The Guided Reader to Teaching and Learning History

Richard Harris, Katharine Burn, Mary Woolley, Richard Harris, Katharine Burn, Mary Woolley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136472831
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

The Guided Reader to Teaching and Learning History draws on extracts from the published work of some of the most influential history education writers, representing a range of perspectives from leading classroom practitioners to academic researchers, and highlighting key debates surrounding a central range of issues affecting secondary History teachers.

This book brings together key extracts from classic and contemporary writing and contextualises these in both theoretical and practical terms. Each extract is accompanied by an introduction, a summary of the key points and issues raised, questions to promote discussion and suggestions for further reading to extend thinking.

Taking a thematic approach and including a short introduction to each theme, the chapters include:

• 
  
  

• The purpose of history education;

• 
  
  

• Pupil perspectives on history education;

• 
  
  

• Assessment and progression in history;

• 
  
  

• Inclusion in history;

• 
  
  

• Diversity in history;

• 
  
  

• Teaching difficult issues;

• 
  
  

• Technology and history education;

• 
  
  

• Change and continuity;

• 
  
  

• Historical Interpretations;

• 
  
  

• Professional development for history teachers.

Aimed at trainee and newly qualified teachers including those working towards Masters level qualifications, as well as existing teachers, this accessible, but critically provocative text is an essential resource for those that wish to deepen their understanding of History Education.

SECTION

1

Nature and purposes of history education

CHAPTER

1

The purposes of history teaching

One of the fundamental questions that needs to be asked of any subject and its place in the curriculum is ‘what is its purpose?’ There must be a reason why a subject or topics within a subject have been chosen for study. For a subject such as history, which is seen as hugely important by a range of educationalists and politicians, this is especially pertinent, as history could be taught to present partisan points of view or could be used to promote a particular sense of identity – the potential for distortion and manipulation is a serious concern. Hence the need to be clear about the purpose of teaching history, yet it is difficult to find a consensus. This chapter explores some of the reasons put forward for the study of the past.

Extract 1

Source

QCA (2007) History: Programme of Study for Key Stage 3. Coventry: QCA.

Introduction

This extract comes from the 2007 revision of the National Curriculum for England. As part of the documentation, an importance statement was included, which was to underpin the thinking behind the content to be taught and the concepts and processes that were to be developed within the subject. The document was a product of a consultation between people within the history education community and government advisers and civil servants. It tries to capture a sense of the value of the subject in a way that could appeal to a range of audiences.

Key words & phrases

National Curriculum; importance statement; purpose; aims

Extract

History fires pupils’ curiosity and imagination, moving and inspiring them with the dilemmas, choices and beliefs of people in the past. It helps pupils develop their own identities through an understanding of history at personal, local, national and international levels. It helps them to ask and answer questions of the present by engaging with the past.

Pupils find out about the history of their community, Britain, Europe and the world. They develop a chronological overview that enables them to make connections within and across different periods and societies. They investigate Britain’s relationships with the wider world, and relate past events to the present day.

As they develop their understanding of the nature of historical study, pupils ask and answer important questions, evaluate evidence, identify and analyse different interpretations of the past, and learn to substantiate any arguments and judgements they make. They appreciate why they are learning what they are learning and can debate its significance.

History prepares pupils for the future, equipping them with knowledge and skills that are prized in adult life, enhancing employability and developing an ability to take part in a democratic society. It encourages mutual understanding of the historic origins of our ethnic and cultural diversity, and helps pupils become confident and questioning individuals.

Summary

This statement identifies the ways in which history should engage young people and the value of studying the past in terms of developing a sense of identity (with a recognition that there will be multiple identities), the understanding of the world in which they live and the knowledge and skills that will be useful in adult life. The statement also outlines the types of values and dispositions that a study of the past can promote. It is a very broad justification for the importance of studying the past, and attempts to relate this to the types of knowledge and understanding young people need to develop. Like any such official document, it was written within a particular context and needed to be acceptable to a range of individuals and groups, hence the broad range of ideas and ideals covered.

Questions to consider

1. Given the range of ideas contained within this statement, which (if any) do you feel are the more important reasons for the study of history?

