teaching history 124

F E A T U R E Sregulars

Teaching History is published quarterly by The Historical Association. It is available at substantial discounts to members. Membership of the Association with Teaching History is £45.00 for individuals, £65.00 for secondary schools, £29.00 for concessionary members.

Publication of a contribution in Teaching History does not necessarily imply The Historical Association’s approval of the opinions expressed in it.

PublisherMadeline stiles

Tel: 020 7735 3901 Fax: 020 7582 4989 [email protected]

Layout and ProductionMartin Hoare

Cover Design reid smith [email protected]

Teaching History is published by and © The Historical association 2006 all rights reserved.

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London SE11 4JH

Printed in Great Britain by Blackmore Ltd Longmead, ShaftesburyDorset SP7 8PX

ISSN 0040 0610

CONTENTS

Dan Moorhouse

Editorial 02 Briefing 04

Triumphs Show 2 8

Polychronicon 4 6

Nutshell 4 8

TEACH 3-19 55

Triumphs Show 5 8Move Me On 6 0

Mummy, mummy... 6 5

06 Deborah Eyre Expertise in its development phase: planning for the needs of gifted adolescent historians

3 7‘Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime:’ using external support, local history and a group project

Alf Wilkinson Subject-specific Continuing Professional Development

5 6

09 Rachel Ward Duffy’s devices: teaching Year 13 to read and write

17 Arthur Chapman and James WoodcockMussolini’s missing marbles: simulating history at GCSE

30When computers don’t give you a headache:the most able lead a debate on medicine through time

A team-taught conspiracy: Year 8 are caught up in a genuine historical debate

5 0

Guy Woolnough

Ellie Chrispin

Politics, history and stories about the Cold War

Edited by Tony McConnellMill Hill County High School, London

Mary WoolleyUniversity of Exeter

Consulting Editorsalison Kitson TDA, LondonKatharine Burn and anna PendryUniversity of OxfordDepartment of Educational Studies

�T E A C H I N G H I S T O R Y 1 2 4© The Historical Association

edito

rial

edit

ori

alThe ‘most able’ present a number of challenges. First of all, who are they? The original DfES guidance would suggest that they should be around about the top 7% of each cohort, as defined by data. There is more to it than that, though. Having identified the most able, it remains to do something about them. What is appropriate teaching for extremely able students? How can they be challenged appropriately, and inspired to continue with history at GCSE, post-16 and beyond? This edition of Teaching History seeks to engage with all of these issues. In many ways, though, teaching the most able is just good teaching. It involves working out where the students are, and moving them on.

So, then, how do we move history students on? It depends on where we want them to get to. Successful history teaching means that we need a sound idea of what history actually is. We know this, of course. We are always searching in our teaching for the ‘acceptable simplification’ which will be accessible to our students, as well as revealing about the nature of the past and of the discipline. The difference with the most able is of degree. The more able the students, the more complex the simplification. The articles in this edition suggest a range of elements of historical practice to which we should introduce our students: complex thinking about causation rubs shoulders with interpretation-led historical debate and individual words in Eamon Duffy.

We must also know which students we are discussing when we write and speak of the ‘most able,’ or ‘gifted and talented,’ or any of the other terms that have been used to describe those students for whom ‘top student’ is an inadequate description. Professor Deborah Eyre, the Director of the National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth (NAGTY) defines giftedness as possessing, or possessing the potential for, high levels of expertise and performance. This poses a problem, of course, for while we might be able to derive reasonably simple criteria for spotting someone who is realising that potential, how can we help the underachiever? For Eyre, teaching the most able involves providing opportunities and support, and building motivation, for all our students. This edition, then, is not particularly about identifying the most able. It is about teaching everyone well, in a way from which the most able will benefit.

Two strategies which have often been used to teach the most able are to use ICT and to collaborate with agencies and people external to one’s own school. These strategies are well-represented in this edition. Chapman and Woodcock use the interactive elements of ICT to build a simulation of the Abyssinian crisis, allowing their students to pick and choose the information they work with, and the perspective they work from, to gain a greater understanding of the reasons why the crisis unfolded as it did. They allow their students to eliminate the kind of 20/20 vision which so often obscures discussions of historical causation, when so often a course of action might appear ‘wrong’ simply because we know it did not work. Dan Moorhouse also uses ICT in a rather different way. He has enabled his students to participate in the Historical Association Web Debate on public health, and thereby build their ability to argue with each other, as well as with members of other schools and a real, professional, historian. He also provides an excellent demonstration of how to differentiate for the most able by task. Guy Woolnough

has also used external agencies in his teaching. As part of the Lancaster Leading Edge project, he was able to introduce his pupils to a senior civil servant and a museum curator to discuss the development of thinking about crime. His pupils have been able to engage with experts, which can only help them in developing their own expertise.

Rachel Ward and Ellie Chrispin have also made important contributions to this edition, showing that excellent teaching to stretch the most able can take place wholly within the classroom. In each case their approach goes far beyond the lessons we learn about; their entire attitude to their students is to treat them as the able historians that they potentially are. Ward gets her students into Eamon Duffy’s thinking, demonstrating how he builds his argument one word at a time, challenging them to deconstruct his argument but then to incorporate the same kinds of techniques into their own work. Chrispin uses team-teaching to engage her students in a real historical debate, modelling the process by which historians form arguments and helping her students to do so too.

Teachers improve by sharing and testing ideas – by Continuing Professional Development (CPD). Alf Wilkinson, the HA’s Professional Development Manager, has written briefly on the opportunities which the HA has made available this year, where experts help to develop subject practitioners’ work. Subject knowledge (of both content and skills) is crucial to teaching the most able students, and this can only be built in the subject community. Writing good ideas down can only go so far. The aim of this journal is, of course, to improve the standard of its readers’ teaching by exemplifying and explaining good practice. The written word of the journal can only ever be a starting point. This edition has two innovations. The first is to use technology to foster debate over the issues raised in each article (see the panel opposite). The second is to provide a new section for many of the articles entitled ‘CPD Notes.’ These notes have been put together to encourage readers to develop the ideas at the core of the articles. They are designed to enable you to use these articles in department meetings, with your clusters, your trainees, or even on your own, by helping you to pull out the core ideas of the articles and apply them to your own situation, as well as photocopying resources and using lessons which happen to coincide with your own schemes of work. CPD – teachers striving to improve and sharing good practice – is the key to all teaching, not just of the most able.

Mary Woolley and Tony McConnellEditors


The National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth’s History Working Group is dedicated to supporting high achievement in school history and aims to do everything that it can to raise the power of pupil thinking in history and to make the challenge of rigorous historical thinking available to all our pupils. We are delighted, therefore, to be working closely with the Historical Association on this edition of Teaching History and grateful for the support that NAGTY has provided in order to make this edition available to history departments nationally.

Tw o k e y d e t e r m i n a n t s o f s u c c e s s f u l teaching and learning in history are, f irst ly, focused teacher thinking about the nature of our subject as a discipline and as a form of knowledge and, secondly, real rather than superficial pupil engagement with historical subject matter. To succeed in history pupils need to ‘know their history’ as history rather than simply to comprehend, recite or recall this, that or the other story about the past. Citizenship stories, identity stories, relevant stories, and so on, are no doubt to be encouraged, although in themselves and without developed historical understanding they remain stories rather than histories. Generic skills and competencies, of whatever nature, are no doubt an excellent thing but they cannot substitute, without substantial educational cost, for pupil understanding of the specific form of knowledge that the practice of history constructs.

History is a way of constructing knowledge: it is a vibrant discipline and field of enquiry with particular notions of evidence, a range of interpretive tools and conceptual understandings and ideas about the validity and truth of the claims that we can make about the past. History is also about engaging rationally with enduring and unavoidable aspects of human life. It is about attempting to understand social, individual, cultural, political and other dimensions of living in time and it is about understanding the epistemological, analytical, narrative and related challenges that making sense of time involves.1 High achievement in history emerges through sustained engagement with this subject-specific, intellectually challenging but humanly indispensable enterprise. Knowledge of history and understanding of the way that historical knowledge emerges matter a great deal for any young person learning what it means to be human, and for any society that wants to try and understand itself and that values rational and open enquiry, critical examination of evidence, openness to alternative perspectives, and related dispositions and attitudes.

NAGTY’s History Working Group, then, aims to raise the power of the historical thinking that takes place in our classrooms. We are very mindful of excellent work that has been and is being done to facilitate this end in the pages of this journal, in innovative classrooms, through curriculum and assessment reform and development and through history education research. Our preliminary paper ‘Supporting High Achievement in History‘ summarises the work of NAGTY’s History Think Tank convened by Christine Counsell last November and sets out our initial thoughts on how to progress these matters further.2 Professor Deborah Eyre’s article in this edition of Teaching History provides an overview of the ‘English Model‘ of Gifted and Talented Education and shows how NAGTY’s philosophy can inform and enable thinking about high achievement in history.

We are also very mindful of the pressures that militate against and obstruct the development of sustained historical thinking in classrooms, not least the pressures on the time that is available for history in timetables that struggle to accommodate pressing policy priorities, strategies and prescriptions. Above all, we are particularly conscious of the importance to educational progress of informed and open professional dialogue amongst educators and of the opportunity for the grounded testing and development of ideas and approaches that only such dialogue can provide. We are particularly delighted therefore that the Historical Association is providing the opportunity for precisely this kind of dialogue on the articles presented in this edition. Each of the articles in this edition contains a box suggesting ways in which the ideas and approaches that the articles propose can be tested, developed and integrated into practice through departmental planning and discussion.

In addition the Historical Association will be hosting online discussion fora with the authors of the articles as detailed in the box below. We very much hope that you will feel encouraged and inspired by the articles in this edition and that you will take part in the discussions and debate that we hope they will generate.

Arthur ChapmanConvenor, NAGTY History Working Group

To take part in discussions on the articles in this edition you will first need to register on the discussion fora. This is a straightforward task that can be completed by following the steps below.

(a) The discussion forums can be accessed at: www.hamessageboards.org.uk/noticeboard

(b) Before you can take part you will need to register. • Click on the ‘register‘ button

• Read the terms and conditions and say you agree with them by checking the box at the bottom of the page. The click on register to confirm that you still want to join.

• Complete the registration form (note that new members are validated by a moderator, users need to ensure that they include their surname in their chosen display name for identification purposes in order to be approved).

• Once completed, check your details and click on 'submit my registration'.

The registration request will then be validated, usually within 24 hours. You will also receive an automated e-mail explaining what to do next.

REFERENCES1. Rusen. Jorn, 2005, History: Narration, Interpretation, Orientation,

New York, Berghahn Books 2. The paper Supporting High Achievement in History: Conclusions of the

NAGTY History Think Tank 28 / 29 November 2005, information on the Think Tank and Christine’s Counsell’s briefing paper for the Think Tank are available at http://www.nagty.ac.uk/professional_academy/think_tanks/history.aspx

bri e f ingwhat’s on in the world of history teaching

English Association and Historical Association lecture

University of Leicester, Leicester Thursday 14 December

HA members are invited to attend the English Association’s lecture given by Terry Jones on Richard II. It will be the last event in both the associations’ centenary year celebrations. Tickets will be free, numbers are limited and HA members are entitled to two tickets per person. To book please email: [email protected]

Looking for subject knowledge updates?

Then why not go to your local HA branch meetings – there are over 50 branches throughout the country so there should be one near you. You don’t have to be a Historical Association member to attend talks. These meetings are a perfect opportunity to hear expert speakers on a wide range of topics and update your subject knowledge. If your branch doesn’t put on the kind of talks you want to hear then tell them. The Branch Secretary will probably be very glad of suggestions for topics related to the school history curriculum – they will hope they might get a few sixth formers along to some of their talks too! You can find the location of your nearest branch on the HA website: www.habranches.org.uk

Are your pupils studying the Civil War?

On Thursday 23 November, HA members are invited to Professor Barry Coward’s lecture ‘Was the Cromwellian Protectorate a military dictatorship?’ The event will be held at Foyles, Charing Cross Road, London and starts at 6.30pm for 7pm. Tickets cost £6 and includes refreshments. Tickets can be purchased from our online shop, alternatively you can send payment to head office for the attention of Simon Brown, call: 020 7820 5986 or email: [email protected] To join the webdebate, visit www.history.org.ukThis event is supported by the National Archives.

Laying the Foundations: Using the built environment to teach

This is a new booklet by DfES and DCMS. It aims to build on the growing interest in heritage, and in using the local area around schools to enrich the curriculum. It is available, free of charge, telephone: 020 7211 2346 or email: [email protected].

Choosing History at 14 packYes, it’s almost that time of year again – Options Evenings! Suddenly you find yourself having to market your subject – rather than simply teach it – and that isn’t always easy. Help is at hand. Attached to the cover of all HA member copies of this edition of Teaching History you will find a free CD-Rom. On this are three separate PowerPoint presentations: one each for students, parents and history department staff. And there’s more help to come …. We will be posting out 100 leaflets for students and two A3 classroom posters to all school corporate subscribers early in September or on payment of subscription if this is later. Additional leaflets will be available to HA members free of charge, if needed, while stocks last!

Tour to Krakow 23 to 26 March 2007

Based in central Krakow at the Hotel Stary – the newest five star property in the city, just a few steps from the Market Square. The tour will include visits to the Wawel Castle and Cathedral Tour, the Wieliczka Salt Mine, an exclusive visit to the Czartoryski Museum at the National Museum with a lecture on the painting – ‘Lady with an Ermine’. The tour continues with a visit to Auschwitz and the Kazimierz District, the former Jewish quarter of Krakow. Two lunches are included in the tour – these are at the Klezezmer Hois and the Ogeniem I Mieczem in Krakow. Dinner will be included on two evenings at the Wentzl Restaurant which is with walking distance of the hotel and the Villa Decius located approximately 6 kilometres from the centre of Krakow.

Air travel will be on direct services from London to Krakow and all transfers are included. From £854.00 per person based on sharing a twin room. Early applications for this tour, preferably by e mail, is recommended. [email protected] Telephone: Rosemary Parker on 02380 715706 Closing date for bookings is 30 September 2006.

History MattersHistory Matters is a new campaign recently launched by, among others, English Heritage, the National Trust and the Heritage Lottery Fund. It aims to increase the awareness of history, and increase its significance in the nation’s consciousness. Something, of course, which is fully in accord with the aims of the Historical Association! You can find out more from their website: www.historymatters.org.uk

Teachers QuestionnaireWe would like to thank all the members that took part in our recent questionnaire. Congratulations to Debbie Byles who won the £75 Marks and Spencer vouchers.

bri e f ingwhat’s on in the world of history teaching

Local and Community History Month and the Archive Awareness

CampaignThere will be a launch on Tuesday 26 September 6.30pm-9.30pm at The Museum of Garden History near Lambeth Palace, to celebrate both Local and Community History Month and the Archive Awareness Campaign, Dr Nick Barratt will give the address. www.museumgardenhistory.org.

If you would like to receive an invitation to this high-profile event, please contact Simon Brown (call 020 7820 5986 or email [email protected]) to reserve your place. The event is free and places are limited.

Midlands History ForumAutumn conference, at the University of Central England. ‘History matters for every child: raising the profile of history in schools.’ Saturday 11 November 2006. Fee £8 (£10 on the day); students £4 (£5 on the day). Starts at 10.00. Keynote speech is by Paul Armitage, HMI; ‘The Changing Face of School History. How schools could respond – an HMI view’. Plus a choice of two workshops from a long list. More details from: Paul Bracey (Home O1788 822993, Work 01604 735500 892471) Or see their website: http://mhfonline.info

Currency converterHow often do your pupils ask you what something was worth ‘in the olden days’? Or what you could buy then with today’s money? Here’s the perfect answer. The National Archives has a currency converter on its site that allows you – or better still them – to work it out for themselves! www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency/default2.asp

London History Teachers Forum In response to requests from teachers the Historical Association and some London history teachers have got together to initiate the London History Teachers Forum. We aim to meet twice a year, in September and in March, for a Saturday morning to discuss key issues in history teaching and learning. This provides an excellent opportunity for history teachers to get together for some quality CPD

and to meet and discuss issues of relevance to us all. We have been very lucky in that the Clore Centre, at the British Museum, has agreed to host the initial meetings. Registration will take place at 9.30 on each day, with the keynote starting at 10.00. Coffee will be followed by choices of workshops lasting until 1pm. The cost will be no more than £20.

Dates arranged so far:

23 September 2006The Key note speaker will be Ben Walsh, looking at the use of Film in the History classroom. Supporting workshops are being arranged.

3 March 2007The keynote speaker will be Christine Counsell.

If you would like more information about the London History Teachers Forum, or a booking form for September, or would like to be involved in the running of the Forum, then please contact Alf Wilkinson, Professional Development Manager of the Historical Association, [email protected]

Web DebatesThe HA Centenary web debates held in the spring term were a great success, and thoroughly enjoyed by academics and students alike. We are planning to run more of these in the coming academic year, starting with a Key Stage 3 topic this term, and Key Stage 4 in January and February, followed by A Level after Easter. For more details of these, and to register your school to take part, email: [email protected]

Watch out for the Great Debate coming soon to a branch near you!

The Centenary Great Debate was also a huge success, and an event that we are planning to repeat this year. More details of branch heats and dates for the final later in the term!

Durham 6th Form ConferenceThe Durham branch of the HA will be holding a 6th Form Conference, 18 September at the Mountjoy Research Centre, The University of Durham. The programme includes: ‘Surviving A-Level History’, Edexcel AS, OCR AS, AQA AS, AQA A2 Personal Study and ‘What History Tutors Want’. The cost is £6.00 per head, for more information email: [email protected]

Competition! New for 2006BBC History Magazine has launched a competition to find the most innovative local history project, to complement the Historical Association’s Local and Community History Month. Full details of the competition will be featured in the August issue of BBC History Magazine, or visit:www.bbchistorymagazine.com/localhistory.asp


It is inconceivable that a school can claim to be taking forward the personalisation agenda seriously without having a robust approach to gifted and talented education.1

In Autumn 2005 the National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth (NAGTY) brought together a group of professionals with interest and expertise in history. They asked them to form a think tank to consider what the optimum provision for the most able students in secondary school history might look like. This group, led by Christine Counsell, University of Cambridge, considered:

1. What are and/or could be the characteristics of the highest achievement in history?

2. How can secondary school history teachers nurture that achievement?

In undertaking this work NAGTY asked the group to focus on excellence in history, both how to recognise it and how to nurture it. This event was one of a series of such events aimed at developing a better understanding regarding how best to support high achievement in various subject domains. It was not a stand alone event but rather a spring-board, a stimulus to encourage the history community to look at designing activities, lessons, schemes of work and whole pedagogical approaches for excellence and to

Expertise in its development phase:

planning for the needs of gifted adolescent historians

The Director of the National Academy for Gifted and Talented Youth (NAGTY), Deborah Eyre, is one of the foremost advocates of gifted and talented children, and their education, in the UK. She plans to improve the education of the most able students by asking subject communities to work on how to provide excellent teaching for the most able students in their particular subjects. She has established a model of using think tanks to encourage the subject communities to begin to discuss the issues involved, and then using a working group to carry the ideas generated forward. This edition of Teaching History has grown out of the work of NAGTY with members of the history working group. In this brief article, Professor Eyre outlines some of the issues surrounding gifted and talented education with which readers may not be wholly familiar, setting them in their wider educational context.

Professo

r Deb

orah

Eyre Professor D

eborah Eyre is the Director of the N

ational Academ

y for Gifted and Talented Youth

look at how best this could be achieved in practice. The articles in this edition of Teaching History translate the ideas put forward through the Think Tank into examples of classroom practice.2

NAGTY’s role within the English Model: provision for all

NAGTY’s role is to help schools to improve their provision for gifted and talented pupils. Of course effective schools aim to provide an appropriate education for all their pupils, not just their gifted ones. They focus on the needs of individuals and design what they offer to take account of the needs of the main recognised groups. Gifted and talented pupils are now a recognised group within each school and individual school departments need to design their curriculum to anticipate excellence and ensure that their teaching and learning fosters high achievement. This does not happen readily; the department must take time to plan its provision aimed at these pupils, recognise those who will be most likely to benefit and monitor the effectiveness of their offer through its impact on the learning outcomes of pupils.

The History Think Tank began by considering the government’s overall approach to gifted and talented education, which is sometimes referred to as the English Model. This model differs from some others in that it focuses on making provision for the most able


In this

model,

giftedness

is not an

absolute.

within the context of provision for all. It assumes that every school and most classes will have students who are capable of achieving excellence and that normal day-to-day lessons should be created and delivered with this in mind. In this model, giftedness is not an absolute. It is a term used to describe children or adults who we think have the capacity to achieve high levels of expertise or performance. For this potential to be nurtured the child or adult must have access to appropriate opportunities and support. They must also develop an approach to learning that is characterised by persistence and personal drive.

Potential + Opportunities + Motivationsupport

=

High achievement

So giftedness in childhood or adolescence could be described as expertise in its development phase. The key to effective provision in schools is to make available suitable opportunities every day as part of overall classroom provision, approaching the subject in a way that challenges the most able to think independently and to utilise their existing historical skills as well as learning new ones.

Subject expertiseThis focus on expertise, or mastery, of the subject domain is helpful in characterising the nature of good provision. It helps to establish what we are aiming for. In essence all students are on the journey from novice to expert. Some students will of course progress more quickly and some may never reach the higher levels, but if we can identify the characteristics of expertise in a particular subject domain then it is possible to start to consider how best to nurture it. We can also explore whether there are clearly identifiable milestones on the journey.

Of course subject expertise or mastery is not entirely the same as exam achievement. The knowledge, skills and concepts that must be mastered in order to attain highly in examinations are part of the puzzle but they are not its totality. ‘School-smartness’ should not be confused with domain mastery. Indeed, if teaching focuses only on examination outcomes then not only do students fail to develop wider historical skills but they may fail to understand the essence of the subject and cease to be motivated by it. High achievement in history involves thinking like a historian, approaching the subject as a historian would approach it and making the most of the recognised historical tools. In general budding historians are quick to question,

to interrogate and to see fine distinctions within an argument. They are enthused by the subject as well as the task and bring their existing knowledge and skills readily to bear on new tasks. They are intellectually playful as well as precise and enjoy the rigour of the subject conventions.

