This blog is trying to capture something I have been wrestling with for a while now. Should we be proud of our history. And no, I don’t mean our national story! Growing up with a Welsh father punctured any notion I might have developed that the history taught in schools was in any way a “national” or representative story of Britain. I can remember him quizzing me weekly on what Welsh history we had studied. The answer, always, was “none!”. What I want to talk about today is a different kind of history: the history of our profession.

Blog series:

1. Being proud of our history? (below)
2. Are we being honest about curriculum?
3. Are we being honest about our discourse?​

I have turned the remainder of my blog here into a short video lecture series which you can access here: PLAYLIST


Being proud of “the community”
Over the years I have been teaching history (and latterly history teachers), I have developed something of a sense of pride in the way in which history, as a school subject, has engaged with complex issues in curriculum and pedagogy. I have even taken to referring to “the history community” in an almost reverential way. I am sure I am not alone. If you look at the discussions which happen, especially on Twitter, you will often see people expressing pride in “the history community” and its various achievements. Often the narrative we tell about “the community” is framed as a story of social justice in which pupils are liberated through carefully curated content and powerful pedagogical knowledge. 

Teacher recruitment is in something of a crisis. For well over three years now, teacher recruitment and retention has been in the headlines, and never more so than this year. The Commons Public Account Committee have noted that there is a “growing sense of crisis”, whilst policies to address shortages have been “sluggish and incoherent.”

The figures around recruitment are pretty stark. In the last six years, the number of primary age students increased by over 14%, and the numbers in secondary are predicted to rise by 19% by 2025. The crisis is neatly illustrated by the following statistics:

• 2016, 42,830 teachers left the workforce (9.9% of the total workforce).
• Nearly 34,910 of these teachers left for reasons other than retirement.
• In the same period just 24,120 newly qualified teachers were trained (replacing 5.6% of the workforce)
• The remainder of workforce replenishment is coming from teachers returning to the profession (14,200).
• Although the number of teachers rose between 2010 and 2016, the numbers of secondary teachers actually fell by 4.9%.

If we assume that pupils numbers increase as stated, we will need a teaching workforce of around 55,000 to cope with numbers by 2025. With applications for PGCE courses reported as being down by as much as 29% this year, it is no wonder there is a feeling of crisis.

Solutions

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: 

In my last blog, I spent some time explaining why I think we still have a long way to go in teaching students how to engage fully with historical interpretations, and not simply dismissing views on the grounds of an historian’s motive. Today I want to deal with a second key aspect of helping children to become better critical readers both in history, and more broadly, namely historical truth.

Putting truth back into history
I fear we spend too little time talking about historical truth in schools. This is because the idea of historical truth has become immensely unpopular. Post-modernists like Jenkins have argued that history has no objective truth, and that to pretend otherwise is a dangerous fallacy. Indeed, Jenkins (1991, 1995, 1999, 2003, 2009) suggests that all history writing is a battle for different groups to construct their own histories in their own self-interest. Taking this to its extreme, he even made the case for the removal of the study of history altogether (Jenkins, 1999, 2009). To my mind, this rejection of the possibility of historical truth is a dangerous stance to take, now more than ever, and one which prevents our students from being properly critical of different truth-claims.

Continuing Professional Development and professional learning are complex terms (Day & Sachs, 2004). Both are loaded with myriad meanings, and there is still no clear definition of either.  In 2001, the DfEE released a major strategy document for CPD. This document set out the government’s aims for professional learning in English schools, a vision which notably blurred the definitions of professional development and professional learning (DfEE, 2001). A second publication in 2005, placed even more emphasis on the creation of effective CPD by schools, stating that its purpose was “…increasing teachers’ skills, knowledge and understanding…” (DfES, 2005, p. 4). Furthermore, recent government reforms have seen an increasing amount of teacher training shifted into so-called “Teaching Schools”. Yet despite this very explicit focus on the role of schools in improving provision for professional learning, by 2006 Ofsted were still led to report that CPD opportunities in many secondary school departments were “wholly unsatisfactory…far more needs to be made available” (Ofsted, 2006, p. 4). It might well be assumed then, that many of the strategies implemented by schools during the course of the early twenty-first century had little impact in improving the quality of provision of professional learning in English schools.

