In my previous two blogs I looked at the problems with teaching the assassination of JFK as a murder mystery, and with imagination type activities in learning about the Holocaust. Today I want to explore one of the most controversial lessons I have witnessed.

The “slave auction”
Reading the title of this, I hope most people would be baulking already. However, in the last five years, I have heard of this kind of lesson being used in multiple history departments and the image above is not invented but actually came from a grammar school in the South East. Just as with the Holocaust example I gave last time, this type of activity can end up being done in multiple topic areas, but effectively involves role-playing an extreme power imbalance.
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The reasons departments persist with “lessons” like this one are usually vaguely couched in terms of empathy, and the need to clarify complex concepts like chattel slavery. However, more often than not they are promoted for their “interactive”, or “engaging” elements. Indeed, one non-historian described seeing such a lesson to me once as being “a good, fun way to get across a difficult idea.”

In my previous blog I discussed the potentially ahistorical nature of studies of the assassination of John F Kennedy. In today’s blog I am entering into more controversial territory and looking at some activity choices with relation to the teaching of the Holocaust.

The letter from Auschwitz
I have seen this type of lesson in all kinds of guises, but this is probably the version I have most issue with. The task itself if fairly straight forward: having learned about the Holocaust and concentration camps, students are asked to imagine they are in a concentration camp and to write about their experiences in some kind of letter or diary.

I completely understand where lessons like this come from. The letter/diary device is straightforward to students to access (they may even be familiar with Anne Frank’s diary), and on the surface it appears to give them a chance to really empathise with people in the past. In reality however, I fear it undermines this latter aim, and raises a host of other issues. For more on this, you may like to read Totten’s “Holocaust Education: Issues and Approaches”, especially chapter seven.
First, because of the placement of tasks such as these, they often end up being a stand-in for a factual recall, rather than a real...

Before Christmas, Ben Newmark posted a blog in which he outlined a range of things which he had found unsuccessful in teaching. This included things such as card sorts (#2), role play (#3), flipped learning (#17), group work (#20) and fifty others. At the time I replied to say that I felt some of the focus on methods was problematic, as things which don’t work in one place, may well in another.

However, I could not quite leave the idea alone. Since Ben published the post in October, I have had a range of discussions with colleagues where we considered whether we actually had our own red lines in terms of history teaching. It turns out that we do. The main difference I think is that they are mostly linked not so much to methods, but to whether or not core educational values, and nature of history as a discipline are being appropriately, and indeed rigorously, served (I went into this to some extent in my post HERE) . In the end we established five or six big problems we had come across in history lessons (not including broader issues of assessment). Of those we agreed pretty much unanimously on two, and partially on a third. I am to outline these in three separate blogs:

• The ahistorical question: who killed John F Kennedy? (below)
• Imagination based tasks: the "letter from Auschwitz"
• Empathy type roleplays: the “slave auction”

Now I am very keen not to make this too negative, so before I begin I’d like to highlight two key points:

​I have read many pieces over the years about how gaming might be used as a pedagogical tool in teaching. Today, I want to turn this on its head. I think new teachers can use gaming, or rather the principles behind gaming, as a mirror to reveal some aspects of effective teaching.

Let me explain a bit further. All games, at some level, have to teach their players how to play and be successful in the game world. Once upon a time, this was done with weighty manuals (Civilization 2 had a manual spanning 200 pages when I got that in 1996), but now the teaching aspects of games tend to be embedded in the gameplay. Although games are only ever going to be a proxy for classroom teaching, I do think there are some essential principles followed by the best games, which make their ‘teaching’ elements effective. I call these the “Nintendo Principles”, after the company who, according to Metacritic, have made 5 of the top 10 games of the last 20 years.

These ‘Nintendo Principles’ are perfectly illustrated in the most recent release from the Japanese game studio, the Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild. The game follows an ‘open world’ approach, meaning that players are thrown in with very little preamble, and can pursue their own path through the game. So far, so progressive. In all honesty, I am not recommending an ‘open world’ approach to teaching, curriculum is too important, but because of its structure, the Legend of Zelda has to do almost all of its ‘teaching’ in game, whilst ensuring there is a good balance of challenge and reward. My contention is that these ‘Nintendo Principles’ are comparable to the fundamentals of good classroom teaching and provide a useful starting point for new teachers to consider their practice. They are also principles which pupils will be aware of, either implicitly or explicitly.

Principle 1: Challenge is Important to Motivation
​Video games producers have a direct interest in ensuring their games hit the right level of challenge. For producers, getting this spot on means more interest, greater longevity, and the prospect of better reviews and critical acclaim. In most adventure games, challenge is linked to story progression (another powerful tool), but it might also be connected to collecting a range of items, achieving certain goals in a number of areas etc.