Identifying and nurturing giftedness in historySo, how early can this type of historical thinking be recognised? It is difficult to be exact on this matter but it is clear that it is only possible to start to recognise those with real aptitude when suitable opportunities are in place. If lessons do not encourage students to pose their own ideas, to take issue with the ideas of others and to become ruthless interrogators of evidence, then those who excel in these areas will not emerge. It could be, however, that students are able to work in this way from a relatively early age and certainly by the start of secondary school. They will, of course, become increasingly adept over time but some of these behaviours can be seen and nurtured from the start of secondary school.

Whilst the History Think Tank concluded that the development of expertise in history should be located primarily in the classroom they also recognised the strength of linking budding historians to academic historians. Academic historians have chosen to pursue their subject and represent the upper end of the expertise continuum. So, core classroom provision should be supplemented by access to enhanced opportunities offered both within and beyond the school. Increasingly, academic historians in universities and museums are willing to work with school age students in face-to-face and online opportunities. Unrestricted by exam syllabuses and timetable constraints they are able to explore particular dimensions of the subject in considerable depth and provide a sense of the subject horizon. New models are emerging here where teachers are able to work alongside academics and renew their engagement with the academic subject – an enjoyable as well as a worthwhile experience for academics, teachers and students.

The role of the teacherIt does seem that teachers are sometimes, unfairly, classified into two groups. First: the straight-down-the-line content-based teacher, who imparts the facts and prepares pupils for optimum performance in the exam. Second, the inspirational teacher: the great story-teller who transports the class to ancient Rome, to the Elizabethan court, to the Wild West, to Hitler’s Germany, but not necessarily to a particularly high GCSE grade. Good teachers are not one or the other. Good teachers educate and inspire, and crucially,

accomplish a third objective, they introduce pupils to the way of thinking and the method of intellectual enquiry that distinguishes history as a discipline.

History teaching has a role to play not only in creating the historians of the future; historical skills are the building blocks for a variety of social sciences. School history is often the first place (and until 16 the only place) in which children are asked to reason from evidence without the certainty of scientific experimentation; to argue through the medium of non-factual prose; to empathise, not with fictional characters, but with real people, whose actions have shaped the world in which we live. For this reason, History teachers have the task of motivating the next generation of social scientists, lawyers and philosophers as well as academic historians.

NAGTY is delighted with the work of the History Think Tank and would like to thank both its members and the Historical Association with whom it is working in partnership on this agenda. The work of the NAGTY History Think Tank was compiled into an initial observations paper which includes useful suggestions with practical examples of how teachers can develop their gifted historians as well as an extensive, although not exhaustive, list of characteristics to help teachers identify their gifted historians. You can find the paper at: www.nagty.ac.uk/professional_academy/think_tanks/history.aspx

High

achievement

in history

involves

thinking

like a

historian.

A history working group now exists, chaired by Arthur Chapman, and consisting of members of the History Think Tank. This group is taking the agenda forward and mobilising CPD and resources to support designing for excellence in history. If you would like to be part of this please make contact by emailing: [email protected].

REFERENCES1. Rt Hon Jacqui Smith, MP, Minister of State for Schools and 14-19

Learners, Jan 20062. The rationale behind the edition grew out of the think tank; only

some of the articles did.


Edexcel’s Unit 4 examination requires students to produce extended essay responses that tackle complex historical problems. Students have to identify and explain a range of causes for events, and to assess their relative importance. They must also, typically, use this understanding to inform a judgement on a presented view: ‘to what extent,’ or ‘how far,’ do they agree with a given statement? The Level 5 descriptor for Unit 4 states that answers of this standard will be ‘wholly analytical’, offering ‘valid, sustained and appropriately critical judgements’.1 This historical understanding must also, however, be accompanied by a degree of literary flair: it must exhibit writing which is ‘well-controlled, well-directed, lucid and coherent throughout; analysis which is conveyed with ‘confidence and cogency’ and it must show ‘awareness of style’.2 It is this latter criterion that I have found most challenging in teaching Year 12 and Year 13 students and too often I have felt a twinge of disappointment that perceptive observations and substantiated judgements have been delivered in a bland and unconvincing way. The problem here is one of unrealistic expectation. I expect my students to be able to write convincing, persuasive prose but, often, I have failed to teach them how to do so.

Beyond textbooksReflecting on this problem led me to consider another issue that has frustrated many a teacher of post-16

Rach

el W

ard

Rachel W

ard is Head of H

istory at King Edw

ard VI U

pper School (13-18 com

prehensive), Bury St Edmunds

Duffy’s devices: teaching Year 1� to read and write

Rachel Ward’s intriguing title seems a little out of place in an edition on teaching the most able. The point she makes, though, is that even our very brightest post-16 students need to be encouraged both to engage with the historiography surrounding their course and to learn to write with the ‘awareness of style’ needed for the very highest marks. These things do not happen by accident. Rachel explains how she has used some of Christine Counsell’s ideas, and her own A Level knowledge, to construct a meaningful rationale for using the work of a real historian in the classroom. She uses Eamon Duffy’s work on the religious settlement following the Reformation to help students to engage with historiographical trends, and to give them the critical filters they need when dealing with anyone’s précis of another historian’s work. She also uses him as an example of good practice, bringing home to her students how precisely they can become good stylists. She shows how the least able in her class can benefit from work such as this which is explicitly devised to stretch the most able. And, finally, she challenges us – how can the rest of their experience of school history be tailored with this kind of learning in mind for students when they reach Year 13? This theme will be explored in our discussion of how to use this article in a CPD context.

students: getting them to read anything other than the core text endorsed by the examination board.3 These texts give students a broad narrative overview of the period of study but are not designed for engaging students in considering how to write history with the flair expected of the most able. For the most able, they are not fit for purpose. If students are not being asked to explore the ideas of professional historians and if they are not challenged to analyse the way in which these historians write they are unlikely to adopt the stylistic conventions that we expect and hope for in their own writing. This is evidently not a new or radical insight; much valuable work has been done with younger pupils, which aims to integrate reading and writing. Barrs and Cork, The Reader in the Writer, shows how challenging literature can be used in order to improve the teaching of literacy at Key Stage 2, has been particularly influential.4 Re-reading this with my trainee teachers got me thinking about how I might encourage my most able Year 13s to read more widely, and to use this reading to improve their own writing. To turn Barrs and Cork’s title around, I wanted to create writers from the readers.

I felt I needed to build into my enquiries activities that would improve my students’ abilities to interpret information, compare their views with historians’ interpretations and then communicate their judgements in a more persuasive fashion. Our Unit 4 course, Settlement and Security: Elizabethan England 1558-1588, begins with analysis of the Elizabethan

10T E A C H I N G H I S T O R Y 1 2 4© The Historical Association

Figure 1: Outline scheme of work for The Elizabethan Religious Settlement, 1558-63

Enquiry questions

Why was England in need of religious settlement?

What options for settlement did Elizabeth have in 1558?

What were the terms of the Elizabethan religious settlement?

Phase 1: 1559Phase 2: 1563

In what ways did the nature of the settlement change between 1559 and 1566?

How far did Elizabeth get the settlement that she wanted? Reactions to the ERS

To what extent did the ERS reflect the queen’s political or personal preferences?

To what extent did the ERS represent a compromise between Catholicism and Protestantism?

Learning objectives

This opening section of the course allows a recap of work on religious divisions in England. It also offers the chance to conduct an overview of opinions in the political nation and in Europe.

Students should be able to:

• identify different religious groups within England;

• compare the differences between these groups;

• assess which forms of religious settlement were most likely/workable.

This section requires students to investigate the different elements of the Elizabethan religious settlement and is the basis for the more evaluative and analytical assessments of the Elizabethan religious settlement (ERS) that follow.


• accurately identify the main terms of each component part of the ERS;

• describe the Elizabethan church outlined by the ERS in terms of doctrine, liturgy and organisation;

• compare its component parts.

These questions are of the type students will face in the Unit 4 exam and should be used to get students to analyse the nature of the ERS from a variety of different angles.


• identify the reasons for opposition to and support for the ERS in 1559;

• select appropriate examples to support the varied sides of the judgements;judge the relative significance of politics and piety in people’s reactions to the ERS.

Learning outcomes and activities

Students produce timeline of changing religious policy in England 1533-1558.

Decision-making activity based on attitudes of key groups to the different settlement options that were available.

Students write a short paragraph explaining which option seems to be most appropriate in 1558. Read out and discuss in pairs/as whole class.

Class vote

Students produce first element of Elizabethan religious settlement (ERS) grid:

Colour code terms to show elements relating to doctrine, liturgy, organisation.

Write two paragraphs:

1) explaining how the nature of settlement changed;

2) explaining how the ERS changed the English National Church.

Produce a timeline of key developments up to 1566

Students investigate the passage of the ERS legislation through Parliament and identify ways in which the settlement had to be modified.

Add to the ERS grid info on Elizabeth’s religious preferences and the degree to which she had to modify her wishes.

Make note on the grid of those opposing and accepting.

Add to grid elements which were Catholic and which Protestant.

Students produce detailed essay plans for a Catholic/Protestant compromise and a politics/piety question.

Act of Uniformity

Act of Supremacy

1559 Injunctions

39 Articles 1563

Acceptance of ERS pre-1570

Catholic elements

Protestant elements

Acceptance of ERS post-1570

Terms of ERS from previous lesson

Opposition to ERS pre-1570

Opposition to ERS post-1570

Elizabeth’s wishes

Against her wishes


Figure 1 Continued

Enquiry questions

To what extent was the ERS accepted?

How successfully was the ERS enforced?

Learning objectives

This section provides a link to the two modules on Puritan and Catholic opposition to the ERS after 1566. It is intended to give students a sense of the differing reactions to the ERS, geographically and socially.

Two case studies:Eamon Duffy, Stripping of the AltarsCaroline Litzenberger, The Reformation in Gloucestershire, c. 1540-1640 9

Students should be able to:• summarise authors’ views;

• select evidence to show opposition and acceptance;

• compare and contrast the findings of historians;

• reach a judgement on the success of the ERS.

Learning outcomes and activities

Card-sorting activity from Duffy extract. Students write conclusions to key questions based on evidence then compare to Duffy’s conclusions. Discuss any discrepancies.

Litzenberger case study. Students read extracts and pick out evidence of opposition and acceptance. Work in groups.

Answer key questions from Litzenberger work.

On basis of all evidence, students produce a report for Elizabeth, dated 1570, explaining how successfully her settlement was working. They will need to explain what has led to success and the reasons why it is not fully successful.

Episcopal visitation game

Update opposition/acceptance notes on ERS grid.

religious settlement and the conclusion to the enquiry provided a good opportunity for the kinds of activities I had in mind. Students had completed work on the background to the Settlement; its terms; its effects on the Church in England; the degree to which it suited Elizabeth and the extent to which it had been accepted. The full scheme of work is included as Figure 1.

Using Duffy to bring essays to lifeCue Eamon Duffy. I was an A Level student in the late 1980s, when Tudor History courses were dominated by A. G. Dickens.5 For him, the Reformation was a popular and welcomed period of religious change, with a moribund Catholic Church being swept from English shores by vibrant Protestantism. Duffy’s The Stripping of the Altars mounted a robust challenge to Dickens’ account; I wanted my students to have some understanding of this historiographical controversy.6 I was keen that they should not accept Duffy uncritically, avoiding the trap of believing all he writes simply because he is a professional historian. I also, however, wanted my students to borrow some of what Counsell has dubbed ‘Duffy’s Devices’ in order to sharpen their analysis and enliven their writing.7 Prevalent in Duffy’s work are superlatives and adjectives, which he uses to bring the sixteenth-century vividly to life. These are the very stylistic features that were missing from my Year 13s’ essays. Duffy’s work was incorporated into lessons in a variety of ways. First, I wanted to present students with

some of the information that Duffy used in support of his ideas (see Figure 2). From this, students had to consider what Duffy suggests about popular attitudes towards the religious settlement. The less able students are given headings which they can use to sort and order the information. For example:

• evidence of acceptance• evidence of resistance• attitudes of higher social groups• attitudes of lower social groups

The most able are given no headings; students develop their own criteria for sorting. Once the cards have been sorted and compared, the students are asked to draw conclusions from this information about the extent to which the settlement was successful in establishing Protestantism in England. Asking students to do this means that they are required to make and to substantiate judgements. The third part of this activity is to present the students with my synopsis of Duffy’s conclusions, which they compare with their own (see Figure 3). This is the basis for discussion work in which students share ideas about which of Duffy’s conclusions they agree with and those they are less happy about. In the final stage, students are given the chapter of Duffy itself and are asked to read it, in order to check that I have accurately summarised and selected his ideas. Scaffolding students into reading Duffy’s work makes them more able to engage with his ideas and also helps them to ask more enquiring questions, rather than getting bogged down in trying to comprehend the text.8

1�T E A C H I N G H I S T O R Y 1 2 4© The Historical Association

Figure 2: Duffy’s evidence10

The impact of the Elizabethan Religious Settlement

In Auburn (Lincoln diocese) all banned items were destroyed in 1559, by Anthony Meeres, a returned Marian exile, brother of the lord of the manor.

In 1568 Great St Mary’s parish in Cambridge sold off the Eucharistic canopy, the Lenten veil, the censers, vestments, a processional cross and thirteen liturgical books. At the same time they unpicked and sold to a choir-man the image of the virgin from a blue velvet altar-cloth that they had been ordered to remove by the archdeacon.

The passing of the Act of Uniformity was marked in London by ‘a wave of iconoclastic and sacrilegious mockery’. At one procession in the precincts of St Paul’s, a printer’s apprentice snatched and smashed the processional cross, making off with the figure of Christ and declaring he was carrying away the Devil’s guts.

The questionnaire that was the basis for the 1565 visitation of Lincoln, was couched in anti-Catholic terms.

Instead of just removing Catholic images and books, the 1559 Injunctions said that all banned items were to be destroyed.

In 1572 the Admonition to Parliament stated that ‘bothe in Countrye and Citie, for the place of burial … the minister meeting them at church stile must wear a surplesse, a crosse must be set upon the deade corpes …. Small commanundement will serve for the accomplishing of such things. But great charge will hardly bring the least good thing to passé, and therefore all is let alone, and the people as blind and ignorant as ever they were. God be mercyfull unto us.’

In the Northern Rebellion of 1569, altar-stones and holy water stoups were unearthed from hiding places and re-erected in Durham Cathedral and in a number of parish churches in the region. Crowds flocked to the masses celebrated in November 1569 and to the ritual burnings of Protestant bibles and prayer-books. In the subsequent inquiry, the authorities attempted to ascertain the current whereabouts of this Catholic paraphernalia.

William Paynter, parish priest at Bardwell [Suffolk], made his will in October 1559. In it he asked that his funeral be marked by ‘the observations and ryghtes of the catholyke church’, if it would be allowed.

The Act of Uniformity passed by only three votes. In St Paul’s Cathedral and several other London churches, Catholic services continued to be performed until the last legal minute.

In the diocese of Lincoln, 45/180 parishes had met the main requirements of the Elizabethan settlement by 1560. Eighty-two parishes delayed the destruction or sale of images, books and vestments for more than three years. Many only complied after the 1565 visitation.

Much of the recorded destruction of banned books and images was carried out in the presence of the commissioners in 1559. At Welby, they destroyed images during the visitation of 1559 and sent books and other ‘like popish peltrie’ to be burned ‘according to the commandment of the Quenes highnes visitors.’ However, they kept the Mass book and ornaments until 1565.

The church of Ashby near Horncastle was visited by Bishop Bullingham in 1561. During this visit, ‘my lorde the bysshop was within the chirch and cawsyd his men to Ryve them in peces and did breke the bner staffes and dyd gywe away ower candilstykes of wode.’ (Lincoln diocese)

In a will dated 1559, William Mylle, priest of Thanet, left vestments and books for celebrating services as well as £5 for various liturgical ornaments. This money was to remain with his executors for 2 years after his death, so that ‘if there chance to be any manner of spoyle in the Chruch within the space of two years’ the money could be spent instead on deeds of charity.

In the diocese of Lichfield and Coventry, in 1565, the bishop, under pressure from the Court, urged his clergy to ‘call upon the people daily that they cast away their beads with all their superstitions that they do use’. The clergy also were to ‘cast away your Mass-books, and all other books of Latin service.’ Anyone using beads was to be fined a shilling and all holy water stocks and other ritual paraphernalia ‘which be laid up in secret places in your churches’ was to be surrendered.

From the 8 or 9 Lincoln villages for which returns survive, all but one held out against reform. At Thurlby, images were retained until 1564 and books and ornaments until 1566. At Bassingham, images were kept until 1565/6.


In 1590 people in Lancashire and Cheshire still followed traditional funeral practices, including prayers for the soul, tolling of bells and distribution of charity to the poor.

Following John Aylmer’s visitation of Lincoln in 1565, he lobbied Cecil, Throckmorton and Leicester for a special commission, to ‘reform this church and diocese … for undoubtedly this country hath as much need of it as any place in England.’

The 1559 Articles and Injunctions were modelled on their Edwardine counterparts and seem to have attempted to recreate the Church of Edward VI. However, in some respects, the articles seem to have taken into account Catholic sensibilities, retaining some processions, bowing at the name of Jesus and forbidding iconoclastic activity.

A report on the diocese of Chichester in 1568 recorded that many rood-lofts still stood and even where they had been removed, they were not destroyed, but were ‘ready to be set up again.’ Lay people brought their old Latin primers to Protestant services and women and old people plied their beads during prayer-book services.

In the archdiocese of York and the dioceses of Chester and Hereford in the 1580s, bishops were still enquiring after the users of beads and primers, and the survival of altars, images and medieval or Marian vestments and books.

By the 1580s, in London, Exeter and Norwich, offences investigated by the bishops included the abandonment of fonts by ministers who would not baptize in ‘popish pig-troughs’ or who would not wear the surplice.

In Chichester cathedral, a painting of the Passion of Christ was whitewashed in the early 1580s, but ‘some well wishers of that waie’ rubbed at the whitewash so that ‘it is almost as bright as ever it was.’

In Bishop’s Stortford, in 1547-8, the church had got rid of all Catholic place and ornaments, whitewashed the building and replace the altars with a communion table, well in advance of many other communities in the region. During the Marian restoration, the church wardens complied with the reinstallation of Catholic ceremonial with equal promptness. In 1559 they removed the altars again, took down the Rood-loft in 1560 and replace their chalice with a communion cup in 1562. However, in 1580, the accounts record the removal of the windows and the sale to ‘diverse of the parish’ of the Catholic liturgical books, altar-cloths and other goods, retained in defiance of Injunction and visitation, and now disposed of ‘at the comandement of my lord of London.’

In April 1567 nine parishioners of Aysgarth in Yorkshire were required to do public penance barefoot in white sheets at the main Sunday service, and to make public declaration that they had ‘conceyled and kepte hyd certene Idoles and Images undefaced and likewise certain old papisticall bookes in the Latyn tonge … to the high offence of Almighty God the breache of the most godly lawes and holsome ordinances of this realme the greate daunger of our owne soules and the deceiving and snaring of the soules of the simple.’ They were then to burn the images in the presence of the parish at the church stile, and the performance of their penance was to be certified to the commissioners.

In 1581, the churchwardens of Scaldwell reported to the bishop of Peterborough, the discovery in a town house of cache of ‘monuments of popery’, including ‘the picture of Chryst callyed the roode, the picture of Saynt Peter, … and a table of wood which in the tyme of popery dyd stande upon the auter with a great number of images’.

At the parish of Morebath, in the diocese of Exeter, in 1573, the parish priest recorded the gift of a communion book and psalter. At the end of the entry, the priest added ‘deo gracias’.

The last Corpus Christi procession at Canterbury, held in 1559, attracted a crowd of 3,000 from the city and surrounding countryside, including many of the county gentry.

The commissions appointed to carry out the 1559 Visitations were dominated by returned Marian exiles, including Becon, Horne, Jewel and Sandys.

In 1559 the regime issued an official primer for use in services. It was much closer to the Anglo-Catholic Henrician Primer, than the Protestant Edwardine Primer. It included prayers for the souls of the dead. These were removed from the 1560 version, although this second version did restore most of the saints’ days that had been observed in the reign of Henry VIII.

The modifications in the Elizabethan Prayer book did seem designed to soften its more starkly Protestant features, notably the slandering of the Pope in the litany, and the so-called ‘Black Rubric’.


Figure 3: Duffy’s conclusions about the Elizabethan Reformation

Becoming persuasiveThe second way in which Duffy’s work is used is to help students identify ways in which their writing can become more persuasive and convincing. For this activity, I use a short extract from The Voices of Morebath, Duffy’s study of the impact of the Reformation on one village (see Figure 4).11 I ask students firstly to read through the paragraph that has had words excised from it. We discuss how it makes clear sense (we can clearly understand what Duffy is telling us) – I ask the group to make a note of all the points they pick up from reading it. We then try to put the excised words back in before thinking about how these words add to the paragraph. Students quickly realise that they might not learn very much more about what happened, but they have a greater insight into Duffy’s views on the matter. The words which have been excised, of course, are all adverbs or adjectives.

To conclude, students are then invited to return to some short paragraphs written earlier in the module -one on the changing nature of the settlement and the other on the way in which the English church was changed. The students identify sentences that can benefit from a bit of Duffyesque enlivening and re-write them, using their new ideas about the use of language in academic writing.

Although this approach still needs refining it can prove useful in showing students that they need to read, not just for information, but for argument, debate, and to improve the quality of their own writing. For students to engage in purposeful reading and writing, they must to be helped to do so: this has implications for our teaching of all ages. If we want our very best post-16 students to be independent and enquiring readers, who take a pride in polishing and refining their writing, we must teach them to do so earlier.