This literature review is a response to general criticisms of professional learning, outlined above, as well as a the 2011 Ofsted report, History for All (Ofsted, 2011), which set out the shortcomings of professional learning in history departments nationwide. The report noted that “an important issue [in recent history inspections] was the near-absence of appropriate subject training.” (Ofsted, 2011, p. 42) and went on to highlight the discovery that “…in the 65 schools visited…[subject training] was good or outstanding in only 15 of them.” (Ofsted, 2011, p. 42). The language here is vague; however the core point is hammered home with statistical precision. In one institution for example, there had been no subject specific professional development offered to staff for seven years (Ofsted, 2011). These findings clearly present stark challenges to history departments looking to improve their practice.

Over the last few years, many schools have made moves to bring their professional learning in-house (Woodcock, 2011). This approach is fairly common and it is unsurprising that this has come at a time when reducing budgets is paramount (Woodcock, 2011). In one case I explored in some detail, Robwood High (a high achieveing secondary - name changed) began a programme of establishing “Professional Learning Communities” (PLCs) to provide in-house CPD. The PLCs were given the purpose of fostering cross-curricular, collegiate approaches to CPD as a surrogate for bringing in external expertise.  The PLCs at Robwood focused on improving teaching and learning across the school through a shared focus on Assessment for Learning (AfL). The challenge with this model of professional learning is twofold. First, the expertise must be available within the school already. Focussing too heavily on internal expertise runs the risk of encouraging conservatism and removing the challenge provided by external sources (Pendry, et al., 1998). The second issue whether or not such approaches to CPD allow all teachers to develop appropriately in response to their professional and subject specific needs.

Initial Teacher Training, some of the most successful and important History PGCE courses were not likely to be viable to run from 2016. Meanwhile, school based training still had a bank of reserved places, despite struggling to fill these in many cases in the past. Now, I have no inherent opposition to schools providing ITT, if it is done well, however I would argue that much of this has been driven by an ideological desire to break up university control of Initial Teacher Training. Just like the unfortunate Despenser, university education departments have been accused of formenting strife, being disloyal to the cause of traditional education, and ignoring the practicalities of training classroom teachers. What is bitterly ironic is that many of the places which are facing the prospect of being forced to shut their doors, are at the forefront of the fight against the dumbing down of education, exam driven practice and pandering to Ofsted’s latest whims. The stage has been set for the final execution of university based ITT, for it to be divided up for academy chains and private education companies to fight over. Much like the execution of Despenser, the process has been long and painful.

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.

Over the last two days I have been writing an account of what happened during one of the most stressful school trip experiences of my teaching career. Yesterday I focused on the challenge of keeping calm and relinquishing some aspects on control. In this final blog I hope to look at those areas where the team and I were able to play a more active role in events. 

Working with support 
​As I have already noted, one of the most amazing parts of the whole experience was just how co-ordinated the emergency response was. As soon as we had established the condition of students in each of the seven hospitals I endeavoured to speak with each of the representatives from the emergency response teams: Red Cross, Police, Coastguard, Public Health, Youth Hostel and so on. In doing this I was able to work out what their remit was and therefore know which aspects of our case were being dealt with effectively. On the first night for example it was clear that our immediate medical needs were being addressed and that the physical needs of food and shelter for the well students were also covered. I was also able to establish that nobody would be checking on the status of students in hospital and of course no-one would be contacting school. We were therefore able to access the hostel’s phones and focus on these tasks, allowing the emergency services to deal with the rest. By midnight we had therefore communicated the situation clearly back to school. 

