How children learn in history, including a consideration of EAL, inclusion and differentiation

Why do trainees need to reflect on the way children learn in history?

Understanding how children learn in history underpins what happens in classrooms, it informs planning, differentiation, assessment, notions of progression and so forth. Ultimately teachers make numerous decisions about what teaching approaches to use, what resources to use, when it is appropriate to introduce ideas and a knowledge of how children learn will ensure that these decisions are made against robust criteria.

Trainers, especially those new to teacher training, may feel they lack knowledge about the various ideas about learning. In addition there is the added complication of making these ideas make sense to trainees and showing how they are important to their everyday practice.

Trainees face different challenges. Our understanding of how children learn is drawn from different areas:

• General theories about how children learn
• Specific research into how children understand the past (e.g. Schools History Project [SHP] and Concepts of History and Teaching Approaches [CHATA])
• Professional knowledge held by teachers.

Trainees need support to see how these all fit together, and how theory can inform their own practice. Within this are a number of different issues:

• Understanding the mis/preconceptions that pupils have about history
• Accessing teachers’ professional knowledge
• Getting trainees to value ‘theory’
• Applying these theories to pupils with additional needs (e.g. SEN, EAL)

This unit looks at these issues through the following sections:

• 7.1 What do we know about how pupils learn in history?
• 7.2 How can we help trainees understand the mis/preconceptions that pupils have about history?
• 7.3 How can we help trainees access teachers’ professional knowledge?
• 7.4 How can we get trainees to draw the different sources of knowledge together and use it to understand classroom practice?
• 7.5 How can we help trainees with inclusion in history (particularly differentiation and pupils with EAL)?