The previous experience of the restoration of Catholicism in Mary’s reign meant that the 1559 Visitation would insist on destruction rather than removal of banned items.

The nature of the 1559 commissions suggests that Elizabeth’s government was intent on radical Reformation, despite the concessions to Catholics in the legislation.

There were widespread attempts to prevent the destruction of images and vestments in 1559.

Most parishes only conformed to the legislation gradually and partially. Parishes removed Catholic items because of obedience to the Queen rather than because of genuine Protestant feeling.

The visitations of the bishops in the 1560s and 1570s reveal concerns about the widespread nature of resistance to reform.

The pressure to reform came from above, from higher social classes and from royal or diocesan officials.

Official documents phrased in anti-Catholic language might not show the views of parishioners because they were written by government officials.

Traditional funeral practices continued throughout the reign, despite bishops’ attempts to stop them.

Elizabeth was keen to get rid of many outward signs of Catholicism as it might continue to inspire devotion. This was often resisted, albeit quietly, by parishioners, but over the long term it had an effect on religious beliefs.

By the 1570s even many traditionalist parishes were beginning to change. Giving time and avoiding confrontation had allowed for Protestant ideas to spread. There was, by this stage, a generation of people who had grown up without the experience of Catholicism and who believed that its teachings were superstitious and false.

‘For most of the first Elizabethan adult generation, the Reformation was a stripping away of familiar and beloved observances at which they grumbled and obstructed but, in the end, took the line of least resistance. Protestantism was a long time coming and, when it did arrive in many parishes, it had been changed.’


The progress of the Reformation in England to this point had been by no means a foregone conclusion. When Martin Luther’s attack on the Catholic Church and the authority of the Pope first began to spread outside Germany, the ______ King of England had been one of the_____ ______ and _____ _____ opponents of the new teachings. Henry and his chief minister, Cardinal Wolsey, had mobilised the theologians of Oxford and Cambridge to preach and write against Luther. The reformer’s books were publicly burned in London, and his English followers pursued and executed. William Tyndale’s _______ translation of the New Testament, with its ___________ anti-Catholic footnotes, was banned and burned, and Tyndale became a hunted man. Henry himself published a ________ defence of the seven sacraments against Luther, for which in 1521 the ______ Pope Leo X granted him the title Defender of the Faith. The anti-Protestant treatises of England’s ________ theologian, John Fisher, bishop of Rochester and chaplain to Henry’s ________ grandmother, Margaret Beaufort, carried Henry’s arms on their title-page. When Wolsey fell from power in 1529, he was replaced as Lord Chancellor by the ________ Catholic layman Thomas More, and over the next four years, More was to write more than a million words in _________, _________ and often funny defence of traditional Catholicism, and in denunciation of the reformers.

Figure 4: Extract from The Voices of Morebath – including a version with the missing words included12

pious

fierce

pugnaciously

formidable

organised

most

leading

The progress of the Reformation in England to this point had been by no means a foregone conclusion. When Martin Luther’s attack on the Catholic Church and the authority of the Pope first began to spread outside Germany, the pious King of England had been one of the most determined and most organised opponents of the new teachings. Henry and his chief minister, Cardinal Wolsey, had mobilised the theologians of Oxford and Cambridge to preach and write against Luther. The reformer’s books were publicly burned in London, and his English followers pursued and executed. William Tyndale’s superb translation of the New Testament, with its pugnaciously anti-Catholic footnotes, was banned and burned, and Tyndale became a hunted man. Henry himself published a competent defence of the seven sacraments against Luther, for which in 1521 the grateful Pope Leo X granted him the title Defender of the Faith. The anti-Protestant treatises of England’s leading theologian, John Fisher, bishop of Rochester and chaplain to Henry’s formidable grandmother, Margaret Beaufort, carried Henry’s arms on their title-page. When Wolsey fell from power in 1529, he was replaced as Lord Chancellor by the devout Catholic layman Thomas More, and over the next four years, More was to write more than a million words in exhaustive, fierce and often funny defence of traditional Catholicism, and in denunciation of the reformers.

REFERENCES1. See the Edexcel website at www.edexcel.org.uk for assessment details

for revised A level (first examination 2007).2. Ibid.3. There are many articles in past editions of Teaching History which deal

with this issue, including: Harris, R. (2001) ‘Why essay-writing remains central to learning history at AS level’, Teaching History, 103, Puzzling History edition; Kitson, A. (2003) ‘Reading and enquiring in Years 12 and 13: a case study on women in the Third Reich’, and Chapman, A. (2003) ‘Conceptual awareness through categorising: using ICT to get Year 13 reading’, both in Teaching History 111, Reading History Edition.

4. Barrs, M and Cork, C (2001) The Reader in the Writer: The links between the study of literature and writing development in Key Stage 2, Centre for Literacy in Primary Education.

5. Dickens, A.G. (2nd ed, 1989) The English Reformation, Pennsylvania State University Press

6. Duffy, E. (1992) The Stripping of the Altars, Yale University Press7. Counsell C. (forthcoming 2007) Building the Lesson Around the Text:

History and Literacy in Year 8, Hodder Murray8. For student difficulties in the effective reading of historical texts see Wineburg,

S. (1991) ‘On the Reading of Historical Texts: Notes on the Breach Between School and Academy, American Educational Research Journal, pp. 495-519.

9. Litzenberger, C. (New ed, 2002) The Reformation in Gloucestershire, c. 1540-1640, Cambridge University Press

10. Duffy (1992), op. cit. ch.1711. Duffy, E. (2001) The Voices of Morebath, Reformation and Rebellion

in an English Village, Yale University Press12. Duffy (2001), op. cit.

grateful

devout

determined

competent

superb

exhaustive


CPD NotesRachel Ward’s article challenges and helps us in a number of ways. How might we plan for progression in the skills she seeks to develop in her Year 13s? These are, on the face of it, ‘literacy’ skills – but they also very clearly develop her students as historians too. How, also, might we use her insights in order to stretch our own most able final year students? For some teachers (those who teach the same content at post-16) it will be of immediate practical benefit in the classroom. For others, though, it will not just be a question of photocopying the figures and applying parts of the scheme of work. It will be a question of applying the ideas behind Ward’s work to their own post-16 teaching.

This is CPD for the entire department – not just for whoever teaches paper 4 (or its equivalent ‘essay paper’). The key to running good CPD in department meetings is the same as the key to any lesson – having, and sticking to, clear objectives. In this case there are four:

1 To identify the elements of Ward’s activities which enable the most able to achieve the highest levels of attainment

2 To produce lessons and resources which will enable the most able in your own school to achieve in a similar way to Ward’s students.

3 To differentiate provision so that the less able are able to access it, and challenged by it.

4 To build up a model of progression whereby the groundwork for these kinds of activities can be laid lower down in the school.

Begin by reading the article with these objectives in mind, but focusing particularly on the first. How does Ward do it? Ignoring the substantive content, what are the pedagogical devices and tricks she is using? Brainstorm a list of techniques she uses.

Then move onto producing a viable lesson or two for your own students. This will require subject knowledge on your part. Perhaps a member of your department, thinking back to their own student days, is an expert in the substantive content of your course. If not, perhaps Teaching History’s subject knowledge section, Polychronicon, can help. Or maybe NAGTY’s new subject knowledge website will have some guidance. Find the text you will use, and then create a resourced lesson using Ward’s principles (which you identified above).

The third and fourth objectives could perhaps be tackled together. After all, a less able Year 13 may be working at about the same level as a very able Year 10. You need to think about how Ward’s (and your own) students have got to the stage where they are able to engage with Eamon Duffy (or whomever you have selected in his place). What prior knowledge or skills are you taking for granted in planning for your most able in Year 13? How could they be acquired? Can you think of a text which your most able could use in Year 7? How will it be different to that used in Year 13? Will it be shorter? Simpler? How will they be able to show off the writing skills they have acquired as a result of using it? What about in Year 9?

The real key, though, is not what happens in your department meeting. Use these ideas to build up lessons and resources – and then take them and share them with your students. See what works, and what does not – and bring your conclusions back next time, further to refine your ideas about how your students should be working with texts to improve their reading and writing.


Mussolini’s missing marbles: simulating history at GCSE

Arth

ur C

hap

man

and

James W

oo

dco

ckA

rthur Chapm

an lectures in Secondary History at St M

artin’s College, Lancaster. H

e is the convenor of the N

ational Academ

y of Gifted and Talented Youth’s H

istory Working G

roup, of which Jam

es Woodcock, w

ho teaches history at C

ottenham V

illage College (11-16 com

prehensive), Cam

bridgeshire, is a mem

ber.

Whether we like to talk about causes and effects, about reasons and results, about factors, or what you will, we can agree that historians are in the business of explanation and that you cannot engage with history in any meaningful sense without starting to ‘reason why’ sooner rather than later.1

What does ‘reasoning why’ look like when it is working well? Perhaps the best way to answer this is by posing the negative: ‘What does it look like when it has been bite-sized, levelled up, down or to death, or simply undernourished?’

The answer to that question is probably something like this. Poor historical explanations make one or more of the following mistakes:

• They list causes or factors or reasons and assume that this amounts to an explanation.

• They talk about causes without demonstrating understanding or even awareness of their effects (or vice versa).

• They talk unconditionally about outcomes.

The first mistake is an error for a number of reasons – a good explanation will aim to prioritise and to rank factors, will offer some form of argument to support the claims that it makes about priority, and will pay close attention to historical events and processes, to the ways that their elements interlink, inter-relate and mutually impact each other in the passage of time: a list does none of these things. The second

Arthur Chapman and James Woodcock have collaborated before: Woodcock extended Chapman’s familiar casual metaphor of the final straw breaking a poor abused camel’s back. Here, they collaborate more explicitly to suggest a means of teaching students to produce adequately nuanced historical explanation. Their two central ideas are to produce a decision-making simulation (using PowerPoint) to enable students to make the kinds of decisions that might have faced participants in the Abyssinian crisis, and to ask students to design a game to simulate the process. The effect of these activities is to leave students with a fantastic level of detailed knowledge of the events of the Abyssinian crisis – a knowledge obtained as far as possible without using hindsight. Their students are also inspired by creating a game to think carefully about the relative importance of each part of the causal explanation. Chapman and Woodcock’s prose – and the students’ responses – are rich with causal metaphors which might aid students’ understanding. This article also contains a rich analysis of the types of causal errors students make – and why they are errors, and what to do about them. Most importantly, though, it brings exciting, active teaching and learning to GCSE history, in a manner bound to engage students of all abilities.

mistake is almost certainly a sign of rote learning and lack of comprehension of the situation, events or states of affairs being studied: a cause is not a cause without an effect, a reason is not a reason without a result and a factor (even an X-factor) is only a factor when it is a factor of something. The third mistake is a mistake because it misses a key point about historical explanations. ‘Reasoning why’ is about forging links, about saying ‘because of this….’, ‘as a result of that…’ and so on. These links are always conditional and writing history is a matter of probabilities, possibilities and tentative links and involves language in mights, coulds, likelihoods and so on.

If we want our pupils to ‘reason why’ and to do so well we need to encourage them to think evaluatively about the importance of factors/reasons/causes; we need to develop depth learning about the topics that they study so that they can build up dynamic ‘situation models’ that link the elements of the events or states of affairs that they are studying together and that allow them to see how one element of the situation relates to and impacts on others; and we need to equip them with an analytical vocabulary and with language that enables them to talk conditionally and tentatively with precision and with confidence.2

We have already tried to explore what teaching strategies that attempt to achieve outcomes like these might look like by exploring analogical stories, causal card sorts, counterfactual reasoning, exercises linking causes and effects and teaching approaches designed to


enhance pupils’ analytical vocabularies and their grasp of the ‘language of doubt’.3 This article reports our attempts to grapple with these problems further.

Simulating situationsThe teaching described below formed part of Year 11’s revision programme. It was therefore important that it engaged them, and allowed them to look at a period of history in new ways; that it deepened their understanding of historical events and processes; and that it sharpened their analytical abilities: a simulation seemed an effective way of achieving all three of these things.4

Historical causation is complex, both as an abstract concept and a practical process. It can be simultaneously dull, dry and difficult.5 We needed to find ways of engaging the students in causal complexity that would make it accessible. We also wanted to develop a deep sense of period detail that would improve their analysis and that would allow their judgments about the interaction and relative importance of factors to be tightly tied to the grain of events. It is often difficult to enable students to dive into and walk through the detail of a story, to ‘take part’ in the sequence of events as they happened, day by day, possibly even hour by hour, in a way that will allow them to pinpoint precise events or moments in time which were turning points. Yet historical argument and analysis is so much more satisfying, persuasive and enlightening when it is immersed in the detail of events and when students can produce a ‘killer fact’ to sustain their case.6 It seemed to us that a simulation might help them develop the depth of understanding we wanted – that analysing the role of events and actors in depth might be easier once pupils had role-played the situations we wanted them to analyse and understand. We also hoped it would make the narrative come alive: it is often the day to day twists and turns which make an event dramatic and a story compelling. Students thrive on decision-making activities that require them to think in character and in period. Such activities offer insights into the powerful forces at play and the difficulty of making ‘real’ decisions without the luxury of hindsight and they also highlight the often conflicting pressures on, and priorities of, the participants in the story.

Students often tend to see events and outcomes as inevitable, done and dusted and, indeed, not worth discussing. They tend to behave as if there were no other options which were considered at the time that the options that were taken, no other answers suggested to the problems faced other than those that were arrived at and no other outcomes which people hoped for or worried about. Similarly, students all too often have a simplistic view of why individuals or groups made particular decisions, as though there were a single over-riding idea or issue that dictated their actions in every circumstance. Role-playing positions

and decisions in a simulation would make students examine the detailed, shifting evolution of an historical episode, and, we hoped, help them see that things could have been different; that sometimes outcomes turned on a single moment, or sometimes they were held back by greater forces; that someone almost did something different; that a particular outcome was not a foregone conclusion, at least not in the eyes of the participants. In other words, a simulation might also enable counter-factual thinking, a powerful tool for developing students’ causal analyses and insights.7

AbyssiniaWith all of this in mind, we decided to see where a web-based simulation of an actual event would take us. We hoped it would enable insights into the detail of the causal process not readily accessible through more ‘traditional’ resources. Complex activities are essential if students are to develop complex analyses but they can come to nothing if students are unable to think or communicate in terms that allow them to explore and explain such ideas. Students would need a broad, diverse and subtle vocabulary with which to conceive and articulate the type of analysis we wanted them to produce.8 We decided therefore to embed this vocabulary in the simulation and into the activities provided for the students: to marry conditional language to counter-factual thinking.

For reasons of practical expediency, we decided upon the crisis in Abyssinia in the 1930s as the central issue, to be taught within a GCSE enquiry about why the League of Nations failed. The lessons initially formed part of a GCSE revision programme, with the intention of embedding them within the mainstream GCSE course in subsequent years. Students had previously studied the formation, structure and organisation of the League, and had examined the degree to which the League had been a success or failure in the 1920s and in Manchuria. They had also studied Nazi Germany, including her foreign policy. The enquiry for these particular lessons was Could the League of Nations ever have solved the crisis in Abyssinia? Although not possible this time due to time restraints (the impending departure of Year 11s for study leave), the intended outcome in future would be an extended written analysis to answer the enquiry question.

An outline of all the various teaching episodes and activities can be found in Figure 1. However, we shall focus here on those aspects of the sequence where the primary aim was specifically to develop students’ causal analysis.

Framing the enquiry The question we chose was deliberately and explicitly counter-factual – the ‘ever’ signalled possibilities not

Complex

activities

are

essential

if students

are to

develop

complex

analyses.


actualities – it posed a ‘what if…?’ and asked students to consider what the turning points in the crisis might have been. Through the activities, we would also require students to consider the likelihood of a particular outcome, because we did not feel it sufficient or helpful for students simply to conclude, ‘Well, yes, it could have been solved,’ as this would have had the potential to lead to implausible or improbable, ultimately unhistorical conclusions which would not pay enough regard to the relative strengths of the particular factors at play.

Once they had the question students were shown a series of possible answers to illustrate the type of thinking we wanted them to engage in and the types of conclusion we were expecting (see Figure 1). At this stage, only the first six statements were used. These emphasised the probability of outcomes and possibility of particular dates as turning points in the crisis, as it was these issues that we wanted students to focus on during the simulation. The remaining, more complex answers were used in the final teaching episode, which in future will take place prior to setting up the written task. These new additions would then include an emphasis on particular factors as necessary or sufficient causes for success or failure of the League, as the issue of larger factors would have been introduced during one of the later teaching activities (see Figure 2).

The simulationThe web-simulation asked the students to work in groups and to take the roles of countries involved in the Abyssinia crisis. Some would play the role of major League insiders and some of minor members. Others would play the role of outsiders not in the League to ensure that world opinion was kept in view.

The simulation of the crisis presented students with a series of ten options, representing actions the League might have taken, appearing at various stages as the crisis evolved. Each of the relevant pages of the simulation included ‘news flashes’ from around the world and from Abyssinia in particular. These news flashes provided a detailed, shifting context in which students had to make their decisions. We felt it was particularly important that the simulation was presented in this way, with a developing scenario within which to work. Firstly, the simulation would then more accurately reflect what actually happened in Abyssinia. Secondly, it allowed for students to consider the role of each particular event far more precisely, as opposed to examining the crisis as an ill-defined whole, which would necessarily lead to less complex and less sophisticated analysis. The options were presented as the simulation of events unfolded and were selected as being most appropriate for that particular stage in the crisis. For example, following Abyssinia’s first appeal to the League, Italy responded

by demanding financial and territorial compensation; accordingly, at this stage in the crisis the option which the students had to consider was whether to do just that; later, blockading the Suez Canal became an option as Italy’s preparations for war accelerated. The news flashes highlighted particular events on particular days, in order for students to consider how very precise developments or actions could influence decisions. Having earlier undertaken quite detailed research into their country’s attitudes (see Figure 1), students considered how likely it would be that their country would choose each particular option.

In order to help them consider the degree of likelihood, students were provided with a list of words from which to choose (see Figure 3). These helped students think in shades of grey, rather than binary black and white. However, this was not intended to encourage indecision or fence-sitting: students were required to select and justify the precise shade of grey! Was this option a ‘probable’ choice or an ‘improbable’ one for Britain? Was it really ‘certain’ that France would do this or was it only ‘likely’? Was it ‘probable’ that China would do that, or actually merely ‘possible’? Having made such a decision, students were required to justify it, with reference to the research they had undertaken and the particular stage of the crisis. Would it have been appropriate to have ordered military action before Italy had even invaded Abyssinia? What about after they invaded? How likely would it have been that Britain would have proposed full economic sanctions, bearing in mind the implications it would have for its coal and oil interests? Would France really have risked alienating Mussolini, particularly once Hitler had reoccupied the Rhineland?

Factual and counter-factualHaving re-enacted an emergency session of the Council of League of Nations (see Figure 1), it was of course essential that we considered and analysed what actually happened. Students were provided with a list of selected key moments in the crisis (such as the Walwal incident, the Franco-Italian agreement of January 1935, the British arms embargo, the actual Italian invasion, the Hoare-Laval pact, and the Italian annexation of Abyssinia), and were required to explain three things, in relation to these particular events, drawing on their learning from the simulation. Firstly, they needed to explain why that event happened. Secondly, they were asked to explain what else could have been done at that point or with regards to that particular issue. Finally, students had to explain why it did not happen that way. By doing this, students had to think about why things happen in two ways: what caused some things to happen, and what prevented alternatives from happening. Clearly these are two sides of the same coin, but working in this way encouraged students to consider the complexity of why things happened in the way they did.

students

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Figure 1: Outline of lesson activities

Teaching Episode

IN CLASS

Initial stimulus: image of Mussolini in uniform

Map of Abyssinia and surrounding Italian, British and French colonies

Pathe news clip anticipating outbreak of war

Introduce enquiry question: Could the League of Nations ever have solved the crisis in Abyssinia?Students shown possible concluding statements

Review of context

Provide students with roles as particular countries

IN ICT SUITE

Students research their country

Working through the options

Outline & Purpose

Use image of Mussolini in uniform to consider whether this man is someone whose aims are consistent with those of League of Nations. Infer Italy’s aims and intentions (militaristic imperialism).

Use to explore what Mussolini’s attitude towards Abyssinia might be – introduce the idea of invasion.

Use to introduce the Walwal crisis.

Students examine the key aspects of the question:

(a) what does it mean to ‘solve’ such a crisis?(b) introduce idea of variety of possible outcomes:

turning points, likelihood, connections between and relative importance of factors, etc

Students briefly review a series of recent events and summarise the primary concerns of the League at this point in time (e.g. Japanese ongoing aggression in China; Great Depression, Hitler’s rise to power, etc.)

Students to take role either of a permanent member of the Council, or an outsider (e.g. USA).

Students use a page on the web simulation and an online worksheet to research and summarise their particular country’s aims, priorities and concerns. Students also infer and note their country’s attitude towards Italy. Finally, students rank their country on two scales:

(a) willingness to take risks for the League;(b) degree of influence and power in the League.

All their scores need to be justified by reference to the information in the research materials.

Using their research as their guide, students review a series of 10 options that the League was faced with, and note their attitude towards each of them. Students explain the advantages and disadvantages of each option from their country’s perspective, and then choose an appropriate word to indicate the likelihood of their country’s choosing that option. As well as the defined options, there is also scope for students to adapt an existing proposal or create their own. Finally, students decide upon their favourite and least favourite options.

Students engage in last-minute diplomacy. They are advised to discuss their preferences with other countries, and find out who would support their action and whose support they would need. They need to take into account their aims, priorities, concerns, risk-aversion factor and degree of influence in the League. Students then vote on their preferred options and justify their choices. Outsiders (e.g. the USA) cannot vote but might have been influential in the diplomacy. Students examine an outline of the key stages of the crisis as it actually happened. Students complete a worksheet requiring them to explain

(a) why particular actions were taken at particular stages;(b) what else could have been done at that stage; and (c) why that was not done or did not happen.