This weekend, the West London Free School organised a history teachers’ conference which looked at the importance of knowledge in the curriculum. Although I was unable to attend, I followed the debates and keynotes closely on Twitter. One of the central ideas which came out of the conference was the importance of substantive knowledge and the potential role of the textbook in acting as a backbone (and even progression model) for a knowledge-rich curriculum. (*)

Textbook publishers have not been slow to catch onto this idea that the textbook might be making a return to the classroom and have started putting out flyers for books (old and new) described as being “knowledge rich” or “content driven”. In addition to this, these books are often sold as promoting the development of long-term memory, hooking into the other significant trend of neuro-science-driven pedagogy. (**)

One of the most important jobs any head of department does is selecting the resources for the department, especially when these may act as the progression model. I have therefore written this series of blogs as a way for departments to think critically about this decision making process and have tried to produce a list of key questions I used to ask when purchasing resources as as head of department. Hopefully this will act as a useful guide for other history departments.

To illustrate my selection methods, I am going to apply my criteria to the newly released ‘Knowing History’ series from Collins. The main reason I want to focus on these books is that they seem to be generating a lot of buzz (in the Carr sense?) in the history community at the moment; especially as a possible solution to teaching a knowledge-rich history curriculum. Another reason for my focus on the series is that the publishers have targeted them at a wide audience with a very competitive price £7.99 (take note other publishers). As many schools are likely to get these on a deal, a school could kit out a whole year group for say £1000. It is therefore plausible that these might end up being widely bought, especially in schools where there is concern to meet the new demands of subject knowledge but where subject specialists are few and far between (a really big issue still!). Finally, the author, Robert Peal has been very vocal in damning other textbooks and recommending his own, so I feel that his series makes a good test case for my selection criteria. (***) In essence, I am asking whether or not Peal’s books meet my criteria for teaching a knowledge-rich and disciplinary rigorous curriculum.

The following is a list of the key topics and questions I intend to cover in each blog. These will be updated and linked as I write them. EDIT: I would like to note that not all textbooks will hit all of these criteria perfectly (in fact I doubt many will - my own certainly doesn't) and that every textbook will have its shortcomings. However, using criteria such as these might allow departments to make more informed choices about which sacrifices they want to make.
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1. Knowing What History? How well is the core narrative developed, and are there any particular narrative oversights?  
2. Knowing Whose History? Are students being introduced to the idea that they are being shown a narrative rather than the narrative?
3. Knowing Which History? What range and depth of knowledge is developed by the books and is this sufficient?
4. Knowing and Remembering History?  How do the textbooks help students to consolidate their knowledge to promote durable learning?
5. Knowing Disciplinary History? Do the textbooks provide a suitable progression model and how do they use content to develop disciplinary understanding?

 
(*) Proponents of knowledge-heavy curricula have often cited the idea of the textbook as the key to driving such a change – see for example Oates’ review of textbooks or Christodoulou’s work on AfL. I tend to be in agreement with the idea that the textbook can act as a progression model, but this needs careful writing.

(**) I am certainly not challenging the importance of understanding neuro-scientific research in education. Indeed, my Leeds Trinity students will be able to tell you that we have focused heavily on research by Howards-Jones, Willingham, Dweck, Brown, Roediger and the like in our first few weeks of ITT.

(***) I would like to clarify before I begin, that I have just written my first textbook and understand how difficult and time consuming a process this is. I also know how publishers can put demands on textbooks which run counter to an author’s intentions. In this case however, I imagine that Peal has probably had a large hand in determining the editorial direction. Collins advertises the series with the strapline: “Encourage a thirst for knowledge in your KS3 History students with high-quality, content-rich lessons that lay the groundwork for the new History GCSE” and endorsements such as “Knowing History has been designed to build historical thinking from the bottom-up and it does this with supreme confidence, taking the number one spot on my winner’s podium of history resources with ease.” As such, I think testing these claims is a worthwhile enterprise as part of my wider blog on resource selection. It should also be noted that Peal himself has never been backward in his critiques so I hope he takes this in the spirit it is intended, namely encouraging robust scrutiny of resources. 

In my last two blogs, I explored some of the problems which have arisen from a limited engagement with historical interpretations and a general fear of talking about historical truth. In this final part of the series, I hope to offer some tried and tested classroom approaches which might help students build a better understanding of the provisional nature of historical claims, whilst not going down the rocky road of vague relativism.
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Tackling the issue of oversimplification
To prevent students from falling back to a lazy cynicism about historical interpretations, I like to use the following approach which I term the “IMA” approach to unpicking interpretations. This works best when students are asked to read extended extracts from historians, or even whole articles. It certainly would not work with tiny gobbets. In essence, the process involves: 

A few weeks ago I was  working with trainees at Leeds Trinity on the theme of local history. I wanted to place a particular emphasis on how local stories might be a means to help pupils connect to the wider national narrative. This is not only a great way to approach complex national stories, but also ties in with the new focus in the curriculum on putting the historic environment in context, something which I think is a hidden gem of those specifications where you get to choose your study!