On the Tuesday, further support was provided by the local police to coordinate returning students to the hostel and booking well students a crossing back to the UK with P&O. Again, this freed up time for staff to see to students’ more immediate needs such as eating breakfast and lunch and getting clothing and other items for them. It also gave us an opportunity to check all students still had their passports and other key documents.  
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School were of course vital in supporting us. When we lost two members of staff the previous night I requested and was given two support staff who came from England overnight to join us on the Monday. They also brought a car which was extremely helpful in visiting the students.  Again, the choice seemed somewhat overkill at 7pm on Monday but by Tuesday morning I was extremely glad of the extra support.  
The one recurring question I was asked by the emergency staff throughout was what I wanted to happen. We decided early on, after discussions with school, that our main aim was to get students home as soon as possible, as long as this was safe and in their best interests. Therefore, the decisions made by the emergency services helped us to achieve this long term goal. It is well worth considering what your long term goals are for a situation early-on, as this will determine many of your options. One example is that the coach company offered to drive us to a second crossing at Calais. However, as I was not convinced the driver was fit or safe to drive, I opted to spend the night in Belgium. As it turns out, the Calais crossing would have denied us access anyway, but here my overarching imperative for student safety and welfare overrode the possibility of getting them home sooner. It was, in hindsight, the correct call. 

Accepting Your Limits 
As a trip leader I like to be in control of everything. I plan to the nth degree, providing colleagues with detailed itineraries and regular updates throughout the trip. I like to know who is going where and when, and to have a clear chain of responsibility with group leaders reporting back to me. This is how I feel comfortable.  
 
As soon as the ambulances arrived in the port, we were faced very quickly with a key decision: to try and control the whole situation or to relinquish some control and focus on other areas. In this instance there was little time to confirm with school. As more and more students began to fall ill, keeping up with who was being taken away became extremely difficult, especially with diminishing numbers of staff. I was forced to confirm and accept that the paramedics would give me a full list of all the people who had been taken. Once I had been given the assurance that every student would be assigned to a specific hospital and that a list would be given to me, I was able to partially let go and focus on other issues. Throughout the next two hours I continued to liaise with the paramedics and confirmed multiple times that I would get lists. This made communication back to school tricky, as we were unable to provide a definitive list of students for a time, however it was necessary for the emergency crews to complete their jobs effectively, and to ensure that the other students were being looked after. 

With the paramedics working with those who were ill, we shifted our attention to ensuring that students were aware of what was happening and that they did not panic. There were also practical issues to deal with such as access to toilets, stopping children from getting cold, and ensuring that luggage was in the right place to travel on to our hostel for the remainder. Again, having really good support meant that all these issues were dealt with, even to the point of staff collecting errant passports and EHIC cards, something which might have created chaos later.  Eventually I was given the list of students with their associated hospitals. We made multiple copies of this and used it as our master document for all updates. 

The situation was similar once the remaining students were transferred to a local hostel. Fifteen or so Red Cross volunteers helped to register and administer to sick students as they arrived. Remaining staff supported in keeping students calm and getting them to rooms. I ensured I was part of the registration process so that I knew who had arrived in the hostel. I therefore had a clear list of those who were well and based in the hostel and those who were sick and in hospital. Keeping and updating a single copy of these lists proved very important three more students fell ill during registration, requiring two more members of staff be sent to hospitals with them.  

So here is the scenario: You are leading a school group back home after a successful residential visit abroad. As you arrive at the ferry port, forty of your students and four members of staff fall ill. The ferry company refuse to let you travel. What do you do?

Any thoughts? Until recently, I would probably have laughed at such an outlandish proposition as being even vaguely plausible. Still, life brings nothing if not experiences and a good slice of humble pie.  The scenario outlined above is now a staple one for the local authority in its trip leader training and one which I ended up having to manage on the ground. 