Students review their work to identify the big factors that are at play in influencing the actions of the League and the League members. Students then begin to consider:

(a) when the factors come into play;(b) which factor(s) are most important for particular countries;(c) how the factors are connected; and(d) what would have happened had that factor not been present.

Feedback stimulated by challenging or supporting the argument suggested by a David Low cartoon commenting on the League’s failure in Abyssinia.

Students are shown a model of the game Marble Maze. Students use their early ideas from the above activity to build / design their own version of Marble Maze to represent the Abyssinia crisis. Students label each part of their model in two ways:

(1) the event or factor which that part represents;(2) a ‘causal word’ that explains the precise role that event or factor

played in the crisis.

Students need to consider:

(a) turning points;(b) connections between events and factors;(c) whether there were alternative possibilities at different points in

the crisis, and how likely they were;(d) what would have happened without a particular event or factor;(e) which factor(s) is/are the most important; etc.

Students then feedback and critique each other’s designs and the validity of using Marble Maze as a model.

Students revisit the possible concluding statements shown towards the beginning the sequence, and choose their preferred answer, or modify the suggestions as they see fit. Students then produce an extended written analysis to answer the question, ‘Could the League of Nations ever have solved the crisis in Abyssinia?’

IN CLASS

Emergency session of the Council of the League of Nations

What really happened?

Identifying factors

Marble Maze

Essay

FOLLOW-UP WORK

��T E A C H I N G H I S T O R Y 1 2 4© The Historical Association

At this stage, students had only really examined the crisis in terms of specific, individual events. In order to develop a deeper understanding, which would hopefully also reveal issues relevant to the bigger question of why the League failed overall, students were then asked to identify the broader factors at play. Typically, students identified factors such as national self-interest, economic pressures, fear of the rise of Hitler, the USA’s absence from the League, potential contradictions between the aims and methods of

the League (how does an organisation devoted to disarmament and ending conflict through diplomatic means justify the use of military force?), and so on. Students were now ready for the final, most important stage in developing their analyses.

Il Duce in the Marble MazeThe final stage of analysis in this lesson was to consider how the individual events and bigger factors interacted and to consider their relative importance. It seemed likely, when planning this sequence that a game would provide a useful model of a causal process, which students could build, explain and critique. Using apparently simple games – such as Jenga or Buckaroo – is a very effective tool for encouraging sophisticated pupil thinking.9 Games allow situations and their component relationships to be represented dynamically: they allow students to see what happens if x, y, or z variable is tweaked. Comparing model situations (games) with real situations (history) is a good way of thinking about situational specifics – it helps focus thinking on what the various variables/factors were and what their inter-relationships were. Games can be used as extended analogies, as ways of making the abstract concrete – of setting up a dialectic in pupil thinking between the known and simple (the parameters of a game) and the unknown, the untheorised or the abstract (the historical situation). A game can help stimulate thinking as discovery also. Take Buckaroo, for example: this game can allow a pupil to say, ‘Okay so the economy’s the spring, and the assassination’s the hat that tipped the balance but.... what’s the saddle that kept all the accumulating stuff on the donkey’s back?’

Readers might remember the children’s game that we shall call Marble Maze (it comes in various incarnations). The game is made up of various pieces – plastic tunnels, slides and tubes (most recent versions have even more complex pieces, including wheels with paddles like water wheels, and so on). Children can build a maze or run, and then put a marble in the top and watch it fall through the twists and turns they have built. We decided to ask students to use this game to think through Abyssinia: to put Il Duce through the Marble Maze.

Ideally, students should be given their own sets and asked to build their own models. This would of course prove expensive, however, so an alternative would be for students to build a collective model, using a single set. Ultimately, though, we decided that doing so would limit the scope for individual ideas, which

Figure 2: Potential student responses

The League of Nations could never have solved the crisis in Abyssinia.

The League of Nations certainly could have solved the crisis in Abyssinia.

The League of Nations possibly could have solved the crisis in Abyssinia.

Before [date/event], the League of Nations could have solved the crisis in Abyssinia.

It was unlikely that the League of Nations could ever have solved the crisis in Abyssinia.

After [date/event], it was unlikely that the League of Nations could have solved the crisis in Abyssinia.

Without [factor/issue], it was unlikely that the League of Nations could have solved the crisis in Abyssinia.

Without [factor/issue], it was likely that the League of Nations could have solved the crisis in Abyssinia.

Because of [factor/issue], it was unlikely that the League of Nations could have solved the crisis in Abyssinia.

Because of [factor/issue], it was certain that the League of Nations could never have solved the crisis in Abyssinia.

Figure 3: List of words in different shades of grey

Certainly not……… Improbable…… Unlikely…….. Perhaps………. Maybe…….... Possibly………. Likely…....… Probably……….Certainly


could be radically different from those of another student. Students were therefore asked to draw their own version. Another alternative could be to provide students with cards with pictures of sample pieces that they could arrange to produce a model.

We chose Marble Maze because its very nature would encourage students to consider the complexity of the causal process, and this complemented our requirement that students use sophisticated vocabulary to help analyse why the League failed in Abyssinia. Pieces of the model could literally be ‘pivotal’, could ‘accelerate’ the League’s failure, or could ‘inhibit’ the ball’s progress, and so on. The model also allows for alternative routes and outcomes, encouraging counter-factual analysis, and is flexible enough to fit a wide range of theories about why the League failed. Students had not only to design their model but also label each piece in two ways. Firstly, they had to decide which particular event or factor was represented by that piece. They also had to label each part with a word from the ‘language of causation’, referring to the word mats with lists of causal vocabulary previously described in these pages.10 This required students to consider precisely what role each event or factor played in the crisis.

Using a flexible model paid dividends, as did, on this occasion, allowing students to draw a model, which enabled more creative freedom for designing different pieces. For example, one pair of students included a brick wall, which represented national self-interest. This wall included a small archway, too small for the ball (a fat man, representing a typical leader of a key member of the League) to pass through. Their argument was that the League was able to see what it wanted to achieve but that any positive outcome was precluded because the self-interest of the member states over-rode any concern for the aims of the League as a whole. Self-interest was an important theme in another model, this time represented by a spiky custom-designed part, over which the ball struggled to travel smoothly towards a peaceful outcome. Another student, Paul, drew two separate mazes. One represented what was happening in Abyssinia, with the other representing the convoluted and ineffective workings of the League, unable to influence the events in east Africa. A similar idea involved several routes through the maze, with none leading to the heart of the problem, defined as aggressive nationalism.

Outcomes and conclusionsFigure 4 reports some of the thinking that students engaged in as a result of the above. As always, students’ comments indicate a range of success, and students have not always fully explained their analyses or always used the most precise form of words. This is something that an extended written exercise would

certainly have helped, had time been available. Such an exercise would have provided opportunities for review, reflection, self- and peer assessment and revision, and previous work with these students has shown how much they enjoy deliberately using causal language in their written work – they have been know to argue over exactly the best choice of word. It would also have been more satisfying to have seen more analysis of the type illustrated by comment 2, which highlights a single, decisive moment in the crisis, although the fact that the students were using larger factors to illustrate their points is not necessarily an indication of limited analysis: the use of broader, more general issues is as important as using particular examples to support them.

Figure 4: Comments made in class by students

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

It all comes back to self-interest. Because countries were more interested in looking after themselves, the League could probably never have solved the problem because they’d be unlikely to do anything which risked their own interests.

Once Italy had actually invaded Abyssinia, the League could do nothing because neither Britain nor France was prepared to risk military action.

It’s the ineffectiveness of the sanctions that was the real problem – it meant Mussolini felt he could do what he liked.

Britain and France would never have blockaded Italian ports because it would have provoked war – it is an act of war – which is exactly what they didn’t want.

I didn’t like the marble run design: I’ve done my game like Monopoly, because you can have chance events and chance cards – you can’t have these in a marble run.

Without Hitler, perhaps Britain and France might have been more willing to do something, but they needed Mussolini as an ally against Hitler. But then you also need to take out the Treaty of Versailles, because so much of it stems from that.

Austria couldn’t really influence events: it was a small player in the League and torn between trying to keep Mussolini as a friend and not annoying Germany.

The Wall Street crash was fundamental: it meant it was unlikely that anyone would be prepared to risk losing trade by imposing proper sanctions on Italy, and it was also the reason why Hitler came to power and one of the reasons why Mussolini invaded Abyssinia.

�4T E A C H I N G H I S T O R Y 1 2 4© The Historical Association

However, what these comments do reveal is that students were thinking counter-factually, explicitly or implicitly (comment 6 is the most explicit), and were thinking about the different roles each country, event or factor played or could have played. The importance of modelling is highlighted by the fact that many of the students’ comments mirrored the style of answer suggested early in the lesson sequence (see Figure 2). These models were deliberately kept simple to emphasise clearly the type of language and answer hoped for, but perhaps their answers would have been more fully explained if these models have been different. Comments 2 and 8 identify clear turning points: it was particularly pleasing to see the use of words such as ‘provoke’, ‘influence’ in comments 4 and 7 respectively, with their very powerful and distinct implications as to how precisely they could cause particular outcomes. Students also were considering the relative importance of different factors (for example, comments 1, 3 and 8), and, perhaps in a less articulate or explicit manner, the relationship between different events (see comments 6 and 8). Furthermore, it was clear that students were thinking in terms of degrees of certainty and probability (comments 1, 4, 6 and 8 are good examples here), whereas previously they had tended only to think in binary black and white. Comment 7 is perhaps of a different order, in that the phrase ‘torn between’ may

Annie

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that the

failure was

inevitable.

indicate that the student had recognised the conflicting pressures acting upon Austria, and the combined effect of those factors. Comment 5 is particularly interesting (even if we might question Sofia’s view that chance was such a big factor), because Sofia had challenged the very idea of using the Marble Maze as a model of the process and introduced a whole new element to her causal analysis which was not provided for in the simulation. She was not the only student to do this: Annie adapted the game to represent her argument that the failure was inevitable. She included a die, but one of the rules in her adaptation was that you needed to roll a seven to ‘win’ (i.e. resolve Abyssinia peacefully and in accordance with the aims of the League), which was of course impossible.

Overall, it was the confidence with which students explored their ideas, presented their theories, and supported or challenged those of others, sometimes quite passionately that was striking. They each had an in-depth knowledge of at least one country’s aims and concerns, and everyone had seen in fine detail how the crisis evolved and what could have been done at each stage. They therefore felt confident enough both to make bold assertions about what countries would or would not have been prepared to do, and about what were the really decisive factors or moments, but they were also willing to qualify their assertions

ChinaChina has a great history but a tumultuous recent past. A relatively new nation in modern times, China is keen to establish herself on the world stage. With the USA’s failure to join the League of Nations, China took the fifth permanent seat on the Council. The new Chinese government wants to modernise business and infrastructure, and needs a strong trading economy to achieve this. China remains regionally and politically divided, with threats of civil war between nationalists and communists, so keeping control of such a large, fractured country is important. China’s current great enemy is Japan, which has been expanding aggressively through the Manchuria region of China. This is seen both as an insult, and a threat to China’s economy and status, because of the loss of important industries to the Japanese invaders. China feels particularly angry at having been let down by the international community, with Britain and France in particular being reluctant to take decisive action against Japanese aggression.

Figure 5: Country context card from the simulation


where appropriate. Perhaps the most impressive of the student responses was Sofia’s: she had the confidence in her brief to challenge the key premise on which the sequence of lessons had been based, namely the idea that the crisis happened as it did because of the deliberate, considered actions of key players. Instead, she presented her own radically different view of how and why the League failed in Abyssinia. Clearly, the simulation had helped Sofia and the others to develop their causal reasoning: reason enough to make us want to develop this kind of teaching and learning activity further in future.

In preparing these lessons, we are grateful to Peter Wright for his artistic skills, drawing cartoons to use on some of the web pages. We would also very much like to thank Alan Farmer and Bob Pearce of St Martin’s college for kindly taking the time to review the historical accuracy of the website.

Designing a straightforward website is a fairly simple affair: anyone familiar with Microsoft Office packages (we used FrontPage, with some embedded Word and PowerPoint documents) and an understanding of what a hyperlink is ought to be able to have a good stab at it. If you do have any problems, hopefully you should be able to get some friendly assistance from your ICT colleagues. Although the design process is a little more time-consuming than preparing a more ‘conventional’ lesson, remember that once the site exists it can easily be reused, revised and used as a template for different simulations. Hosting a website is also straightforward: even if you do not have anywhere to host a ‘live’ website, you can simply copy across a

folder containing the webpage files (html files) onto a shared network drive and your students can access them just as if they were accessing any other document on that shared drive. Again, this is very simple to set up, whether you do it or you have the help of an ICT colleague.

REFERENCES1. A highly instructive and research based discussion of historical

thinking, including causal reasoning, can be found in Chapter Two of Donovan, S., et al, eds. (2004) How Students Learn, History In The Classroom, Washington: The National Academies Press. This publication is available online at http://newton.nap.edu/books/0309089484/html/.

2. The phrase is Sam Wineburg’s. The role of situation models in effective historical interpretation is discussed in Wineburg, Sam (1991) On the Reading of Historical Texts: Notes on the Breach Between School and Academy American Educational Research Journal Fall 1991, Volume 28, No.3, 495-519

3. In Woodcock, J. (2005) ‘Does the linguistic release the conceptual? Helping Year 10 to improve their causal reasoning’, Teaching History 119, Language Edition and Chapman, A. (2003) ‘Camels, diamonds and counterfactuals: a model for teaching causal reasoning’, Teaching History, 112, Empire Edition.

4. For an extended discussion of simulations in history see Farmer, A. and Knight, P. (1995) Active History in Key Stages 3 and 4, Davis Fulton. The University of Exeter’s History PGCE’s History Resource pages contain a number of simulations in Front Page that inspired our thinking about what could be done - http://www.centres.ex.ac.uk/historyresource/resources/ICTresources.htm#hyperlinked%20webs:%20simulations

5. A number of strategies for teaching causal reasoning can be found in the report of NAGTY’s History Think Tank of November 2005 – Chapman, A. (2006) Supporting High Achievement in History published at http://www.nagty.ac.uk/professional_academy/think_tanks/history.aspx

6. Hammond, K. (2002), ‘Getting Year 10 to understand the value of precise factual knowledge’, Teaching History 109, Examining History Edition

7. Chapman (2003) op cit. 8. Woodcock op. cit.9. Pupils often make reference to such games spontaneously as models

for historical processes (see Chapman [2003] op. cit. for a pupil generated reference to Buckaroo).

10. Woodcock op. cit.

Figure 6: Information from the simulation

What is the League of Nations?The League of Nations was set up under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, 1919, and held its first meeting on 10th January 1920. It was hoped that the League would help to prevent future world conflicts. Countries were encouraged to resolve disputes through diplomatic means, and the League could function as a mediator or judge when countries could not agree. The League had a range of powers to use against countries who threatened world peace. The League was divided into various branches, each with different responsibilities. The Council was responsible for dealing with international disputes such as the Abyssinia crisis.

The League of Nations

Aims: Discourage aggression. Encourage international trade and co-operation. Encourage disarmament. Enforce the Treaty of Versailles.

Priority: Peace and prosperity for the World, especially Europe.

Powers: Public reprimand. Trade sanctions. Military action. Expulsion from the League.

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CPD NotesThis is an edition on teaching the most able and yet, this article, written by two members of NAGTY’s history working group, makes hardly any mention of differentiation at all. Its relevance to the most able is implicit. One of the most difficult things about trying out new ideas is getting the pitch right. How, for your students, in your context, can you use this kind of activity to produce the kinds of high level responses shown in Figure 4, many of which must surely have come from very able pupils?

The central issue is about how your students think about causation (although you could, of course, undertake similar CPD about any of the key elements). This would be a good place to begin in a department meeting. What do your students think about why things have happened? Which of the three mistakes outlined in Chapman and Woodcock’s introduction do they make most often, and why, and what do you already do about it? Take a particular year group (is there one that everyone in your department actually teaches?) and focus on them, but then move into other year groups too. If your Year 9s think about causation in a certain way, what about your Year 7s? What about your Year 11s? Build up your model looking at the mainstream of each year group – ignoring for the moment the students at each end of your ability range.

You may then find that your students are making huge progress between Year 8 and Year 9, but none at all between Year 9 and Year 10. Why not? What can you do to accelerate their progression? What implications are there for all your teaching about causation, across the school? How can you maximise the rate and amount of progress your students make in terms of causal understanding?

You then need to consider the least and most able students in your cohorts. A less able Year 9 might be working at Year 7 level; a very able Year 9 might be working at A-Level. This is the key question. How can you deliver activities which allow the majority of your cohort to progress at the ‘normal’ rate, while ensuring that students who need help in accessing the work are helped, and that the most able are sufficiently challenged? Go back to this article for some ideas. Chapman and Woodcock provide a lot of information about what, exactly, they have done. How do they build these levels of access and challenge into their planning?

Of course, this is by no means the only value of the article. Woodcock and Chapman show us how to bring games into the classroom. How, and when, can you use games in your teaching – in a meaningful, rigorous way?


triumphs

SHO

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Four years ago, as an academic historian with a recently-acquired Secondary History PGCE, I was striving to satisfactorily deal with the many challenges faced by all NQTs in their first appointment. Among many other things, it was the sheer pace of the school day and the practical issues of lesson delivery that I felt caused the most exasperating problems. In particular, the subject materials that I had zealously produced to stimulate and facilitate my pupils’ learning were regularly subject to irritating temporary loss, wastage, the need for constant additional speedy reproduction and updating. Many a class was slightly delayed and a lovingly-crafted lesson plan changed when pupil and teacher materials disappeared, were forgotten or needed amending despite the best efforts of all involved in the teaching and learning process. Informing absent pupils of what they had missed, without disrupting lessons or preparation time, proved especially problematic.

Developing a history department intranet as a resource for

students and staff

me with a virtual learning environment in which to build a history department intranet site; a resource that has rapidly metamorphosed from its original function as a handy deposit for student handouts and homework instructions to become (according to the counter measuring its daily use) the focal point of history teaching and learning in the school. It forms part of a fast-developing whole school intranet which, at present, is a shared network resource serviced by Microsoft Internet Information Services v 6.0 and is based on Microsoft FrontPage software. A main page, which contains a school diary, staff and student noticeboard, events area and a Spotlight section showcasing pupil work provides a gateway to the history and all other academic department and student sites when logging on to any terminal or smart board projector within the school. Armed with only ninety minutes’ basic training in FrontPage, and a medium proficiency in Microsoft Word, I have been able to create a useful department site using only large textbox areas, imported files and additional web links. Following an illustrated staff list, seven areas cater for all year groups: for the lower school internal school syllabi, associated vocabulary lists and homework tasks are made available; for GCSE and A level the specifications and dates of public examinations, word lists, past paper questions, course schedules and homework tasks are posted. Links to other web-based learning aids related to various topics

I craved an area that was instantly and constantly accessible to myself, my pupils and my colleagues, not easily lost, easily modifiable, but also secure to help make me into the proficient and organised teacher that most of us aspire to be. I also longed for a way of keeping my pupils up to date – at their convenience and without initially relying on me – with all that had occurred in classes missed in whole or part.

It was cyberspace that offered an excellent solution to my immediate problems by providing

Figure 1: Front page of the history department’s intranet site


triumphs

SHO

Wand weekly class handouts are provided for all year groups whenever possible, as is marking and other evaluative criteria used for student reports. Advice for parents and pupils on choosing history for GCSE or university is also available. Other areas attempt to foster positive attitudes to learning and provide help with identifying learning styles and appropriate revision techniques and give hints on how to conduct research and acquire historical language, knowledge and understanding. Pupils are kept abreast of developments and requirements of History Department trips and other events through a noticeboard and their interest in the site is encouraged by the weekly competition ‘History Pupil of the Week’ and the regular displaying of pupil work (e.g. PowerPoint presentations). Intranet provision such is this is particularly environment-friendly since materials do not always have to be produced in concrete form and those that do can be updated and speedily printed in handy batches at the click of a mouse; moreover, display and storage space becomes almost unlimited in cyberspace. It is also well suited to satisfy the learning needs of all categories

of children including those with special educational needs at both ends of the spectrum and those for whom English is a foreign language.

The enormous utility of our History Department intranet results from its convenience, wide scope and accessibility – eventually pupils and parents will be able to access it remotely, use its resources and check on homework set thus invalidating normal pupil excuses of ignorance of instructions! Although its creation has admittedly involved a considerable amount of staff time, the speed at which it can now be modified, and the significant role it has played in reducing preparation time and fostering independent and personalised learning more than justifies the initial effort involved in its development. In the final analysis, it is undoubtedly a valuable tool helping History staff and students to realize, effectively and efficiently, most of the teaching and learning objectives of the department.

Fiona Kisby, Queenswood School (11-18 girls’ independent), Hertfordshire

Figure 2: Conceptual site map

stafflist

atlases, historical language

chronologies & encyclopaedias

revision tips and timetable

yr group boxes

pupil of the week

progress checks

exam specifications

EFL

study skills learning styles

university Oxbridge

trips, History Society

pupil work

why choose history at GCSE

intranet: text, image,

sound


When computers don’t give you a headache:

the most able lead a debate on medicine through time

In its early days, ICT on its own was enough to engage pupils, but the ‘wow’ factor has long since gone. ICT is used so frequently now that it is the norm rather than something new and exciting that will engage pupils simply by being ‘different’. For many pupils the Internet is where they do most of their writing – in chat rooms, ‘blogs, e-mails or on discussion boards. Utilising this interest and manipulating it to tackle historical skills can have a tremendous impact on learning in history. In particular, this article looks at one way in which forum technology can be used to extend and challenge capable pupils.

