressed in different ways and possible causes for these differences. High school students' and history student teachers’ answers to a historical test were analyzed in relation to historical consciousness.  The German philosopher of history, Jörn Rüsen, has in numerous publications presented four forms or expressions of narratives and historical consciousness and these have been applied in the analyses. Rüsen’s four main categories of historical consciousness (i.e. traditional, exemplary, critical and genetic) stretch from a simple understanding of history to a more complex one. The main findings here show that expressions of historical consciousness differed significantly among the respondents. In view of these findings, education and age seem to affect respondents’ expressions of historical consciousness. Traditional expressions of historical consciousness were less prominent among history student teachers than among high school students, for instance. Gender differences were also prominent among the respondents: the female respondents manifested exemplary forms of historical consciousness to a higher degree than the male counterparts. There were also big differences among the gender groups as the high school student boys expressed traditional forms of historical consciousness and male history teacher students were more inclined towards a critical historical consciousness. Social background also seemed to influence the expression of historical consciousness to some extent, especially if the parents were university educated. However, some results in this study seem to indicate that social environment is more relevant to explain differences in historical consciousness than social background. For these reasons the school context has been highlighted in this study.