The idea was to replicate some of the planning processes we used to go through when I was head of history and to build an interesting historical enquiry rooted in a local story. As such I hope this might be of some use to departments planning their own local history enquiries.

Over the course of a day, we were able to wrestle with enquiries which linked pupils'  localities with the bigger national picture. We were also able to grapple with real issues around appropriate sequencing, disciplinary development, and the interplay between contextual knowledge and historical thinking. We also learned some interesting lessons about letting the history lead the lesson sequence, rather than the other way around, as I will explain in due course...

Or to give this it’s fuller title: “Shackled to a corpse by hands and feet, tied to a 50 tonne block made of GCSE specifications, in a sea of indifference, blinded by the sea-spray of accountability, with a guy sat in a boat asking why we are not swimming better: Why can’t we make progress in our understanding of progression?” To be honest, if you want the short version and have a bit of imagination, you can stop reading right there.

I will warn you now, this is a long post. But then again, progression is a complex subject…or rather it is a subject which has been made complex. Please bear with me though, because I think this is fundamental!

If you have not yet read my “primers” on progression, you may wish to do so now.

• PRIMER: The problem with linear progression models
  
• PRIMER: Research-based progression models.
  

If you are already familiar with the two aspects above then please feel free to read on...

Context
Over the last week or so I have been marking PGCE trainees’ assessments on planning for progression in history. As I have done this, I have found myself returning to a common theme in my comments; namely that trainees first need to consider WHAT they want pupils to get better at before they start considering HOW they want to achieve this. Where trainees did focus on the substance of history, there was either too much generic focus on the development of historical “skills” and processes (and issue which I will deal with later), or too much time spent on discussing knowledge acquisition and aggregation with little sense of how this contributed to overall historical progression. Knowledge acquisition certainly is a type of progress, but I would argue is insufficient to count for all progression in history. In essence, trainees have found themselves wrestling with history’s twin goals of developing pupils’ knowledge as well as their second-order modes of thinking. Too often they fell down the gap in between.

Interestingly, these confusions were much less evident in work produced by maths trainees. This may be because the maths curriculum specifies a series of substantive concepts for students to master. For example, in understanding algebra, students are asked to “simplify and manipulate algebraic expressions”, to “model situations or procedures by translating them into algebraic expressions”, or “use algebraic methods to solve linear equations in 1 variable” (DfE, 2013, p. 6). As such, maths teachers can help pupils progress to more powerful ideas about maths through a clear content focus. Maths does still have its unifying second-order concepts, “select and use appropriate calculation strategies to solve increasingly complex problems” for example (DfE, 2013, p. 4), but progression in these is can be tied to precise curriculum content. To be fair, this does also come unstuck, as pupils failed to use their second-order ability to apply maths in context in the “Hannah’s Sweets” controversy last year!

A very real confusion
In many ways, the confusion about progression is at the heart of history teaching more generally. Indeed, the recent book "New Directions in Assessing Historical Thinking" (Ercikan & Seixas, 2015) suggests that there are vastly different approaches to understanding historical progression both internationally and within countries and states. This is certainly true of history education in England. There are many reasons for this:

By now many of you will be considering what you will be teaching for the new GCSE units, which are launching in September 2016. The less fortunate of you may even be teaching them already, despite the fact the specification documents are still in draft; but that is an issue for another day. One thing you will certainly have noticed if you have begun the process of choosing already, is that there are now an extra two units for students to cover in their two (or three!!) years. To recap, students now have to study:

• Content from 3 different periods of time: Medieval, Early Modern, and Modern
• A breadth study which covers all three of these periods
• A period study which tells an unfolding narrative
• A British depth study which can come from any period
• A World depth study which cannot come from the same period as the British one
• A study of the historic environment

So far, so complex. In reality what this means is that most GCSEs are asking students to study five different historical periods or issues in the time they used to study three. This effectively means a term per topic if you want to leave time for revision. Clearly this puts a huge focus on students learning a significant (although not overbearing in some of the better specifications) amount of content.

One of the most important tasks for history departments over the next few months will be narrowing down and choosing which specification best fits your students, expertise, interests and (sadly) resources (again, I might make this a future blog). Once you have decided on a suitable route, you can then think about mapping out how you will cover each of the units in the 10-12 weeks allocated by the new specification materials. This is also a good way to test specifications as some certainly have an awful lot of content to cover! I have already written about the process of unit planning for the new A Level HERE and HERE, highlighting the importance of excellent subject knowledge in planning meaningful units. I will not repeat that, but if you are considering issues of planning for GCSE then these posts would be a good starting point.

The one worry I hear a lot with the revised GCSE, is that it demands a lot of content knowledge and may be inaccessible for weaker students. I therefore want to spend the rest of this post exploring these claims and considering how we might respond as history teachers who want every child to be able to access and enjoy really great history.