My department has made use of the Internet for many years now. We have developed a large website and a range of activities for the Intranet. In addition to this I have developed an e-learning course for Key Stage 3 pupils to follow. This course was established following Gilly Smith’s five stage model.1 It was intended to:

• develop pupils’ skill level when making use of the Internet as a research tool;

• teach methods of using websites critically; • develop e-mentoring within school and explore its

potential within subject areas.

The e-learning programme assumed that the majority of our pupils had Internet access and were eager, though not necessarily skilled, users of the medium.

Dan Moorhouse begins with a complaint about ICT. It is not the clichéd teacher-complaint – that the computers keep crashing, and the students are messing around on the Internet (and how, exactly, do you turn the things on?) Instead, he observes that the use of ICT in the classroom is now so routine that it has lost what he terms its ‘wow’ factor. Moorhouse tries to put the ‘wow’ factor back for his GCSE class. He uses Internet-based forums to encourage students to argue by posting their ideas and opinions (properly supported with evidence, of course). This takes advantage of a means of communication with which many of our students are familiar (and, thanks to Moorhouse’s school’s work at Key Stage 3, all of his are). This article sets out how the central idea – ‘using forums’ can be supported with other activities so that it is ultimately successful. It also shows a variety of techniques with which Moorhouse differentiates for the most able. Last year he went further by participating in the Historical Association’s Centenary Web Debates. This enabled his most able students to lead his class in debate and discussion with other schools about the worst time to have had a sore throat. This provided the kind of challenge on which the most able thrive – especially so because it included the immediacy of the Internet. Moorhouse makes his sequence of lessons look easy, although in fact he has undertaken tremendous preparation in order to make them work. This preparation will form part of our discussion of how to use this article to move your own practice forward.D

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Dan M

oorhouse is a mem

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ssociation’s Secondary Com

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as Head of H

istory at Laisterdyke Business and Enterprise College (11-18 com

prehensive), Bradford. H

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ead of History at M

illthorpe School (11-16 comprehensive), York.

Extending e-learning to GCSEI decided in September of this year to introduce web based tasks into our revised GCSE scheme of work. The objectives behind this decision were:

• to provide remote support for pupils as the new course structure means the GCSE is taught in one year;

• to enhance research opportunities and provide an alternative means of communicating students’ thoughts and findings;

• to provide parents with the opportunity to access class materials and to engage in the learning process if they wanted to;

• to develop a mechanism in which the pupil voice could be heard and responded to;

• to enable the easy and more frequent involvement of outside agencies and experts in the development of pupils understanding of historical concepts.

To enable this I developed the use of forum technology by the GCSE group. I wanted to provide reference points, to broaden awareness of concepts and themes via online homework tasks, to encourage the group to participate openly and to establish a means of extending the pupils’ analytical skills via online discussion and debates.


Using the Centenary Web DebatesThe Historical Association’s Centenary Web Debates provided an excellent opportunity to engage pupils in tasks that would meet these objectives. Using them well required students to:

• evaluate significance;• develop an analytical writing style;• select source material;• write for a varied and academic audience.

I incorporated the Web Debate relating to Medicine through Time into my departmental planning from October through until the end of the debates in March. The debate question was one which could act as a key area upon which to focus when beginning and ending enquiries and enabled research-based tasks to be prepared and presented to pupils as part of their ongoing studies. The question (to be explained with reference to the types of treatment available as well as who would have been administering the treatment), was:

Which period of time was the worst one in which to have a sore throat and a headache?

When planning for this debate I had to decide what proportion of the task and pupil preparation ought to be completed online. On the one hand the debate itself would be online but on the other, there were elements of the preparation, drafting and presentation of the posts that would be better completed away from the ICT suite. The result, shown in Figure 1, was a series of exercises over the autumn and spring terms that led to the eventual postings in the Web Debate. Of course, each stage had to be differentiated for all the pupils so that they could all access a task which was aimed at stretching the most able.

Stage 1: developing the activityThe first stage in preparing for effective use of online debates was to research best practice in this area. Based

on ideas raised by Denise Thompson and Nathan Cole’s recent article, and as a result of issues raised in Richard Jones Nerzic’s online seminar, I decided that the debate could be used as a hook throughout the teaching of the Medicine through Time course.2 The debate itself could be used as a means to stretch the most able and encourage critical thinking and self-evaluation for all of the class.

Figure 2 outlines the process that I developed for developing differentiation while using the Web Debate. In the initial stage of researching areas and assigning periods of time to some pupils, careful planning was required in order to ensure that the debate would cover all periods of time and in order to address misconceptions that had become apparent in classroom discussions. Some differentiation was needed to present pupils with exercises that were suitably challenging. As a result the most gifted pupils in the class were assigned particularly challenging or esoteric research tasks at this stage. See Figure 3 for examples of these tasks.

Both of these pupils were provided with a selection of resources other than the standard texts available in school. Print outs of articles found online and from specialist journals such as Biomedical Scientist were used to provide highly technical and advanced opinions of the way in which disease was treated within these eras.3 These were supplemented by teacher-produced notes and the pupils’ own research.

In order to set a high standard I added a requirement for myself to participate in the debate. To illustrate the way in which an argument could be presented and to model the way in which pupils developed their arguments I opted to suggest that today is the worst period of time in which to have a sore throat.

Results of a differentiated approachThis differentiated approach had positive consequences both for the most able students and for the quality of

Figure 1: Planning overview: timeline

When What WhereOctober Research task Class forumOctober Class debate – roles assigned Class forumNovember Presentation by teacher ClassroomNovember Debate ClassroomDecember Online poll Class forumJanuary Research and drafting ClassroomFebruary Presentations by pupils ClassroomMarch HA Web Debate Classroom

Formulation of initial post Class forum Response to Post 1 and 2 HA Web Debate forum

pupils

realised

that

there are

merits to

arguments

that they

do not

support


Figure 2: More detailed planning

the class’s debate as a whole. From the point of view of the debate it ensured that every period of time was covered and that an argument was presented to suggest that each period was the worst in which to have had a sore throat. This had an interesting outcome. Pupils realised that there are merits to arguments that they do not support, and consequently began to acknowledge this fact in their own contributions. The quality of pupils’ arguments was high; they modelled their responses on the exemplar argument that I had presented and made sure that they didn’t make the mistakes that I had built into my contribution. The most able students also benefited from a real challenge which enabled them to make something of their own from difficult areas of content. Figure 4 has examples of the posts the pupils came up with.

Stage �: the whole class arguesThe second stage was to debate the merits of each of the starting arguments. At this point the remainder of the class was expected to join in the discussion, taking whichever side they saw fit. Here we saw that the competitive nature of boys came into its own. The boys made a conscious decision to try and destroy the arguments presented by two of the girls. This led to usually quiet girls responding in depth, which was an unexpected benefit of the debate.

Differentiation came from questioning at this stage. Pupils were asked to offer constructive criticisms of arguments and to add weight to their own argument through selection of source material. I had anticipated

Main form of differentiation

Most able pupils required to argue for periods that they had not yet studied.

Selection of time periods based on perceived level of challenge involved.

The level of text provided for pupils was differentiated, ranging from my own materials to university texts and accounts from specialist journals.

Teacher involvement in the debate aimed at challenging pupils and requiring them to consider complex alternatives.

Self- and peer- evaluation is part and parcel of debating, as is an element of competition.

Differentiation by task and through selection of resources.

Level of expectation.

Main activity

Assign periods of time for pupils. They would argue that their period of time was the worst in which to be ill.

Research and present initial thoughts.

Engage in practice online debate of the strengths and weaknesses of each period of time. Prizes to be awarded and a place in the class team up for grabs!

Assess pupils’ posts and provide feedback on ways in which to improve the quality of their arguments.

Develop revision guide for mock exams covering the three main areas to be covered in the debate

As a revision exercise for mock exams, debate the question in class

Conduct online poll to decide which period of time pupils want to argue was the worst in which to have a sore throat

Announce results of the online poll and the winners of the class debate.

Team to be given guidance and time in lesson about how to write the first post. Reference materials available along with limited access to the Internet. (PC available throughout).

Team presents their first post to the rest of the class and guests in classroom – Head of Year and a colleague from the Science department. Peer- and self- evaluation takes place along with questioning and comment from class teacher and the invited guests.

Stage

1

2

3

4

5


having to intervene and raise these questions myself, but was pleasantly surprised as pupils were keen to get involved in this, particularly when presented with the chance to tear my argument to pieces – it is not just the most able who like to prove the teacher wrong… See Figure 5 for examples of pupil posts from this stage.

Stage �: feedback to combat anachronismThe third stage in the process was to present my feedback to the class. Here I was able to deal with some misconceptions that had crept into the debate and add an extra level of challenge for pupils by posing questions for them to consider. For example, pupils had questioned the worth of pilgrimage during the later Middle Ages but had failed to take into account the fact that the people going on these pilgrimages would have believed that they would, God willing, result in a cure for their ailment. At worst, if God willed an alternative outcome, pilgrimage would cleanse the pilgrims’ souls. I was able to work with ability-based groups within the class and analyse the quality of their postings. Again I used my initial post and asked them to highlight the places where I had backed up my point with specific and relevant evidence (I had not). This allowed a revision of some of the thoughts that pupils had about the time periods and, based on their self evaluation sheets, made them realise that they had to read for meaning and that they had to put events into the context of the time in which they happened. It also emphasised the need for them to do what I had not done in supporting their ideas with evidence.

Stage 4: moving back to live debateThe fourth stage of the planning was a review of our study of medicine to this point. Pupils worked in groups to evaluate just how bad it would have been to have a sore throat in each of the following periods of time:

• prehistory• ancient world• medieval Europe• Renaissance• industrial revolution

Differentiation within this model is discreet and pupil-led in many cases. The task was to prepare a two minute presentation outlining the reasons why the specified period of time could be considered to be the worst in which to have a sore throat. Within each group roles were assigned:

• researcher(s)• presenter(s)• writer• resource manager• timekeeper• spokesperson

Of course, the pupils within this group are well-versed in this type of exercise. It is hardly new to them, and they are aware that the spokesperson has the most demanding role. At the end of each presentation each group (and the adults) in the class posed questions of the spokesperson, who therefore had to have an in-depth knowledge of the content and concepts in order to address these points confidently. Likewise the presenter(s) need to be confident in their historical knowledge and, working with the writer, must be able to articulate points without reading from notes. For an extra element of challenge with one of the most able students, I removed their prompt sheets – after all, they don’t get a prompt sheet in the exam!

To review the presentations, I used an online poll. I chose to do this as some of the pupils had very strong views about which period to select and the less confident members of the class were reluctant to voice alternatives due to peer pressure. The online

Figure 3: Differentiated research tasks for the most able

Task one: the Renaissance

Description

The student had to research the way in which a sore throat and headache would have been treated during the Renaissance. This included a requirement to evaluate how much change there was in the treatment of these ailments at the time and an assessment of how comfortable people would have felt when they became ill in a time when accepted beliefs and practices were being challenged.

Element of differentiation

This task was more difficult as this period had not been covered in lessons at this point in our programme of study and the pupil for whom this task was set was aware that she would be expected to participate in introducing the era in a follow-up lesson.

Task two: the industrial revolution

Description

Here the pupil was asked to consider the significance of medical breakthroughs at the time as well as evaluating the impact of new techniques on the way in which ordinary people would have been treated.

Element of differentiation

Again this area had not been studied in class at this point.


polling software allowed anonymous voting alongside an opportunity to try to persuade other pupils to vote for a preferred area.4

The result of the online poll was a little surprising. I had assumed that the pupils would want to argue that either the middle ages in Europe or the early industrial revolution were the worst periods in which to have a sore throat. The poll, though, revealed that the Ancient World was their period of choice. The reasoning when I enquired about this was that ‘everyone will pick the middle ages, it’s too obvious and we want something that’s more challenging.’5

Stage 5: final preparationsFor the final stage of preparation a ‘team’ was selected. This group would write the draft of the first post for the inter-school Web Debate during a lesson and present it to the rest of the class for comment and approval at the end. To ensure that the pupils received a variety of ideas about their post I invited two colleagues into the session to offer constructive criticisms of their arguments. The benefits of this were that pupils were able to see the way in which their post may be viewed by a range of other people allowing them to refine their argument and take on board additional points of view. It allowed them to check that they had considered the three main components of the original question:

• Which period was the worst in which to have a sore throat?

• Reference to the treatments available

• Reference to the people available to treat you

and required them to develop the way in which they wanted to explain their points.

This was not without difficulties though. The word limit of 250 words was exceeded by more than 100% when the pupils wrote their draft. In refining the post they become much better at stating things clearly and succinctly but by their own admission failed to double check that they had given equal weighting to the three elements noted in the question.

Into the fray: the Centenary Web DebateThe entries in the Historical Association Web debates can be viewed, along with feedback from leading historians on the Historical Association message board website at www.hamessageboards.org.uk/noticeboard/.

The different entrants in the debate organised their participation in the event in different ways during the debate. Some of these methods are outlined in more detail in the feedback section of the messageboard.6 With my own group the process was relatively straightforward. The posts on the message board were printed out at the end of each day. They were distributed to members of the team who were then asked to consider the way in which they wanted to respond and enter their thoughts onto our class forum. These in-class posts, along with links that I provided would then form the basis of the second and third posts that the group were to make. Within the classroom the group was allocated an hour in each week to write a draft of each of these posts. These were then

Figure 4: Examples of pupil posts from the debate, stage 1


entered onto the class forum for comment by other pupils in the class and edited by a nominated student to formulate the reply.

Issues to be overcome• Pupil absence posed a problem. With the class

working in teams the absence of one of the pupils hindered them in their progress with the second post as that pupil had taken the draft home with them. The lesson to be learnt was clear – keep a copy in school and type up the draft to share digitally.

• Ofsted paid a visit. This did not pose a problem in terms of planning but I hadn’t anticipated how eager the pupils would be to explain what they were doing and why they were doing it. Whilst it served a purpose and clearly impressed the inspector, it did not help in cutting editing time for the third post down to 20 minutes or so after the inspector had left.

ConclusionsPupils responded very well to opportunities to work with leading experts in the field. They also enjoyed the competitive nature of the debate and were highly motivated to perform well throughout. Ironically I think that this enthusiasm and competitiveness also clouded their judgement during the debate as they strayed away from the careful planning that they had undertaken in order to ‘attack’ other perspectives. Had they posted in the same way that they had in our preparatory debate they would have fared much better. Professor Worboy’s end of debate comments highlighted the need for pupils to understand the

beliefs systems in place at the time of the cure and reminded groups not to judge people of the past by today’s values and beliefs. In the practice debate pupils had realised this and been commended on it, but they failed to do so in the public forum.

The use of Forum technology has great potential to hone writing skills and focus enquiry.7 Combining formal debates such as the one outlined here with less formal methods of teaching such as reference guides and topical discussion can develop pupils’ understanding of a range of complex issues and increase the pupils’ conceptual understanding. It also offers a medium in which guidance and assessment can be offered relatively quickly, cheaply and by a number of people – many posts are commented on in a constructive manner by the pupil themselves, and by their peers and supervising adults in more popular discussions. The end result was more mature and advanced explanation and analysis than these pupils had achieved in their classroom work prior to the introduction of these techniques.

REFERENCES1. Salmon. G (2004) E-Moderating: The Key to Teaching and Learning

Online, Routledge Falmer2. Thompson, D. & Cole, N. (2003) ‘Keeping the kinds on message…one

scholls attempt at helping sixth form students engage in historical debate using ICT,’ Teaching History 113, Creating Progress; Jones-Nerzic. R. (2006) Student forums seminar on the www.schoolhistory.co.uk teachers’ forum

3. Articles found using the academic journal search engine www.findarticles.com; The Biomedical Scientist, The Institute of Biomedical Science

4. A voting mechanism for polls is incorporated into many of the freely available PHP based forums that can be downloaded and installed onto departmental websites. The version that I use is provided by www.invisionboard.com.

5. Source. Pupil learning diary. 6. Feedback and Requests. HA Message Board.. http://www.

hamessageboards.org.uk/noticeboard/..7. A fuller technical rationale can be found in Thompson & Cole, op. cit.

Figure 5: Pupil posts following Stage 2


CPD NotesThe history at the heart of Moorhouse’s activities is obviously excellent, but also reasonably simple. He is encouraging his students to think about the way attitudes have changed over time, and to develop their argument and explanation by providing sufficient evidence and by building up their ability to counter-argue. He does differentiate his activities very well in order to capture the imagination of the most able. One fruitful means of using Moorhouse’s article for CPD might be to identify and reflect on the ways in which he differentiates.

The ideas in his article which will, no doubt, be most unfamiliar to the majority of readers, are those to do with his use of ICT. We have come a long way from the days when ICT provision consisted mostly of students typing up their essays as a treat. PowerPoint, Moviemaker and Excel are regular fixtures in many classrooms; there has also been substantial progress made in using web pages as historical sources. Moorhouse, though, focuses on the ability of ICT to facilitate long-range discussion of the sort which could never previously have been easily managed. His most able students are able to test their ideas against other historians – both their peers, and professionals – in remote locations, for a fraction of the cost (and not to mention sheer inconvenience) of physically assembling all those people in one place.

The opportunity to test one’s ideas against one’s peers is very important for the most able historians in our classes. Typically, the most able students enjoy a challenge, and debating to such a high standard is certainly that. How, though, as a department, can you plan for it?

Read Moorhouse’s article and think about the activities his students must have undertaken in Key Stage 3 in order to allow this kind of teaching at GCSE. He tells us that his school is particularly keen on e-learning – but how has that been integrated into history lessons? He gives some hints about the way in which his students have learned to produce argument-based presentations – but how, in particular, would you start them off on this? Would you model the different roles one-by-one? Or would you build up the activity as a whole?

You might also consider how you could build in an opportunity for your students to liaise with students at other schools, and with academics. It may be that there is a nationally-organised web debate available for the topics you had in mind; it is more likely that there will not be (although the HA is nothing if not demand-led so you could ask…) How might you, though, go about finding another school? Might you go for a school in your area? Contact a teacher you trained with? Perhaps someone in your department knows someone. Think about how to find an academic to provide relevant (and, crucially, up-to-date) input. You, or one of your colleagues, might have been taught by someone at University – if not, perhaps your school’s UCAS administrator or G&T Co-ordinator might have some useful links. The key, though, is in firm planning. Think about how you might plan this six-month project, using Moorhouse’s model at its base.

When you observe a good lesson, it is a good idea to think in these terms:

• What else must the students have done (and, of course, what will they do next?)• How has the teacher gone about planning this lesson?• How might I adapt this lesson to my own students and my own style of planning and

teaching? • How might I adapt this type of lesson to a different area of content?

Part of Moorhouse’s teaching was observed by an Ofsted inspector, who went away happy. But we have also been allowed to observe it. This is not just an opportunity to applaud good practice. It is a chance to learn from it, and to implement it ourselves.


Many of us have chafed at the slur of ‘bog standard comprehensive.’ A few years ago this gratuitous insult made it easy for some to say, ‘Gifted and talented? Not in this school!’ Teachers and pupils are, however, stemming the pernicious effects of this negative thinking. In the Leading Edge history project in Lancaster over the last year, pupils and teachers have been learning to challenge expectations, discover new talents and extend thinking.1

The history teachers of four Lancaster schools took the opportunity to challenge their pupils under the Leading Edge initiative.2 We started in 2005 with a target to engage and stretch more able pupils; not just the conventionally academic, but also pupils whose talents included oral presentation and argument, ICT and drama. Our chosen group included those who were at times overly assertive or excessively reticent, rather like any normal comprehensive class (see Figure 1).

We chose our project carefully; the main aim was not to enhance history teaching per se, but to develop thinking skills, using history as the vehicle. Crime and punishment was our first choice. It was particularly

‘Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime:’

using external support, local history and a group project to challenge the most able

The most able can be challenged in a variety of ways and at a number of levels, from the extension question for the individual child to the extended enquiry for the most able class. In a Leading Edge History project, Guy Woolnough and his colleagues took the concept of challenge further, in taking history outside the classroom. The project challenges the most able on a number of levels. Pupils’ expectations are raised by working with peers from different schools; external agencies are brought in to ensure that challenge moves outside the educational institution and that pupils have to think more broadly about the subject matter. Pupils are forced to apply skills they may have learnt in the history classroom such as research, questioning and debate to a much broader project and therefore come to an enhanced understanding of the applicability of the subject. The project may have moved away from traditional approaches to history teaching, but the pupils’ evaluations show that this has only resulted in an increased desire to learn more about the subject.

appropriate to Lancaster, where the Castle has a long and continuing history as a High Court and prison, a place where witches, Jesuit priests, Chartists and suspected IRA bombers have been imprisoned, tried and in some cases executed. Crime also recommended itself as a topic on which everyone has an opinion; the shocking, sensational or even glamorous aspects gave it Key Stage 3 appeal. ‘Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime’ provided our title.3

Having decided that outside support could enhance our project, we made two approaches, one to the author of the quote, ‘tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime, the second to Lancaster Castle Museum. Both approaches worked splendidly. Mr Blair’s office put us in touch with a senior civil servant at the Home Office, Mr Jon Parkin. Mrs Christine Goodier offered the services of her staff and museum.

Our chosen pupils were flattered by being chosen for ‘Tough on Crime,’ but they had a challenge to meet. We decided that the pupils must have the opportunity and responsibility to direct the course of the project. So we asked the pupils to prepare for our first meeting by

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researching and preparing a presentation. Each school had one crime to investigate: murder, treason, theft and anti-social behaviour. Aware that many crimes are too sordid and unsuitable for secondary school use, we specified cases.

This initial research was completed in school with a couple of one hour sessions using the internet. The staff had identified in advance several appropriate websites. My school, Carnforth, took anti-social behaviour. We asked the pupils to investigate the Gordon Riots (London, 1780) and Mods and Rockers. The research soon assumed a life of its own. The pupil investigating the Gordon Riots was looking for a modern comparison and was directed to the Broadwater Farm riot of 1985. Another pupil had a particular interest in skateboarding and moved from Mods and Rockers in the 1960s to recent ASBOs imposed on skateboarders. It was very useful to allow the pupils to set the direction of their enquiry at this initial stage; it made clear our wish that the project should be pupil led.