2. In what ways do you feel the study of history contributes to the development of personal identity and to dispositions such as tolerance? Do you feel these aims are intrinsic to the study of history? If not, are they appropriate extrinsic aims for teaching history?

Extract 2

Source

Lee, P. (1992) History in schools: Aims, purposes and approaches. A reply to John White. In P. Lee, J. Slater, P. Walsh and J. White, The Aims of School History: The National Curriculum and Beyond. London: Tufnell Press, 20–34.

Introduction

This extract comes from a book that presents a discussion about the aims of school history at the time of the introduction of the National Curriculum for England in the late 1980s. However, the issues raised are highly pertinent for any discussion about the purposes of history. The particular extract from Peter Lee is a response to ideas presented by John White; White argues that there is a need for much greater clarity about the aims of a national curriculum, and feels that there is a need for history to serve broader educational aims to help students become successful citizens within a liberal-democratic society. These views are challenged by Lee. Lee argues that broader educational aims, such as using history to promote patriotism or democratic values are ‘contingent’ aims, because learning history has no necessary connection with such aims; it is perfectly possible to become patriotic or to develop a commitment to democracy without studying history. Instead, Lee argues that the point of studying history is to get better at history, and that the power of learning history lies in its transformative powers, i.e. it has the power to alter the way people perceive the world in which they live.

Key words & phrases

Purpose; disciplinary knowledge; second-order concepts

Extract

The reason for teaching history in schools is not so that pupils can use it for making something else, or to change or preserve a particular form of society, or even to expand the economy, but that it changes pupils; it changes what they see in the world, and how they see it.…

History is a way of acquiring rational knowledge and understanding of the past – any or all of the past. And since the present, however specious, is, from the point of view of knowledge and understanding, rather short, history bears on much of what is construed as present. To say someone has learnt history is to say something very wide-ranging about the way in which he or she is likely to make sense of the world. History offers a way of seeing almost any substantive issue in human affairs, subject to certain procedures and standards, whatever feelings one may have. Patriotism, on the other hand, is a set of feelings and dispositions, underpinned by a cognitive (or sometimes quasi-cognitive) foundation consisting of substantive beliefs and values to which people subscribe, localised to a particular place and time. Being patriotic cannot be generalised. It makes no sense to educate people to be patriotic in general – towards America, Angola and Antigua, Belgium, Bolivia, Britain and Brazil … and so on.

The change of view one acquires from history is not just a matter of picking up a new set of beliefs, or even new substantive knowledge. It is also taking on a set of second-order understandings, together with the ‘rational passions’ (e.g. for truth and respect for evidence) which give historical understanding a universality that patriotism does not have. Learning history is like learning a science: it is transformative in a radically different way from becoming patriotic or even socialised. (Socialisation arguably has a universal component, since all humans belong to societies. But any universal meanings which could be given to socialisation would be either very abstract or very basic: socialisation has to be socialisation into some particular society.) …

It is not just that learning history and producing patriotism or nurturing democratic citizens are aims which belong to different categories; it is also that the relation of learning history to becoming patriotic or being likely to see the world from a democratic perspective is a contingent one: learning history has no necessary connection with becoming patriotic or seeing the world from a democratic perspective. It is perfectly possible for students to learn history and be less patriotic than they were before they began. (Indeed it is precisely the claim that this was what was happening in schools that led the far right to get so excited about history teaching.)

What aims can or should history have? … There is little point in going for aims which have no discernible connection with history: how can they be aims of history teaching? And among the many contingent aims which might be plausibly asserted to have some sort of connection with history, those which are not linked to history by decent empirical evidence have little claim to be taken seriously: they lie somewhere along the continuum running from pious hopes through self-deception to deliberate misrepresentation.

Summary

Lee puts forward a case for the aims of teaching history to be focused primarily on those that are directly related to history teaching and are not necessarily broader goals such as engendering a sense of democratic values. The focus is thus on the disciplinary nature of the subject; pupils need to understand how the past is constructed, therefore there needs to be a focus on second-order concepts such as change and continuity and causation and the way in we can make claims about the past, based on evaluation of evidence, the construction of reasoned judgements and so forth.

