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6.4 Developing trainees’ understanding of how school history works Developing trainees’ understanding of how school history works It is possible to develop trainees’ understanding of how school history works in different ways:
Discussions are likely to centre on the following issues:
Content and its selection Critiquing the content requirements of the National Curriculum, the GCSE and AS and A level criteria and specifications is an easy way into understanding what is taught in schools. It can also provide a springboard for looking at the purpose of school history, rationales for the selection of content, whether the structure of the Order helps elucidate how history works and whether it aids planning. Unless trainees see how the current history Order derives from earlier Orders (DES (1990), DES (1991), DfE (1995)), the work of the History Working Group (DES 1990) and the Schools History Project (SHP), it is unlikely that they will see much rationale for the selection of content or that previous Orders identified unifying themes, such as changes in government or economic structures across the key stages. Activity 6.4.1 evaluates one method of helping trainees assess the content requirements of the history Order. It also raises the issue of whether looking at the content is an important issue for trainees to consider. Activity 6.4.2 examines the impact of changes to the curriculum on how history has been taught. Knowledge Issues about what to teach are frequently confused with building pupils’ knowledge base, although obviously these are linked. In many of the debates on school history teaching, knowledge about the past has been set against the teaching of historical skills and processes. Christine Counsell has categorised this polarisation of knowledge and skills as a distracting dichotomy (Counsell 2000). Her work has clarified the interrelationship between knowledge and analysis and has shown why it is important for teachers to devise activities that build pupils’ knowledge base at the same time as giving them tools to structure their knowledge. Many of the articles in ‘Teaching History’ illustrate this approach. Looking at the relationship of knowledge building to conceptual thinking is likely to be an issue that trainees will return to in the context of medium and short-term planning as well as in relation to assessment. Husbands, Kitson and Pendry, (2003) provide a useful way into how classroom teachers think about knowledge building and offer a good foil to both the conceptual framework of the Order and the work of researchers such as Peter Lee and Denis Shemilt (see Activity 6.3.1). Second order historical concepts Second order concepts, such as causation and change, have been central to history teaching since the subject was included in the curriculum. Descriptions of the development of pupils’ ability to reason, together with analyses of the development of their evidential understanding, have provided the frameworks for definitions of attainment in the National Curriculum and public examinations. They have also underpinned some of the research on how pupils learn (see also unit 7, especially section 7.1). Looking at the history of the National Curriculum can be really useful here because by seeing the difficulties caused by the progression in the 1991 Order - the rigid application of hierarchies of causal analysis and the lack of relationship to substantive knowledge - trainees may come to see that the use and application of concepts is likely to be messy and complex. It is inevitable that trainees will consider the role of second order concepts in any work on planning, teaching and assessment (see units 8 and 9). Historical processes and skills Historical enquiry and the use of evidence are normally agreed to be
central to the discipline of history and to school history. The use of
hierarchies of difficulty in source analysis - comprehension, comparison
of sources, investigations of reliability and utility - underpins current
approaches to assessment in history and many textbook exercises. Exploring
the history of the use of sources in school history is one way of enabling
trainees to reflect on whether current methods of source analysis bear
any relationship to how historians use sources or are likely to motivate
pupils. These approaches have been criticised as formulaic and recent
emphasis on source analysis in the context of an enquiry could be said
to be more authentic. Understanding the relationship of sources to an
enquiry question and how evidence substantiates description, analysis
and argument can also help trainees set more challenging work for pupils.
For an analysis of the use of sources see McAleavy (1998), LeCocq (2000)
and Phillips (2002: 72-5). For an analysis of the use of enquiry in history
teaching see Riley (2000). Language and communication Recent work on teaching history has focused on the importance of language
in developing pupils’ understanding of past events and in helping
them communicate their ideas. This has involved teachers in describing
how they help pupils sort, classify and use information to support arguments.
Some of this work has been linked to approaches used in the literacy
strategy, although the focus in history teaching has been more sharply
on the status of the information and on using language skills to develop
historical understanding. Work on language and communication by Christine
Counsell (1997) and Chris Husbands (1996) has been particularly significant
in this respect. Activity 6.5.2 is about looking at the role of language
in history teaching. Activity 6.4.1 How can we help trainees reflect critically on the National Curriculum?
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