The pupils were told to prepare a presentation on their chosen area, to be delivered to the rest of the group at the first meeting. The staff encouraged the pupils to use PowerPoint and the interactive whiteboard, but to use the technology primarily to deliver images, they were encouraged to plan and deliver their own spoken commentary to explain the points they wanted to put across.

The next challenges for the pupils at the first meeting were:

1. To deliver a presentation to a group they had never met before.

2. To work in group of four, made up of one pupil from each school.

3. To prepare to interview a senior civil servant (Mr Parkin) on his own specialism, the control of crime and methods punishment.

4. To welcome and interview Jon Parkin.

We were all (staff, pupils and civil servant) delighted and impressed at how successful the two days were. Pupils who were reticent met the challenge of speaking to a group and asking difficult questions of an important man. The voluble were able to use their talent constructively (see Figure 2).

One highlight worthy of particular mention concerns a pupil who lives in part of town with several social problems, including crime and drugs. Mr Parkin’s brief includes responsibility for a project that aims to clear and redevelop this very area with crime reduction as a goal. The pupil, when he realised Mr Parkin’s responsibility, could barely contain his anger as he prepared for the interview. But he was able to talk through the issues with other pupils and staff in the preparation phase so well that he was able to ask

Figure 1: Criteria for selection of students

The pupils were chosen by staff at each of the schools taking part, but before selection we agreed some criteria.

We aimed for an equal number of boys and girls: since one school is all girls, that necessitated more boys attending from the other three.

We agreed that we should select pupils whose talents were not the conventionally academic; pupils who did not all excel at written work, but could bring something special.

A couple of pupils were chosen because of their interest and ability with ICT.

Some pupils stood out for their oral ability.

Some pupils were challenging, other were excessively quiet, but showed ability.


very polite but charged questions at the interview. The answers given were very honest and professional, and our pupil felt pleased with himself for achieving more than if he had followed his instinct to give Mr Parkin a verbal mugging. At lunch, Jon Parkin admitted that he had faced more difficult and better informed questions from our pupils than he had from certain government ministers.

Our starting point had been clear, with structure sufficient to facilitate achievement. Now an open ended task with pupil-defined goals was a primary objective. The pupils’ appraisals of the first event were crucial: their comments showed that they had come with many of the popularly held assumptions about crime and punishment, however their opinions were modified or even reversed by the event. Pupils were

Figure 2: Questions for Mr Jon Parkin

Do you think that juries are correct when they reach a decision of guilty or not guilty?

Elizabeth Tea was executed for infanticide in 1735. How would a case like this be dealt with today? Does the conviction of Angela Cannings show that we have not made much progress in 250 years?

In the West End of Morecambe, Lancaster City Council has decided to tackle a drug problem by demolishing a group of houses where users and dealers operate. Do you think this will solve the problem or simply spread it elsewhere?

John Bellingham shot and killed the Prime Minister, Spencer Percival. Do you think hanging was fair in this case? Patrick Magee got eight life sentences for trying to kill the Prime Minister and killing five others. Do you think this punishment was too light?

Dr Crippen was executed for murdering his wife (1910). Gordon Park was given 15 years for murdering his wife (1976). Lana Yadgari murdered her husband and was sentenced to 4 years(2005). The cases are very similar; murder for very similar reasons. Do you think the courts are prejudiced against men?

The Gordon riots were against Catholics. There was terrible damage and a lot of deaths. In the context of the Iraq war, how would anti-Muslim riots be handled in the UK today?

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Figure 3: Details of the cases used in the project

The Pendleton MurdersMurder Took Place: 26 Saturday April 1817 2pm Trial Began: 5 Friday September 1817

Margaret Marsden and Hannah Partington were both servants to Thomas Littlewood. Mr Littlewood was away on business on the day of the murders. He returned to find the two servants battered to death. Over £100 had been taken, as well as some goods.

Accused: James Ashcroft (Senior) 53David Ashcroft 48James Ashcroft (Junior) 32William Holden 47They were all unemployed.

These men had been seen around Pendleton at the time of the murders. Two of them were seen in the house, talking to the two servants. They were seen in Manchester later that day, spending money freely. This was the crux of the case for the prosecution, but the weakness in their case was the lack of blood on the accused.

The defence made it clear that the brutal killings would have left the murderers covered in gore.

One interesting piece of evidence came from the arresting constable. He took the accused to see the bodies; the five men kissed the bodies, which did not stir or start bleeding again. This strange encounter was based on the ancient superstition that a murder victim would respond in the presence of the murderer. Clearly, the constable and the accused had some belief in, but it proved very difficult for the defence to use it as evidence in court, as our judge (as a good son of the Enlightnment) refused to accept superstition: only clear facts could be given in testimony.

The case was a good one for our pupils, because the circumstantial evidence of theft was quite good, but the evidence of murder was non existent. They were convicted and executed at Lancaster in 1817, protesting their innocence to the last. Several years later, another man made a death bed confession to the crimes. In our trial, the jury acquitted the men.


The Westhoughton riot

On Tuesday May 26 1812Abraham Charlson, Lydia MolyneuxWere put to the bar, charged with setting fire to and burning, or aidingandassistingtherein,aweavingmill,warehouseandloomshopinthepossessionofThomasRoweandJamesDuncoughatWestHoughton,towhichtheypleadedNotGuilty.

This case dates from the time of Luddite unrest. The mill at Westhoughton was attacked and destroyed by an angry mob.

There had been several days of unrest in the area, and soldiers had been stationed at the mill. But on the day of the attack, the soldiers were called away to another trouble spot.

A large, angry mob took the opportunity to attack the mill. They broke in and set fire to the buildings. There were many witnesses: those who came forward at the trial were mostly described as servants of the mill owners.

Several people were tried at Lancaster for involvement in this crime. We picked two. Abraham was only 16, but the case against him was very strong: he had been seen running into the mill with burning straw, and shouting to other to destroy the mill. The only chance the defence had was to undermine the reliability of the witnesses, either by imputation of bias, or by highlighting any errors and contradictions in what they said.

Lydia had been present, but the evidence against her was very circumstantial. No witness testified that she had done anything, though she had been seen outside the mill, and some witnesses testified that her friend had been involved.

Our result was the same as that in 1812: Lydia was acquitted, Abraham was hanged at Lancaster. Several others were also executed, some transported.


What have you learned from this project?I have learnt there is no truth in history. There is no such thing as an un-biased account

I have learned to work with different people and to listen carefully to their ideas.

Criminals in the past were treated differently.

What have you learned about the law from this project?I understand more how the justice system cannot be perfect.

The law can be quite sexist

The law is inflexible

What have you learned about presentation skills?Make presentations more interesting by not putting too much information in.

How to speak in front of a judge, how to present a case

Using colour etc. can have a good effect, but if you don’t have the information, it isn’t a good presentation.

What have you learned about speaking skills?I have learned that it takes a lot of courage to stand up there in front of a critical eye while trying to state a case.

I have more confidence about speaking in front of audiences.

What have you learned about thinking skills?You cannot look at something and accept it for what it is. It needs thought to verify what is what, and to realise and summarise the truth.

Things need thinking through carefully - writing out and drawing diagrams helps to put ideas together. Let others comment on what you think, and say what they think; it helps to produce new ideas much faster and avoids errors.

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using advanced thinking skills. The significant result of the appraisals was that they had a clear and generally agreed idea of the direction of the next stage; they wanted to explore role play in order recreate some of the situations we had been discussing.

We decided that trials were the obvious topic to explore. Here the Castle Museum provided exactly what was needed: two cases, tried at Lancaster, both

serious, but cases where both defence and prosecution could present a good argument, so that the jury really had a significant role to play. Our pupils would take the roles of defence, prosecution and jury in both cases. One case was a murder and burglary at Pendleton, near Manchester, in 1817. The evidence against the five men accused was essentially circumstantial, but quite sound. In 1817, they were all condemned and executed at Lancaster. The second case was a riot in which a

Figure 4: A selection of pupils’ evaluations of the project

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What has been a challenge?It was all a challenge! The court case was the hardest.

Speaking in the courtroom. It helped my confidence.

The court case: IT WAS REALLY FUN THOUGH.

Getting up to speak in front of everyone was a challenge for me.

I did not think we had enough time to prepare the court case, but we did in the end.

The first presentation we did on crime

What did you think would be difficult?I thought there would be expert Historians who would leave me behind, but it wasn’t like that.

To prepare a case from scratch.

I thought everyone would be cleverer than me, that getting on with others would be hard, but I have made several new friends.

What did you do that you were really pleased about?The court case

I was pleased how I coped with my group. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but they turned out to be great people and great friends as well.

We won! Even though the prosecution had a good case.

Making new friends, gaining more confidence and overcoming my shyness.

I surprised myself with how I handled the judge. I was stuck at several points in my speech, but I came through and convinced the jury they were innocent

Interviewing Jon Parkin and the court case

I actually got up and spoke in the courtroom

mill was attacked and destroyed, at Westhoughton near Manchester in 1819. From the large number of defendants, we chose two, one whose involvement was quite easy to prove, the other who was by contrast, easy to defend. In 1819, the first was condemned, despite his youth, and the other acquitted (Figure 3).

Defence and prosecution would prepare quite separately. They would have extracts from the original

court records and news reports so that they could decide who to call as witnesses and what questions to ask. Because there were two cases, each pupil would be counsel in one case and juror in the other. The jurors’ only knowledge of the case they heard would be what they heard in court.

The idea was simple; implementation would be difficult. We were fortunate to have tremendous


groups, if anything, enhanced the final product. We felt this was a validation of the methods used and of the success of the project as a whole. The comments in the pupils’ appraisals bear this out (see Figure 4).

At this last meeting, the pupils worked together to produce a PowerPoint covering the whole project, each group was detailed to cover a discrete part. The advantage of the PowerPoint is that a completed presentation was produced, a copy of which every participant could take away. The pupils used video recording so that the presentation is mainly clips of the pupils explaining their work and ideas, with little supporting text. It was an impressive achievement for sixteen pupils to complete this in just one day, part of which was taken up with a presentation ceremony and a loyal toast (to the Duke of Lancaster, of course.)

Our year’s work has been a pilot. Although the staff have not yet met to discuss the evaluations, we are confident the programme has been a success. We are now planning to run the event again next academic year, with more pupils and a few refinements. We expect our final evaluation to show that the target of engaging and stretching able pupils has been met admirably. We have achieved our primary aim of developing thinking skills; indeed, a wide range of skills has been refined on this programme.

Box tickers will be delighted to know that we have covered a wide range of estimable goals: • Citizenship• Group work• Role play• Inter-school co-operation• Local History• Involvement of outside agencies

We are sure that other teachers will be able to replicate our successes. The model could be adapted to other topics and locations. The approach used seems best suited to history, as a subject in which pupils, from their earliest studies, have to engage with uncertainty. But other subject areas may be able to adapt the model to suit their disciplines.

RefeRences

1. Thanks to the full team: Carnforth High School, Rachel Beesley, Guy Woolnough; Central Lancaster High School, Kim Hodges; Garstang High School, Simon Milward-Hopkins; Hornby High School, Liz Hurley; Lancaster Girls Grammar School. Katy Allen; Lancaster Castle Museum, Christine Goodier, Eric Wilkinson; St Martin’s College Lancaster, Arthur Chapman.

2. To find out more about Leading Edge projects, go to www.standards.dfes.gov.uk/leadingedge3. For a wide range of activities on teaching about crime and punishment

through history, try www.learningcurve.gov.uk

support from the museum and from St Martin’s College. The museum managed to secure permission for us to stage our trials in the Shire Hall, a Victorian courtroom still used today. Mr Eric Wilkinson, of the museum, volunteered to take the role of judge - his robes and his knowledge of the nineteenth century legal process were a major factor in the success of the occasion. Eric carried off the role with aplomb. He displayed the gravitas expected, but also managed to be very sympathetic in how he handled the very youthful counsel presenting the cases.

History students from St Martin’s took on the roles of witnesses and defendants. They too made an invaluable contribution. They briefed themselves from the original trial records and used their historical empathy to answer questions of which they had no prior knowledge. Their performance was perfect; only one of them was condemned to death!

We all felt the day was a triumph. To take the role of defence or prosecution in a genuine law court was a major challenge for pupils in years eight and nine. It was fascinating to see how tense the pupils were, as though it were a real trial. The challenge for the reticent pupil was to stand in court and interrogate a witness, without knowing how he or she might reply. We were impressed at a couple of pupils who are not conventionally able; they sometimes struggle with top set written work, but in the cut and thrust of court room debate they were clearly in control.

Promoting thinking skills was a major target. We have seen how this target has almost taken on a life of its own. When we were interviewing Mr Parkin, the whole debate centred on ethics. But once we got to the trials, the emphasis was on logic. Defence and prosecution never asked themselves the question: ‘Did they really do it?’ The only issues were ‘How can we prove our case? How can we undermine the other side?’ For example, one case concerned a burglary and murder. The defence realised that evidence against the accused was strong in the case of the burglary but very weak in the murder. So the defence focused on linking the two crimes, then showing that the murder case was very weak. They secured an acquittal, though in 1809 the men had been convicted and executed.

We have just reached the conclusion of the project for this cohort of pupils. At their final meeting, the pupils planned and produced a presentation using knowledge and skills developed on the project. The focus of this meeting will be on teamwork, using The Apprentice as an exemplar, except that our teams completed their tasks with less swearing and better co-operation. This last meeting was in fact the most relaxed of all the sessions the pupils came to. We therefore decided to give them a new challenge, following Sir Alan’s example, by changing the groups completely so that everyone was working with a new team. This reforming of the


CPD NotesIt may be hard to recreate exactly what Woolnough and his team achieved in this project, but there are many lessons to be drawn from such a project.

What outside support exists in your area? Have you approached the local museum to see what they could offer your history department – many are very keen to get more involved in schools and education in general. Why not put it on your departmental development plan for the coming year? Local archives can also provide treasures for the classroom. There may be an archivist who is willing to help, but if not, and if the history department is suffering from other pressures, then set a competition for several able pupils in the archive centre, local library or even on the internet? Pupils could simply be challenged to find a little known piece of local history and explain why it holds particular interest for them. This would at least give the pressured history teacher a decent selection to choose from!

This project benefited from the use of a wide range of people, inside and outside the classroom. Parents of pupils can provide another source of valid knowledge or experience. The Modern Foreign Languages department often has a good idea of what different parents do for a living. Some legal companies and others e.g. BBC have systems to encourage their staff to help in local educational settings. Or you could simply follow the example of this project and write to the Prime Minister to see what he has to offer.

Woolnough and his team correctly identify crime and punishment as a topic which hooks in a range of pupils, provides challenging scenarios and gives opportunities for contemporary comparisons while also conveniently hitting those citizenship targets. While Crime and Punishment is an increasingly popular development study at GCSE, there are also numerous opportunities to link this area into other key stages. Why not give your department some research homework on the learningcurve website? After sharing views in the next department meeting, you could agree to each trial one enquiry with one class during the next term.

One way that this particular project challenges the most able pupils is by enabling them to learn from and with able pupils in other schools. More history departments could benefit from taking this approach. If taking small groups out of school is a challenge to staffing, why not consider the route of webdebates? Many ICT teachers and network managers would be more than keen to see computers being used in this fashion and once set up, a similar scheme could be used in future years. At an even simpler level, why not ask the school down the road if your most able pupils could email their last history essays to each other. Each pupil should write three positive comments on the essay received and post it back. Why shouldn’t pupils be challenged at a level beyond that of their immediate peers?

One of the simplest and most effective elements of this particular project is the pupil led element linked to the pupil evaluations. While some structure may be necessary, the most able pupils often need a sense of freedom and independence in order to pursue the aspect of a subject that really interests them. Think through your departmental schemes of work – how much room do they give for independent study or choice? Take ten minutes of a department meeting to think through a variety of ways of encouraging independence in the classroom. Pupils choosing from a list of topics for research? Pupils choosing their own enquiry questions? Pupils choosing their own methods of enquiry? Many of the ideas may seem risky at first, but if activities are carefully followed through pupils will become more focused learners. Track pupils’ own opinions with pupil voice to see how they react to these opportunities.

Politics, history and stories about the Cold WarInterpretation of the Cold War is a fascinating area. Many students begin to study it certain pre-formed ideas – gleaned from their parents, perhaps, or from films or computer games. Historians have interpreted it in different ways – and those who believe in the ‘twenty-year rule’ that historical judgment is impossible until twenty years after an event can only just start to do so. The ‘traditional’ classification of Cold War historiography (traditional, of course, is a problematic term in this time-frame) is into ‘original,’ ‘revisionist’ and ‘post-revisionist’ historians, although there are many, many problems to do with when, where and for whom the historian was writing. More recent historians have had access to far more documentation than their predecessors, which has also affected their interpretations.

The original American line was, fairly predictably, that the Cold War was the fault of the Soviets – for their actions following Yalta, for Stalin’s provocative behaviour in Europe in the late 1940s, and for the generally expansionist evil that was Communism. This is the line of George Kennan, the State Department official (and historian) who was at least partly responsible for the theory of containment.1 In the era of McCarthyism, which American historian would have wished to disagree? Soviet historians (ritual criticism of whose freedom to write independently is so often well rewarded in some examination questions) were equally certain that the fault lay with the West. The history of the recent present was used for political purposes precisely because during the Cold War it really mattered who had started it. ‘Winning’ looked like it would require allies aplenty – and each side needed to advertise itself as the aggrieved party.

This is not to say that American intellectuals all thought that the USSR had caused the Cold War. Revisionism in the west waxed as McCarthy waned and dissent became possible. The first real example of a western historian blaming the west for the Cold War came from W.A.Williams in 1958 and focused on the conflict as a consequence of American and Soviet economic expansion leading to an inevitable imperial clash.2 This opened the door to other historians who looked to America for political causes for the Cold War. These works also involved an element of moral judgment. Williams’s very title involved Tragedy, and the revisionism in the USA came almost entirely from

the political left. Post-revisionism, when it came, was an attempt to describe the causes of the Cold War in terms other than blame. If the War was to be nobody’s fault it had to be in some sense inevitable and beyond the ability of any one ruler or state to solve. In his latest work John Lewis Gaddis, a major post-revisionist, uses new evidence from the Soviet archives to conclude that, in fact, the Cold War was, if not caused, at least consolidated by the paranoid actions of Stalin.3 Gaddis also seeks to explain how the Cold War continued to be caused (in that the preconditions for ‘war’ were repeatedly renewed) and how it finished.

Much of the historiography about the Cold War is concerned with its causes, course or conduct. There has been some recent work on its impact on popular culture, which is an important aspect of its historical significance.4 The impact of the War on popular culture is as much a part of interpretations as reading history books. What can Billy Joel tell us reliably about the Cold War? Perhaps not a lot, but he tells us about the Cold War’s place in American society.5 What about all of those Cold War films? What can James Bond tell us about the Cold War? Did the makers of From Russia with Love take the Red Menace seriously?6 What could account for the popularity of novels such as The Hunt for Red October?7 Perhaps the Cold War – with its tension, its polarisation between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ and, let’s face it, it’s weaponry, is simply inherently interesting to address in the creative arts. There is more to it than just that, though: the Vietnam War seems to have had a profound effect on American society; for an American politician even to mention it is still playing with political fire. The meaning of the Cold War, in the popular mind, is interestingly uncertain.

Interpretations of the Cold War are not just historiographical. To the extent that it is, causation and politics dominate (perhaps because the historiography was started by a politician). But it also occupies a part in the collective consciousness of the western world where it is, a rich contextual setting for a good story.

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PolychroniconA Level: 1� to 1� years

This topic represents an excellent chance to get your students thinking about the factors which lie behind the formation of an interpretation. A good way in might be to get them reading John Lewis Gaddis – all of him. He has nine major publications spanning 30 years so the work will need to be split around the class. Ask What has made Gaddis change his mind? – or, to get an opposite effect, you might focus on the areas where he has remained consistent. Gaddis makes excellent use of newly available archival material to form his arguments. You might also focus on a particular aspect of the Cold War – perhaps the Cuban Missile Crisis, which so many historians regard as the Cold War’s tensest moment, asking Why has the Cuban Missile Crisis been seen as so significant? This will lead you into a fruitful discussion not just of the Cold War, but also of the way in which different historians interpret the second-order concept of significance. Does the concept have a

Designing enquiries to make students think about interpretations of the Cold War

REFERENCES1. In the so-called ‘X’ article: X (1947) ‘The sources of Soviet conduct,’ Foreign

Affairs; Kennan’s identity as X was not a particularly well-kept secret.2. Williams, W. (1958) The Tragedy of American Diplomacy, Delta 3. Gaddis, J. (2005) The Cold War, a New History, The Penguin Press4. E.g. Whitfield, S. (1996) The Culture of the Cold War (the American

Moment), John Hopkins University Press 5. Joel, B. (1989) ‘We didn’t start the fire,’ Storm Front, Sony6. Young, T. (dir), Fleming, I., Harwood, J. & Maiburm, R. (wr.) (1963) From

Russia with Love, Eon Productions Ltd.7. Clancy, T. (1984) The Hunt for Red October, Berkley

Further ReadingThe Cold War Oral History Project – a fascinating project devoted to making oral history available online: www.vmi.edu/archives/archivecoldwar/Freedman, L. (2001) The Cold War, Cassels – perhaps the pre-eminent British historian of the Cold War

This edition of Polychronicon was compiled by Tony McConnell, Mill Hill County High School (11-18 comprehensive), London.

Polychronicon was a fourteenth-century chronicle that brought together much of the knowledge of its own age. Our Polychronicon in Teaching History is a regular feature helping school history teachers to update their subject knowledge, with special emphasis on recent historiography and changing interpretation.