Questions to consider

1. To what extent do you feel learning history ‘for its own sake’, is a valid justification for the study of the past?

2. How might an emphasis on the disciplinary nature of history shape the content of the curriculum and the teaching and learning approaches adopted?

3. What do you see as the goals of a general education, and to what extent should history meet these general goals?

Extract 3

Source

Barton, K. and Levstik, L. (2004) Teaching History for the Common Good. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Publishers; see pp. 28, 35, 38.

Introduction

Keith Barton and Linda Levstik argue that teaching history has a strong focus on developing students as citizens. They critically discuss at length the nature of democratic citizenship and its relationship to public education, and highlight the shortcomings of some notions of democratic citizenship. For them democracy is pluralistic and an adequate preparation must include an element of humanistic education. Again they discuss different models of humanistic education before arguing that it must entail a social dimension.

Key words & phrases

Purpose; democratic citizenship; citizenship education; humanistic education

Extract

We assume that the overarching goal of public education in the United States is to prepare students for participation in democratic life. We cannot justify an assertion like this by reference to a single, authoritative source, because we do not have a national system of education, and therefore, the purpose of schooling is not established by federal legislation, judicial mandate, or executive order. However, public schools in the United States share an origin in the common school movement of the 19th century, and the ideology of that movement revolved around the need to prepare citizens for a democratic, republican form of government: schools were meant to be, as Carl Kaestle [1983] puts it, ‘pillars of the republic.’ State and local curriculum guides still pay homage to citizenship education as a fundamental purpose of schooling, and the United States has a long tradition of philosophical reflection on the relationship between education and democracy. Democracy has never been the only goal of education in the United States; economic productivity and individual development have provided rival conceptions of the purpose of schooling. Yet throughout our history, the need to prepare students for citizenship in a democracy has furnished one of the most frequent and persuasive arguments in support of public education …

We believe that students will be best prepared for democratic citizenship if they receive a broadly humanistic education …

The final characteristic of the humanistic study of history – and the most controversial – is that it involves deliberation over the common good. This has not been a significant part of either the classical or romantic humanist traditions, both of which emphasize individual judgement rather than joint deliberation, and individual standards of moral and ethical behaviour rather than collective visions of the common good. However, our view of humanity is a more social one, and we believe both the format and objective of humanistic study should be social in nature. Dewey [1966] argues that ‘“humanism” means at bottom being imbued with an intelligent sense of human interests,’ and he equates such interests with the good of society. For Dewey, a study of humanity that simply involves the accumulation of knowledge ‘is on a level with the busy work of children.’ For any study to be truly humane, he argues it must produce ‘greater sensitiveness to social well-being and greater ability to promote that well-being.’… Discussions about how to promote social well-being and how to care for the public realm are at the heart of participatory democracy, and we believe history has an important role to play in preparing students to take part in such deliberation.

Summary

For Barton and Levstik, the teaching of history is explicitly related to the promotion of democratic citizenship. How this is achieved can vary and they present a range of ‘stances’ or positions relating to purpose, which they name as identification, analytical, moral response and exhibition, and explore how these relate to democratic citizenship. They acknowledge that there are different understandings about humanistic education, but argue that it should have a social emphasis. Within this, history provides an important sense of context, engages students with critical thinking and judgement forming, which should provide a valuable grounding in the promotion of a pluralist democracy.

Questions to consider

1. To what extent should preparation for life in a democratic society be the goal of education?

2. How far is it possible to use history as a form of education for democratic participation?

3. How might an emphasis on education for democratic participation shape the content of the curriculum and teaching and learning approaches adopted?

Extract 4

Source

Husbands, C., Kitson, A. and Pendry, A. (2003) Understanding History Teaching. Maidenhead: Open University Press; see p. 123.

Introduction

This extract is from a book that is based upon in-depth interviews and lesson observations of eight history teachers in English schools. The book itself covers a range of issues including a general discussion about the state of history education, an examination of the practice of these eight teachers and a section on the nature and purpose of history education. The book therefore presents the views of teachers across a range of issues, including the point of teaching history.

Key words & phrases

Purpose; teacher perspective; moral education; citizenship education

Extract

The extent to which history teachers should view moral education as ...