Let me say this now, if you are running a school trip and want to choose a country for over half of your students and staff to fall ill, make it Belgium, the emergency response is outstanding! Coordinated services, clear communication, and everyone bending over backwards to be of assistance. When our history battlefields trip party fell victim to an outbreak of illness last week, every single agency we worked with in Belgium was absolutely fantastic. From the staff in the ferry terminal, to paramedics and police, right through to staff in the youth hostel. We could not have asked for more in terms of care and compassion. All of this, coupled with students who dealt bravely with the crisis and the support of my own amazing colleagues, meant that all students were eventually returned home safely. 

For those of you who missed the news headlines, a little extra detail. Recently, I was leading our annual battlefields tour of eighty students and eight staff . It was set to be a 5 day tour of the battlefields of Flanders and the Somme. Days 1 to 3 were brilliant, amazing students and real interest in the history. But on day 4 unexpected problems struck. By 11pm on our final full day in Belgium I had 45 students, 4 staff and 1 driver in 7 hospitals all across northern Belgium.  

Despite the fact we all got home safely, a situation like this is every teacher's worst nightmare! However, the purpose of this blog is not to reflect on the details of what happened, the newspapers have already covered that angle, rather to reflect on the issues that arose for us as teachers during the two days. Hopefully I will be able to offer some thoughts on what helped and hindered us in the process of getting our kids back home.  ​

Well as it turns out, we do talk about History Club...quite a lot actually...my wife suggests possibly too much, though I think not enough! Anyway, today's blog is a follow-up to Toby French's excellent post about the myths of good history teaching. If you have not read it, can I suggest you head over and have a look now. In the blog, French notes how he tries to get a trainee to look beyond the "strategies for engagement" taught to them at university and think more pragmatically about how they might deliver effective history lessons. I thought this would be quite relevant as many trainees begin to think about moving into their new jobs for September.

Reading the blog got me to thinking about my own work with trainees. To be fair they are quite a mixed bunch. Some come in with really clear notions about what learning means and how it might be achieved, some less so. However all come with one unifying feature, a lack of experience. I completely understand French's frustration when he talks about having been told that group work, co-operative learning and teacher facilitation were the ultimate answers to pupil learning. Many of the trainees I have worked with in the past seem to work on a lesson by lesson basis, not really looking at the larger picture. They tend to focus on activity over content and assume that "engaging" means "fun", and that all teacher talk is a bad thing. They look at assessment as a way of showing progress, rather than as a useful teaching tool. These are the rules of History Club for many trainee teachers. What trainees don't yet know, is that these are the rules of Trainee History Club...

Now I completely understand why universities have to equip their students with all of these beliefs. A single year is really not enough to become a good teacher. Hell ten years is barely adequate in my view! Universities therefore need to imbue their charges with a wide range of approaches to teaching, to allow them to deal with an even wider range of schools and students. Universities need to provide their NQTs with the milk needed to survive their infancy in teaching. This means quick ways to getting classes engaged and simple solutions to delivering content after only a few weeks of training. We all need to start somewhere, and the best universities couple this with excellent pedagogical training as well (the problem of poor training will if anything become worse as universities are cut off from the training programmes, as Rich Kennet has written about before.) The real issue with this form of training comes when such teachers are not weaned off this diet and into more complex understandings of their professional role. The best students should be moving beyond the "activity" approach to teaching within their first few months, others may take a bit longer, but all need to make this move. 

Well it seems Mr Hunt is in the firing line on Twitter once again for an article posted on the Sunday Times suggesting that, if Labour does manage to solve their infighting and get elected, as education secretary, he will bring in a kind of teaching MOT. Now this is not an entirely fresh piece of news. Indeed, as I rolled my eyes at the outcry and started thinking about my blog, I stumbled across this piece I wrote in January on the exact same theme! Now, to save you from my usual blog length, I will not repeat anything I have already said, but I do want to reiterate my call to get beyond the rhetoric around licensing teachers and consider the potential for positive impact.

Clearly not a piece of gospel research but some interesting bits and bobs I picked up during the reading for this. If nothing else it might be worth looking at the reference list. Can I particular recommend Lave and Wenger.