John Kennedy meeting with Nikita Khrushchev in 1961.

different meaning for different historians? What about for the public at large? Or does it change its meaning from topic to topic? Of course you could also try any of these enquiries with your gifted and talented Year 9s…

Key Stage �: 11 to 14 yearsKey Stage 3 students might undertake some oral history. Ask them Why do different people think different things about the Cold War? and then start them off on a project. Get them to come up with a list of questions that they could ask, and then to ask different people (ages, nationalities, professions) to see how their answers differ. Then they need to account for those different answers as well as they can. Alternatively, focus on the popular culture element by asking Do films about the Vietnam War have a common message?

Anti-Vietnam demonstration, Arlington, Virginia, October 21, 1967.

In a NutshellHigh Achievement in History

WHAT IS HISTORY?

History is a discipline that attempts to understand human beings, the civilisations, cultures, nations and communities that they make and that make them. History is about time because everything human has its time and time runs out: it is about change, development, coming into being and passing away and about understanding people in different times whose worlds are no longer and are no longer our own. History is also about the stories that human beings tell themselves about time – about who they think they are, where they think they came from, where they think their past is leading them, and so on. It is also about the ways in which these stories themselves change with time and with the purposes of their tellers.

WHAT IS HIGH ACHIEVEMENT IN HISTORY?

We can only ever know a little of our history – time is short. Nevertheless, high achievement in history is inseparable from wide knowledge and understanding of the human past across the full span of human time. We cannot know any of this, in the strong sense of know, however, if we do not know the difference between the past, which is gone, and stories about the past, which are everywhere and which go on and on: high achievement in history, therefore, must mean understanding interpretations and accounts. We cannot understand interpretations or stories as history, however, without a thorough grasp of historical enquiry or an understanding of how to ask questions and how to pursue their answers through historical research and through inference and account construction. High achievement in history, therefore, is about understanding the nature of history stories, and about knowing how to construct, compare and analyse warranted history stories. It is also about understanding a lot of these stories covering a broad range of the human past and about knowing how to draw measured conclusions from these individual stories and from the big story of the human past as a whole that deepen our understanding of what it is to be human.

WHAT CAN I DO TO ENCOURAGE IT?

High achievement in history is inseparable from a developed understanding of the discipline of history. We encourage this understanding best by modelling the discipline through our teaching and by exemplifying careful historical thinking in the stories we tell, the enquiries we set up and the activities we design. We encourage developed disciplinary understanding best, also, through practice: effective teaching and learning in history is necessarily structured through enquiry and explicitly builds understanding of enquiry as a process; our curriculum planning across key stages, therefore, ought to scaffold and spiral the development of enquiry as a disposition and as a set of procedures and understandings. Enquiries need answers and high achievement in history is about understanding how to formulate answers to historical questions: effective curriculum planning, therefore, must focus on and constantly return to the construction of historical accounts and arguments grounded in evidence. Writing history stories and arguments goes hand in hand with studying those that have already been written and with developing understanding of the nature of historical accounts and interpretations. Above and beyond all this, high achievement in history is inseparable from a broad understanding of the human past as a whole: schemes of work and planning across key stages, therefore, need to provide children with opportunities to study a wide range of time periods and dimensions of the human past and teaching and learning needs to be designed to ensure that children make links in their thinking between different time periods and issues that they have studied.

WHERE CAN I FIND OUT MORE?

The NAGTY History Think Tank summary paper ‘Supporting High Achievement in History‘ available at www.nagty.ac.uk/professional_academy/think_tanks/history.aspx suggests strategies for developing historical thinking. What we know about how children’s historical thinking can de developed is cogently summarised by Peter Lee in Chapter 2 of Donovan, S., et al, eds. (2004) How Students Learn, History In The Classroom, Washington: The National Academies Press. This publication is available online at http://newton.nap.edu/books/0309089484/html/


A top-ability Year 8 class, inherited at the beginning of my NQT year, was a dream come true. The group in question had been very well taught in Year 7 and so the students already had a strong conceptual awareness and a striking confidence in their own knowledge and understanding. More importantly, they had been well and truly inspired by all things historical in their first year of secondary school and were hungry for more. I was onto a winner from the start. All I had to do was pick up where my predecessor had left off and just do more of the same…

If only. As is often the case with the most able of students, generally excellent behaviour and consistent compliance enables the teacher to get away with an awful lot. I knew that skimping on planning would not provoke a riot amongst these Year 8s (and I had my fair share of behaviourally challenging groups). In order to keep this class on track, I knew that I had to be alert to my own potential for complacency. I did not want this to be the group that always suffered as a result of the more obvious demands upon my time and resources made by other students. By the same token, in what is traditionally the year of the Key Stage 3 ‘dip’, I was also aware of the possibility that this high-ability group could switch into ‘autopilot’ as we moved through Year 8, their progression suffering as a result.

Getting the balance rightEven if complacency can be avoided, the balance is still a notoriously tricky one to maintain with this kind of class. On the one hand, it is so easy to slip into overkill mode, cramming so much into a lesson that nobody has time to think. On the other, in an attempt to keep all avenues of enquiry wide open, there can be

A team-taught conspiracy: Year 8 are caught up in a genuine historical debate

Ellie

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Ellie C

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Are top sets always our top priority? Of course, we know that every child matters (should that now have capital letters?) but those of us who teach in an ability-setted context also know that a bottom set left unable to access the curriculum is likely to pose bigger problems than a top set which is a little bored, and that there are only so many hours of the day available for planning lessons. In this article Ellie Chrispin, who has just completed her NQT year, gives an unusual example of a teaching strategy which has successfully inspired her top set Year 8. Inspired by TV coverage of the four hundredth anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot, she created a lesson in which her students could investigate the hype by working out what actually had happened. Enlisting a colleague to team-teach with her, Chrispin set up half her class to be entirely convinced that Guy Fawkes had attempted to destroy Parliament, while the other half were equally convinced that he and his co-conspirators had in fact been set up by high-ranking Protestants such as Robert Cecil. Crucially, both sides used exactly the same evidence. Chrispin’s class learned to argue as historians do. This article also suggests a salutary warning – even the most able students were extremely easy to convince of a particular teacher-led interpretation of the evidence available.

a tendency to leave the precise structure and content of a lesson so vague that nobody knows exactly what it is they should be thinking about. In this sense of course, high-ability students do not require anything different to those found at the other end of the ability spectrum. Clarity, access and challenge have to remain central to planning if it is to secure each individual’s learning and progression. Identifying and working with the particular needs of a class is a key starting point. My own challenge with this group of extremely able students, then, was consistently to stretch and inspire each one of them. I knew that short-cuts just would not be an option. This would be no mean feat. Only the use of teaching strategies targeted specifically at the students’ needs, and driven first and foremost by the subject, would keep these students engaged with and really tuned into the history.

This was the pivotal point – the discipline itself. I knew that I needed to interact with these students as a historian. In turn, they needed to interact with one another as historians. But what does that really mean? I refer to all of my students as ‘historians’ on a regular basis, but how often I actually allow them to become immersed in the nitty-gritty of genuine historical debate or investigation (rather than remaining spectators, or temporary participants) is another matter. With this class, the students themselves needed to be part of the process of historical construction. More than that, getting students to approach their learning as ‘historians’ has to be about removing the need to put periods or topics into discrete boxes, to impose arbitrary dividing lines upon the past. If my Year 8 students were to move forward in their understanding, they had to be allowed to see the ways in which the past knits together. For example, they needed to come to an awareness that the causes of one event might hold


similarities and differences with those of another event, and that, by drawing such contrasts and comparisons, new light can be shed upon both.

Becoming historiansI could not expect the group to become historians without some guidance from me. A few months into the school year, I felt that some explicit modelling of what it means to be in the business of constructing the past might breathe new life into the Early Stuart scheme of work. Inspiration arrived with a piece of primetime television history. The four hundredth anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot gave rise to a televised attempt to reconstruct the explosion that never happened, involving a to-scale model of the parliament building, crash-test dummies and lots of real gunpowder.1 Whilst Top Gear’s Richard Hammond’s attempt to create a big bang was an entertaining and fairly harmless spectacle per se, I was struck by the way in which the programme entirely ignored the huge question marks surrounding the story, not to mention the none-too-subtle parallels being drawn between a failed terrorist attack on the heart of the seventeenth-century government and the bombings in London in July 2005. I felt disgruntled at just how much was being taken for granted about the way I, as a viewer, was approaching the content of the programme. I wanted Year 8 to begin to ask the kinds of questions about the process of constructing and presenting history as a result of their own learning, investigation and enquiry, that I had been forced to ask as a result of the documentary.

The work I did with the group on the Gunpowder Plot provides the best example of the way in which I was able, on occasion, to successfully intrigue and engage, as well as motivate and move this group on. As a topic that can engender banal source analysis, or a rehashing of primary school work on Guy Fawkes and fireworks, I felt this was a subject begging to be dealt with differently. I wanted to sustain the mystery and fascination inherent in the narrative by getting the students to a point at which they were able to place the events of November 1605 into a present-day context. But they had to arrive at that point for themselves. I had taught the Plot as part of a three lesson enquiry during my PGCE year, in which students were given the official story in the first lesson, the ‘conspiracy’ theory in the second, and asked to make up their own minds in the third. This linear, directive approach just would not have worked for my own class. In an already-stretched Year 8 curriculum, I also did not want to get bogged down in the minutiae of the story and did not have time to devote lessons to setting up the medium-term context of the Plot. I also knew that I wanted to give these students the chance to take part in a live historical debate, rather than yet another excuse to trawl through some sources.

ConspiracyUnable to haul the makers of the explosion documentary up in front of the class to be interrogated and questioned about their motives for producing such polemic, I had to look a little closer to home for a starting point. I was fortunate enough to teach my Year 8 group during a departmental colleague’s free period; we decided to experiment in some team-teaching. We split the class into two halves and taught them separately for the first part of the lesson. What the students would not realise during this section of the lesson is that they were being taught two different versions of the Gunpowder Plot narrative, only to be brought together at the end of the lesson to argue out their case with one another. The historiographical consensus on the Gunpowder Plot is now, very firmly, that it was genuine (and that a Catholic conspiracy had indeed intended to eliminate the King in Parliament). Nevertheless, there is evidence, which has caused genuine historical debate, that Catesby, Fawkes et al had been set up. It is this evidence with which half the class would engage.2

It was essential that we separate the group physically; we used the school library in order to bring about the division. To get such a compliant lot into an argumentative mood from the outset, I was happy to tell the group selected to go to the library that I had simply had enough of teaching them. This induced just the right amount of outrage. Once separated, the lesson followed exactly the same pattern for each half of the class. A simple brainstorm of everything the group knew about 5 November provided an ideal springboard into the issues. The group being sold the ‘official’ story fed in all the right lines. From bonfire night being about a Catholic plot to blow up the king, to Guy Fawkes being the key player, and so on and so forth, all of these ideas were then to be reinforced by the evidence. For the conspiracy theorists, the brainstorm provided lots of ideas and preconceptions that would soon be blown out of the water by the very same contemporary sources being used by the other half of the class (see Figure 1). The lesson question, Why is Guy Fawkes burned every 5th November? confronted students with the interpretations angle from the outset. This overarching question was further broken down into two sub-questions: what happened in November 1605 and why did it happen? These questions gave students a focus for some close reading of the evidence during which they highlighted the text in two different colours depending on whether the evidence pertained to the what or the why question.

Influencing the studentsIt was during feedback on the reading exercise that we as teachers really had to go to town on the historical spin. At this point it was crucial that each of us knew

They

needed to

interact

with one

another as

historians.

Figu

re 1: Worksheet used by both groups in the lesson


exactly what verdict we wanted our group of students to reach. We really hammed it up, sounding incredibly decisive about all the details of the case. My colleague was able to exploit the vast array of questions that surround the original story and get the students questioning absolutely every single piece of evidence they considered. He ensured that his group believed that the whole plot was a Protestant conspiracy to discredit the Catholics in England. Left to proffer the official story, I stirred up a sense of outrage amongst students and played on their instinctive fears of plots and sabotage, as well as the natural inclination that lies within every Year 8 student to search for a baddy! When we were happy with our efforts at spin, students had a few minutes to jot down their verdicts, including some justification from the evidence available. This meant that when we brought the two halves of the class back together each student was absolutely clear about their own perspective on events.

This is the point at which we were really able to go to town and let the argumentative sparks fly. The two halves of the class were brought back together and immediately presented with the gruesome image of the plotters’ executions (see Figure 2). A few of the most grisly details were pointed out before I asked the students what they had done to deserve such a fate. As the students began to offer very assured, yet incredibly different, answers to the same question, backing up their answers with almost identical evidence (and as they began to notice that something was up), my colleague and I joined the debate. The class were then divided into groups of four, with two students from the separate halves of the class represented in each group. They were charged with arguing out the facts and trying to convince one another of their stance whilst their teachers were ready to contradict and challenge them just as soon as they thought they had settled on a particular verdict.

Resolving the debateThe students’ engagement was not simply about watching two members of staff lay into one another verbally, although the excitement surrounding the fact that we apparently had dramatically opposing opinions was tangible.3 These students were witnessing a genuine historical debate and they wanted to, and could, be fully involved because not only had they been given the evidential tools to do so, but they were also seeing the argument itself being modelled for them. Best of all, the nature of our involvement pushed students into drawing their own conclusions. Any tendencies amongst them to settle with the point of view preferred by the teacher were removed. As the question of who to believe was impossible to answer, students were forced to think about what they should believe and why. Finally, we could discuss the programme on TV, which some of them had seen.

Was the hype justified? What about the links with al-Qaeda?

By coming out of role for the plenary, and by pulling the class out of their adversarial role too, I could help these very able students to access the very highest level of historical thinking. Simply posing them with the question of why different groups, audiences and historians may want to view the events of November 1605 in a particular light, and by exploring the different factors that would determine a particular stance, finally set the argument into its crucial context. These students had taken part in a historical debate – a debate which they had been helped to see not only resonated with their own world, but one which had meant just as much to people who came before them and would continue to resonate with those who came after.

This activity worked so well for a number of reasons. It enabled me really to stretch my students’ argument and analysis. It enabled them to take ownership of a historical debate – and to assess why, and to whom, that debate might be important. Most importantly, they got to see that their history teachers are also historians, engaged in historical enquiry, disagreeing and arguing just as they should. These very able students are trainee historians, and we treated them as such.

Of course, on a few occasions over the year complacency has crept in, and of course this group of Year 8s has never actually rioted. However, by always having history at the very top of the agenda, and by being allowed to engage with that history as historians, this group of able students have, by and large, met the challenge they faced this year: to remain inspired, engaged, challenged and tuned into history.

REFERENCES1. Slee, M. (2005) Exploding the Legend, Darlow Smithson

Productions2. For a summary of the relevant historiography, see McConnell, T.

(2006) ‘Whose conspiracy? The plot of 1605,’ Teaching History 122, Rethinking History Edition.

3. Part of the work on Alexander the Great for the Historical Association’s Key Stage 2-3 Transition Project includes a similar idea as ‘Oliver Stone’ and ‘Wen Balsh’ are brought in to debate in front of a class – see http://czv.e2bn.net/e2bn/leas/c99/schools/czv/web/website_files/mp4/alex4.html and Wrenn, A. and Brown, G. (2005) ‘”It’s like they’ve gone up a year!” Gauging the impact of a history transition unit on teachers of primary and secondary history,’ Teaching History 121, Transition Edition.

Figure 2: Execution of the plotters

I wanted to

give these

students

the chance

to take part

in a live

historical

debate.


CPD NotesThere are two main ways of engaging the most able students demonstrated in this article. Team-teaching is a powerful tool, although clearly it is not all that easy to implement. Nevertheless, there may be ways to achieve similar effects without over-stretching the already busy members of your department. The other way in which Chrispin engages her most able is by the more general principle of treating them as historians. How to do this successfully should be the major focus of your CPD activities with this article.

The most important part of learning history is to learn how to be a historian. One might argue that this is critical for all our students. It is especially important that the most able are explicitly introduced to it. After all, it is our most able students today who are the historians of tomorrow. The future of our discipline depends upon inspiring those with the potential to be these historians. This sounds rather dramatic, but does not imply that every great historian must have had a great history teacher. If we wish to inspire our students to be good historians, that rather suggests that we must begin with a coherent idea of what a good historian actually is. You could use Chrispin’s article as a springboard for that. What does she assume about what historians should be able to do? What else might you add to the mix? This could be a fruitful avenue to explore in a department meeting. Once you have a picture of what might make a good historian, you might be able to identify your most able students, or to build a progression model for your most able.

Historians have certain characteristics in terms of their knowledge, and in terms of their skills, but also in terms of their enthusiasm for and interest in the past. How on earth can you quantify enthusiasm and interest? It is, perhaps, worth a discussion. Although you may not reach an answer, you might find the discussion helpful. The key, as with any progression, is not really quantification – it is nurturing, and building on, students’ abilities and talents. So how might you do that? Discuss as a department all the ways in which your most able students demonstrate their enthusiasm. Are there particular parts of your schemes of work which seem more engaging? Or are there areas which few of your students enjoy? If so, what can you learn about the way you teach certain topics? Furthermore, do particular teachers get more out of certain types of students than their colleagues? This is a sensitive issue; it helps to remember that every teacher can do some things instinctively, but must learn others. Somebody in your department, cluster, or circle of teachers, is likely to be an instinctively good teacher of the most able. Get them to analyse what they do (this process will improve their own practice) and share their ideas with everybody else (perhaps in return for some tips on how to support under-achieving boys, or whichever group of students they find most difficult). You may well find that engaging the most able is about employing a consistently questioning attitude, or about the teacher modelling the process of historical enquiry, or even about the teacher making ridiculous suggestions and asking to be shot down. The key is to build on the successes which instinctively occur. Perhaps use peer observations to help teachers to analyse their own practice.

The other major aspect of Chrispin’s work is her use of team-teaching. This is not something which can be employed particularly often, but it is worth trying. Can you identify moments in your schemes of work when it would be particularly useful? The Gunpowder Plot, which has easily understood and completely contrasting interpretations deriving from the same evidence, seems perfect, but there are other examples out there. Perhaps you could even go one further and, rather than simulating academic debate between two history teachers (neither of whom, in this case, was a particular expert on the Gunpowder Plot) you could invite in some academics and ask them to have an argument. What better way to make historians out of your students than to have real historians in the classroom?


TEACH �-1�from Paul Bracey from the Ireland in Schools project on the issues raised in his study of the teaching of Ireland in British history. We also had input from teachers who grapple with these issues every day in their classroom.

For many of these issues it was felt that they were controversial because the children involved had already received different narratives. They might have learnt about the same events through family, religious or cultural links outside the classroom. This can lead to emotive reactions when pupils face a different narrative inside the classroom. It was suggested that pupils can hold more than one narrative understanding of the past; that there can be a difference between an ‘authoritative discourse’ and an ‘internally persuasive’ discourse.

The weekend resulted in a commonly-agreed set of research questions, and an agreed methodology. We are not expecting similar results from each Key Stage, but we do need to ensure compatibility in the final report. Key areas to investigate seem to be:

• the context for teaching emotional and controversial issues – where does the NC allow/ encourage us to do this? And do the QCA Scheme of Work help us to address controversy?

• What choices do schools and teachers make within this context? Do they choose to teach controversial issues or do they avoid them? And which issues are taught?

• What exactly is the best pedagogical approach to teaching controversial issues?

The group is meeting again in October to discuss progress and to explore similarities and differences in the way teachers approach emotional and controversial issues. The researchers are looking for case studies and examples. If you would like to contribute to the project, or know of colleagues who you think are teaching these topics and issues well, and who might be happy to talk about this, then please do get in touch with us: [email protected] and we will forward the details to the relevant researcher. Our final meeting is in December, following which the steering group of the project will produce a final report which will be presented to the DfES in March and sent to every teacher member of the HA. This is a real opportunity for us to explore how these difficult, yet engaging topics are currently taught in history, and an opportunity to highlight good practice and to spread that throughout the history community.

Mary Woolley

The Historical Association recently received funding from the DfES to carry out a research project on teaching emotive and controversial history (TEACH). Of course, all history, by the very nature of historiographical debate, can be seen as controversial. Indeed, many history teachers search out the controversy in a particular area in order to engage pupil interest. However, this project is more concerned with how potentially sensitive subject matter is handled in the history classroom.

It is a challenging task to rank events according to how controversial or emotive they are. Factors such as distance in time, audience and medium can affect the sensitivity of any event. Hence, to one pupil, the Irish question may be more controversial than the Vietnam War, to another a study of communism may be more emotive than a study of the slave trade. Some history teachers may suggest that it is often easier to avoid topics that are likely to provoke an emotive reaction. Perhaps the subject matter is taught from a perspective that is not controversial, or a slightly spurious ‘middle way’ is reached. This project is looking for good practice from teachers who have taken up the challenge of teaching about sensitive issues that they know may well prove controversial in their classrooms.

The project has appointed five researchers who are looking at the way we approach the teaching of controversial issues in each Key Stage. Michael Riley of Bath Spa University College is researching good practice at Key Stage 3, Richard Harris of Southampton University good practice at GCSE and Alison Webb at A level. Penelope Harnett and Helena Gillespie are the other researchers. They are looking for examples of good practice that are specific to each Key Stage, but also for common threads and themes, so that perhaps we can make comparisons and reach conclusions on some of the best ways to enrich history teaching and learning through controversial and emotive issues.

The group met for a weekend in June 2006 to hear from a set of experts in the field and form a common set of initial research questions. Sue Bennett gave examples from across Europe on what teachers feel constitutes sensitive content in their classrooms. These included World War Two, particularly with respect to ethnic cleansing and deportations, some civil wars, some personalities, the impact of communist policies and empires. Farid Panjwani, of the Aga Khan University spoke about the way Muslims view history teaching and learning, both here and in the Muslim world, and why that might be controversial. Marika Sherwood warned us of the dangers of an ethnocentric curriculum and discussed the issues of inclusion and diversity. Finally, we heard


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A plea for understandingMarc Bloch wrote, ‘Have patience. History is not yet what it should be,‘ and as history teachers we know, as Bloch did, that our students are the future of the discipline.1 However, history students seem to encounter difficulties in transition between school and university. Regular and direct contact between historians, teachers and students of all ages is essential. More importantly, we need history as a living discipline that thrives on debate about what exactly it means to know, learn, teach and write about the past. Thus, there is a compelling need for institutions and individuals that provide history education to understand one another.2 Our involvement in the Researcher in Residence scheme helped us in some small way to begin to achieve that goal.

