The edit history includes content edits made to a node by someone exercising janitorial powers, but not by the node's owner.

It also, currently, shows section changes. It does not show approval changes. (This could, and arguably should, change.)

The Approval Nodelet can be used to see the current approval status, which is normally all you should need. Just remember to unapprove from a section -- and reload the node a couple times just to make sure, as some caching happens at some level in the stack -- before approving it into a different section.