AimsOn one level we simply wanted to give history, as a professional practice, a human face. We were saying, ‘Look, we don’t just make this stuff up. People like Will Pettigrew build careers on researching and writing about the past.‘ There is a serious point here. We wanted to show that our knowledge of the past derives from the research, interpretation and analysis carried about by individuals, and that this is necessary because the past is not observable in the way that rainfall or electrolysis is. In other words, we were trying to show that the past, our past, is being constructed through the combined activities of people like Will Pettigrew

We wanted to encourage our sixth-formers to be more independent, and to see themselves as historians, with the confidence to pursue aspects of the past they felt drawn to. Stepping beyond the specification and finding that you have a real interest in Russian economic history, or the Dutch Golden Age is a powerful incentive to confront the complexities of the past because you are driven by a desire to know rather than merely to pass an exam. Exploring an event or period

The Use and Abuse of a History Researcher in Residence

The Researcher in Residence scheme, funded through the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), brings together researchers and teachers by getting doctoral students into schools. Will Pettigrew, an expert on the Atlantic Slave trade and DPhil student at Lincoln College, Oxford worked with students and staff from the History Department at Aylesbury High School for five days in the 2005-6 academic year.

will also generate experience and knowledge which students can draw on when studying their examined units. One task for our Researcher in Residence was to support our pupils in the development of techniques and dispositions central to their personal investigations. More importantly, though, we wanted Will Pettigrew to help us nurture good, old-fashioned interest by exemplifying the personal compulsion to uncover the past.

Linked to this was our desire to bring different perspectives into the classroom to help develop our students’ understanding of some key second order concepts, in particular historical change. The message was that a theoretical understanding of how change operates is, in some ways, best derived from empirical research, and so our Researcher in Residence would help to present history as an holistic practice in which thinking about the past conceptually is inseparable from studying its actuality. In the event, this encouraged the girls to discuss their internalised working assumptions about how the past operates, and we moved some way to appreciating that it is not just professional historians who have a philosophy of history.

In Key Stage 3, we wanted Will Pettigrew to run some workshops on the Atlantic Slave Trade and Empire to support the work that we had already done in these areas. We hoped that the students would ask ‘an expert’ different questions to the ones they asked us, which they did. The belief in our department is that we make (or break) our historians in Key Stage 3, and so we wanted to inspire and enthuse these younger students.

Finally, we wanted to feed into some processes and activities we had undertaken as part of a recent restructuring of our provision. We had recently extended our extra-curricular activities and knew our girls would welcome some outside involvement. Similarly we wanted to exploit Will Pettigrew’s expertise as part of a review of our new Key Stage 3 programme. Figure 1 is a list of


triumphs

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BenefitsThe Researcher in Residence scheme fitted in well with our longer-term goal to raise the profile of History within the school and the consciousness of pupils and parents. Will Pettigrew’s work certainly helped us to do that, and it had some very positive effects on the way our students viewed the historical process and profession. Working with Will Pettigrew as a teaching team also raised our awareness of certain issues that may seem obvious but soon get obscured in a result-led environment. Firstly, if we want our students to go on and study history further then we need to bring that world to them and personalise it so that they not only know what will be demanded of them, but also are given a sense of the passion and absorption that research and study can engender. Secondly, contact with someone like Will Pettigrew leads you to examine, as an educator, what your perspective on the past is, and to consider the vision of History that you are projecting to your students. Discussion about what, as a department, you are trying to achieve, beyond the statistical reassurance of value added and residuals made positive, are essential if a department is to approach its work with creativity and commitment. Finally, it recalls that desire to know what attracted us to history in the first place. This leads to an empathetic achievement in that it encourages us to sit as one of our students and consider the questions ‘why should I be interested in this?‘ and ‘what is special and different about exploring the past?‘

Sustaining the programmeIt is important for us now to develop the scheme further so that we build on Will Pettigrew’s excellent work. As each individual has their own talents and interests, we will tailor the programme to what they feel they are best suited to and to our aims for the department. For instance, our 2006-7 Researcher in Residence will be an expert on Gender and Irish History, and as a Girls school we will make use of her to challenge stereotypes about professional History being by, about and for men. Similarly, she will hopefully help us to examine the gendered perspective on the past throughout our curriculum. As a very experienced researcher, she will also help us to design an Independent Learning programme that will help our older girls to work more effectively with historical material. In the long term we will keep up this contact with the academic world as it reminds us where we come from intellectually and draws us into the community of enquiry in which we teach, and in which we wish our students to learn.

Iain Spottiswoode AnnatHead of the History Department

Aylesbury High School

REFERENCES1. Bloch, M. (1954) The Historian’s Craft, MUP, Manchester2. For the most penetrating recent examination of where this relationship

is going, and where it needs to end up see Eric Evans’ piece entitled ‘University History and School History’ in the 2003 HA publication Past Forward: A Vision for School History 2002-2012. For a call for practical action see Guyver, R. M. (2006) ‘The Role of Historians in Curriculum Debate and Review’ in The Historian. No. 90, pp42-43. For an initiative designed to cement and extend existing relationships see the press release from the Office of the Prince of Wales relating to the foundation of the Princes’ Cambridge Programme for Teaching at http://www.princeofwales.gov.uk/media/02_press_releases/2006/060607_cambridge.html

Figure 1: Use and abuse of a Researcher in Residence

Extra-curricular workshops• Speaking at our Sixth Form History

Discussion Group.• Sharing stories about the slave trade and

writing history books with Years 7-9 for World Book Day.

Activities beyond the classroom• Accompanying year 7 to Warwick castle.• Taking time out from his research there to

work with Year 12 on a study visit to the National Archives.

Work with the History team• Providing the department with some

much-needed subject-specific CPD as we struggled to find material and guidance on the political changes of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

Classroom-based activities• Leading workshops on the ‘triangular trade’ and the origins of Empire with year 8.• Leading workshops on historical change with years 12 and 13.• Helping AS level Communications Studies students with a task designing text-boxes for a Slavery

Museum.

Work with individuals• Working with Year 13 on applying for

history at university and working in the media

• Mentoring a successful Oxford applicant and offering general advice on university life to Year 12 and 13.

This feature of Teaching History is designed to build critical, informed debate about the character of teacher-training, teacher education and professional development. It is also designed to offer practical help to all involved in training new history teachers. Each issue presents a situation in initial teacher education/training with an emphasis upon a particular, history-specific issue.

Mentors or others involved in the training of student history teachers are invited to be the agony aunts.

the problem page for history mentors the problem page for history mentors

THIS ISSUE’S PROBLEM:Lucy Hutchinson is finding it difficult to teach local history well.

Now her new mentor has asked her to plan a local history dimension into the 1750-1900 scheme of work.

Lucy Hutchinson has had a successful first placement, and is making excellent progress. She is already able to think about progression in pupils’ learning, and is developing her skills in crafting both individual and series of lessons that have a strong sense of purpose and direction. Her ability to communicate to the pupils the goals of the lessons – and their value – has been commented on by all of the teachers who have worked with her. Her mentor’s report from this placement lists as one of her main strengths her capacity to design worthwhile activities that get the pupils thinking for themselves, especially at Key Stage 3. Lucy’s work with Year 10, though, has not been so successful. The school follows the Schools’ History Project and for their History Around Us coursework they have been studying a local castle, exploring how and why its use has changed over time. Lucy has really struggled to see the point in this – especially in contrast to other elements of the specification. She feels that the medicine unit is far better suited to making sense of change and continuity in history and introducing pupils to the contribution of a range of civilisations to medical beliefs and practice. With Year 11 she has worked as a TA, supporting individuals in their modern world study of the conflict in Ireland which the pupils find much more relevant and interesting. A local castle seems something of an irrelevance in the lives of young people, and she wonders whether local history simply encourages pupils to become more insular and parochial in their attitudes.

Lucy has now been contacted by Tom, the mentor in her second placement school who has asked her to make a significant contribution to the development of their local history work at Key Stage 3. The school has recently been inspected by OFSTED and although there was praise for many aspects of the department’s work and its management, the inspector noted that they were non-compliant in relation to their 1750-1900 unit. The head teacher has made it clear to Tom that he expects the history department to remedy this.

Lucy had been looking forward to this placement but now is horrified – how can she make a contribution to something about which she has no knowledge and little belief in its worth?

Email from Tom, the mentor for Lucy’s second school placement

Hi Lucy,

We’re really looking forward to you joining us next term. I’ve attached a draft timetable, so you can see the range of groups that you’ll be working with and the sorts of topics/enquiry questions they’ll be moving on to when you start with us. I thought I should give you some advance warning that we’re in the process of developing the unit on Britain 1750-1900 to include a significant element of local history. It’s an issue we’ve been vaguely aware of – but since none of the department come from the area we’ve never really made an effort to consider the best way to incorporate a local dimension into the schemes of work. Now we’ve been pushed by OFSTED – who picked up on the fact that there’s nothing in our Key Stage 3 course, and that at the very least it ought to be included in the Britain 1750-1900. The critical role of the railway in the way the town developed in the nineteenth century is the most obvious point of connection and we really should make use of the local museum! So we’re excited that you’ll be around to join in developing the new scheme and are hoping that you’ll have good ideas about how we can make it an interesting part of the course (The report from your previous mentor, Jo Bradshaw, is full of praise for your planning!) If you’ve got some time in the break it might be well worth you visiting the railway centre before you start here so that you can get up to speed quickly, as you’ve obviously got two Year 8 groups and we’d like to make this a key focus for your work here.

Looking forward to seeing you, Tom.

Lucy’s note to Robert, her tutor

Robert – I desperately need some help with local history. Tom has asked me to come up with some ideas for a local dimension to the industrialisation unit at Harley College and I am REALLY struggling. I went out to visit the town yesterday and Harley seems a fairly boring place – just loads of new housing estates (a huge Tescos) and its only claim to fame seems to have been the railway. I always thought railways were pretty tedious anyway and now it looks like we’ll have to spend even more time on them – and go and look at them???? There’s the railway museum but I reckon it’s only 8 year old boys who enjoy things like that. At least with the Y10 lot at my last school we got to have a really good day out at the castle, so even if I couldn’t really see the point I know they enjoyed it and it was a good opportunity for me to get to know them better. But this seems so pointless, plus I haven’t really got the first idea about how to start with the research I’ll need to do. I know that Tom is under pressure from senior management and I do want to make a good first impression. HELP.

Reply from Robert to Lucy

Don’t panic Lucy! I know you’re keen to make a good impression – but don’t feel you have to take on full responsibility for their new scheme. It’s great that Tom has such high expectations of you, but I will have a discussion at next week’s mentors meeting about reasonable expectations and targets for trainees’ learning during the second placement!

I have to admit that I’m feeling a bit stuck about how to help immediately. This is the first year that Harley College has taken history trainees, so I’m not very familiar with the town myself. And, as you’ll know from the history programme, the main sessions on ‘history outside the classroom’ come in the final university block at the end of the course. The course reading list should be of some help – but a critical message (from Chris Culpin’s Teaching History article ‘No puzzle, no learning’, for example) is about the importance of a good enquiry question – and that’s something I know is securely in place in your teaching anyway. The Railway Centre is likely to be very helpful – museum funding these days is very much tied into promoting access and education – so if you can make a visit there we’ll talk further after that.


Lucy has a great deal to be positive about. Her first placement was clearly a great success and she

has easily overcome many of the planning and communication problems that other students may

face. She therefore needs to be congratulated and praised so that she is given the confidence to deal

with the challenges of a new placement.

I WOULD GIVE THE FOLLOWING ADVICE TO TOM’S MENTOR:

• In her first placement Lucy was commended for getting the pupils to think for themselves. Why

not take this further and gather some pupil voice on what might be an interesting local study. This

would serve several purposes. Unlike others involved in this decision, the pupils come from this

area and have the greatest knowledge of it. They will help and suggestions, but they could also

use parents and grandparents as a resource. If the pupils are given a sense of ownership over the

topic then they will be hooked in from the start. If Lucy wanted to get ahead with her planning,

she could ask the head of department to set up a focus group with a group of pupils for her to

chair on her introductory visit to the school later this term. Lucy could give a selection of sources

to the group and use a community of enquiry approach to encourage the pupils to come up with

a series of questions to which they would be interested in researching the answers. This would at

least give some stimulus for the department’s planning.

• This clearly cannot run as a one-woman project. This may well be what is scaring Lucy so much.

She needs to realise that she has the complete support of the department. At the moment she could

be forgiven for thinking that she is getting the work that nobody else wants to do – hardly fair for

a trainee. The head of department needs to bring this planning to a department meeting and then

allocate some time for a more experienced teacher to work with Lucy on planning up the scheme

of work. In this way the work will fit in with the methods the department already uses, otherwise

there is a risk of Lucy putting a lot of work into something which may only be used once.

• Lucy needs to contact the railway museum to see what support they may be able to offer her, but

she could also use the internet to find out whether there is a local history society, or the local

branch of the Historical Association may be able to give her some leads. Local libraries often keep

archives. Here it is worth looking for the personal story - a series of letters, a memoir or a diary

as pupils very much enjoy the originality of a personal source.Sometimes one really interesting

source is a better hook for a local history enquiry – it can then lead to the more obvious ‘big pic-

ture’ approach.

• Lucy needs to question her own attitude to local history as all history is local to someone. If the

question of significance still confuses her, then why not use this to challege the pupils? How about

some kind of local history versus national history approach? ‘What was more important for the

people of Harley, the coming of the railway or the Great Reform Act?’ Was there a local Chartist

movement which could lead to a fuller understanding of the national campaign? In this way, lo-

cal history could be used as a way in to access national history and give it more relevance. To see

how this approach might work, ‘Lucy could read Murray’s article, ‘Which was more important

sir, ordinary people getting electricity or the rise of Hitler? – using Ethel and Ernest with Year 9’

(Teaching History 107).

• This is a big step for Lucy, but also a very exciting opportunity and a challenge she is very capable

of dealing with. This could be the perfect thing to show off at a job interview and many schools

would be very impressed with an innovative approach to local history. I’m certainly looking for-

ward to Lucy presenting her ideas to the rest of the PGCE cohort when we come to concentrate on

local history at the end of the year.

Mary Woolleywas, until recently, a mentor with Kingston University, part of the SWELTEC consortium.


Firstly Lucy should be aware that she is experiencing a problem many PGCE trainees and

History departments across the country are struggling with. QCA reported in 2005 that over

one third of departments in England and Wales were failing to include the local dimension in

their Key Stage 3 planning. It is understandable then that Lucy has concerns about an area

of subject knowledge with which she feels unfamiliar and in which the department is not fully

prepared.

I would give the following advice to Lucy’s mentor:• See this as an opportunity for collaborative planning that will help Lucy to progress and

give her an insight into the way the course at Key Stage 3 works as a whole. Lucy can work

with you to identify an enquiry question that will support the whole programme of study as

well as provide a rigorous historical focus for a local study. (Michael Riley’s article ‘Into the

Key Stage 3 history garden: choosing and planting your enquiry questions’ from Teaching

History 99, Curriculum Planning Edition is an excellent starting point for this)• Lucy is making assumptions about the unit and is feeling negative. Help her to view local

history in a more positive light by exploring the local museum together and looking for

‘hooks’ to engage both Lucy and the pupils. Local history is an opportunity for students to

engage with the kind of research that is undertaken by ‘real’ historians. How can their local

history illuminate the ‘bigger picture’ of Britain 1750-1900?• Encourage Lucy to build upon the skills acquired in her degree and contact the local library

to explore their archives to develop her understanding of Harley as a historical entity.• As this will be a new unit of work for everyone in the department use opportunities to team

teach with Lucy to help build her confidence and enthusiasm and to allow her a supportive

environment to adopt teaching and learning styles that are more risky. Encourage her to

make full use of additional adults in the classroom as a creative resource for her lesson

planning.

• Make links for Lucy between this unit of work and her own progression as a trainee. This

is a valuable opportunity to provide some meaningful evidence towards standard 3.1.5,

planning for out-of-school learning. Engaging with the local environment and museums is a

valuable way to demonstrate to pupils that history is a part of every community and directly

relevant to their lives and this is a real opportunity for Lucy to plan for this.

Joanne Pearson Secondary PGCE Tutor, School of Education and Professional Development, University of Huddersfield

Lucy has a great deal to be positive about. Her first placement was clearly a great success and she

has easily overcome many of the planning and communication problems that other students may

face. She therefore needs to be congratulated and praised so that she is given the confidence to deal

with the challenges of a new placement.

I WOULD GIVE THE FOLLOWING ADVICE TO TOM’S MENTOR:

• In her first placement Lucy was commended for getting the pupils to think for themselves. Why

not take this further and gather some pupil voice on what might be an interesting local study. This

would serve several purposes. Unlike others involved in this decision, the pupils come from this

area and have the greatest knowledge of it. They will help and suggestions, but they could also

use parents and grandparents as a resource. If the pupils are given a sense of ownership over the

topic then they will be hooked in from the start. If Lucy wanted to get ahead with her planning,

she could ask the head of department to set up a focus group with a group of pupils for her to

chair on her introductory visit to the school later this term. Lucy could give a selection of sources

to the group and use a community of enquiry approach to encourage the pupils to come up with

a series of questions to which they would be interested in researching the answers. This would at

least give some stimulus for the department’s planning.

• This clearly cannot run as a one-woman project. This may well be what is scaring Lucy so much.

She needs to realise that she has the complete support of the department. At the moment she could

be forgiven for thinking that she is getting the work that nobody else wants to do – hardly fair for

a trainee. The head of department needs to bring this planning to a department meeting and then

allocate some time for a more experienced teacher to work with Lucy on planning up the scheme

of work. In this way the work will fit in with the methods the department already uses, otherwise

there is a risk of Lucy putting a lot of work into something which may only be used once.

• Lucy needs to contact the railway museum to see what support they may be able to offer her, but

she could also use the internet to find out whether there is a local history society, or the local

branch of the Historical Association may be able to give her some leads. Local libraries often keep

archives. Here it is worth looking for the personal story - a series of letters, a memoir or a diary

as pupils very much enjoy the originality of a personal source.Sometimes one really interesting

source is a better hook for a local history enquiry – it can then lead to the more obvious ‘big pic-

ture’ approach.

• Lucy needs to question her own attitude to local history as all history is local to someone. If the

question of significance still confuses her, then why not use this to challege the pupils? How about

some kind of local history versus national history approach? ‘What was more important for the

people of Harley, the coming of the railway or the Great Reform Act?’ Was there a local Chartist

movement which could lead to a fuller understanding of the national campaign? In this way, lo-

cal history could be used as a way in to access national history and give it more relevance. To see

how this approach might work, ‘Lucy could read Murray’s article, ‘Which was more important

sir, ordinary people getting electricity or the rise of Hitler? – using Ethel and Ernest with Year 9’

(Teaching History 107).

• This is a big step for Lucy, but also a very exciting opportunity and a challenge she is very capable

of dealing with. This could be the perfect thing to show off at a job interview and many schools

would be very impressed with an innovative approach to local history. I’m certainly looking for-

ward to Lucy presenting her ideas to the rest of the PGCE cohort when we come to concentrate on

local history at the end of the year.

NEXT ISSUE’S PROBLEM:Steve Cloye is having trouble helping pupils to make judgements about historical significance. For full details of Steve’s Mentor’s Problem, contact: Martin Hoare, The Historical Association, 59a Kennington Park Road, London SE11 4JH. E-mail: [email protected] Responses are invited from mentors and trainers of trainee teachers. Responses for the December edition must be received by 14 October.

Steve and Lucy are both fictional characters. Thanks to Katharine Burn and Anna Pendry, Oxford University Department of Educational Studies, for devising the Move Me On problem.


Mummy, Mummy, what’s collective memory?Not now, dear, Mummy’s trying to work out whether this new Year 9 set is taking history GCSE in one year, two years or three years. I think it’s called the 14-19 curricu-lum. Maybe they’re not taking it at all.

But what is it?I think you must be referring to the ideas of Maurice Halbwachs, a French philosopher and sociologist. He was professor of sociology and pedagogy at the University of Strasborg, then was called to the Sorbonne. He was detailed by the Gestapo after the Nazi occupation of Paris and deported to Buchenwald, where he was executed in 1945.

That’s very sad, but I think you’ve forgotten the question. What is collective memory?Collective memory is the memory of a group. Halbwachs said that there are as many collective memories as there are groups and institutions in a society. It is of course indi-viduals who remember, not groups or institutions, but these individuals, being located in a specific group context, draw on that context to remember or recreate the past. For example, Independence Day means something to Americans and Bastille Day means something to the French. The individual often remembers by placing himself in the perspective of the group, but Halbwachs suggests that the memory of the group relizes and manifests itself in individual memories

But how does that help me with my history homework?Well, Halbwachs argues that collective memory is essentially a reconstruction of the past in the light of the present. That can help you to understand historical interpretations. He points out that memory needs continuous feeding from collective sources and is sustained by social and moral props and goes so far as to suggest that the past is not preserved, but is reconstructed on the basis of the present. Think about how Empire Day became more and more popular as the British Empire went into decline and isn’t the National Curricu-lum itself a way of ensuring we share a certain collective memory?

Daddy says television can teach us a lot.We all know that Daddy excels in his research of the television listings, but for once he has a point. The success of comedy programmes such as Blackadder and Dad’s Army depend to a great extent on the audience having a certain knowledge, or collective memory, of the past. But it’s far too late for you to be watching television. Run along now, time for bed.

Mummy, what is truth?

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