How have we got historical enquiry so wrong? re-empowering young people through a radical reset of historical enquiry

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A few days ago, I wrote a blog responding to the DfE’s interim curriculum and assessment review. In it I expressed deep concerns that there was too little critical evaluation of concepts like 'knowledge-rich' and 'mastery learning', which continue to do enormous damage to meaningful teaching in subjects like history. One of the key places I see these concepts impacting is on the framing of historical enquiries in the classroom. They therefore strike at the very heart of history teaching itself.

In 2023, over a decade after the Gibb-Gove reforms began, Ofsted reported on the picture of history in schools. In their report, they noted that in too many schools, “pupils’ knowledge of history was disconnected or superficial” and “in most schools, pupils had misconceptions about how historians and others study the past and construct their accounts” (Ofsted, 2023, n.p.). The report further noted that "the teaching of disciplinary knowledge in key stage 3 was overly influenced by leaders’ interpretations of GCSE examination requirements. In most schools, pupils learned disciplinary knowledge that was either directly or indirectly connected to particular GCSE question types" (Ofsted, 2023, n.p.). These issues should also be seen alongside the common criticism that history is increasingly overloaded with content and a growing perception that it is inaccessible for lower attaining pupils, especially those with SEND. Meanwhile other reports suggest pupils from Global Majority backgrounds are significantly less likely to choose to study history beyond age 14, due to its perceived irrelevance in their lives (Atkinson et al., 2018). This is a travesty on a national scale.

Done well, school history has enormous potential to empower all young people to think critically about the world around them. It can help them to:
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• Understand themselves and others.
• Explore common and unique human experiences across time.
• Engage with- and understand the importance of- truth processes.
• Develop their own ideas and make meaning of the past in local, national, global, and of course personal contexts. 
• Embrace uncertainty and complexity in safe and meaningful ways (Dawson 2018). 

 
One of the key tools history teachers have used to empower young people through history lessons is historical enquiry, and specifically the enquiry question. Indeed, Ofsted’s research review noted the importance of historical enquiry in curriculum planning and pedagogical decision making, and even Michael Young (2016), whose work was so central to the Gibb-Gove reforms, has written about the importance of historical enquiry as a vehicle for 'powerful knowledge'. However, the meaning of enquiry itself in the context of the history classroom seems to be changing, to the point where is is being robbed of its potential to deliver on the goals of empowering young people through history education.

Enquiry as empowerment
The concept of historical enquiry has been embedded in school history teaching in  

England since the advent of the National Curriculum. Building on the pioneering work of the Schools Council History Project (later Schools History Project), framing history as enquiry has long been viewed as the means to develop pupils’ historical knowledge through careful engagement with modes of historical thinking (Chapman, 2024; Dawson, 2015, 2018; Sylvester, 1976). In ‘A New Look at History’, David Sylvester (1976, p.36-37) outlined the radical potential of historical enquiry to ensure school history was an intellectual valid apprenticeship in powerful modes of historical thinking:

"Studying history involves the activity of enquiring into the past, and is not the passive acceptance of information gathered by others... The sources of history are mere dust and dry bones until teachers and pupils make them come alive. History in this sense involves a perpetual act of resurrection in which pupils, teachers and historians reconstruct the past and so make it become real and “present” to them...History in school should involve the active enquiry of pupils into the various kinds of primary and secondary sources which make up the raw material of history....[A] major activity should be the reconstruction of the past [which]...involves the making of an imaginative response to the evidence from the past as well as the intellectual one implied in R. G. Collingwood's remark that 'all history is the history of thought.'"

Riley’s (2000) ‘Into the KS3 history garden’ perfectly captures the vital role which enquiry plays in developing young people’s historical knowledge and consciousness through real and engaging historical questions. The concept of an enquiry question has become central in the discourse around effective history teaching in England and internationally. For Riley (2008, p.8), the ideal enquiry question needs to:
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• Capture the interest and imagination of pupils.
• Place an aspect of historical thinking, concept or process at the forefront of pupils’ minds.
• Result in a tangible, lively, substantial, enjoyable ‘outcome activity’ through which pupils can genuinely answer the enquiry question.

For Riley, and many others, the key drivers of enquiry questions are first and foremost related to specific pupils being taught in specific school contexts. The key questions for teachers and departments are then framed with pupils at their centre. For instance:

• How can help this enquiry on Partition in India connect with my Year 9s and fire their imaginations late in the summer term?
• How will I enable my Year 7s to engage in debate and have a voice in responding to our enquiry about why the legitimacy of medieval queens was ignored?
• How will my Year 8s develop their historical thinking and consciousness through our enquiry on the campaigns for suffrage, so that they understand themselves and their world better?

How have we robbed historical enquiry of its power?
At the beginning of this blog I claimed that historical enquiry has been the victim of the 'knowledge turn' in education. I stand by this point. Historical enquiry is currently framed as best practice almost universally, and seems to have been adopted more widely than ever before. Ofsted (2023, n.p.) noted that in most school "historical topics were structured by overarching enquiry questions." Yet all the evidence seems to suggest that the enquiry approach is doing little to counter the problems of superficiality, inaccessibility and alienation already identified. Why should this be the case?

Part of the answer, I think, lies in the fact that historical enquiry is being interpreted and approached very differently now than it was when Riley was writing, twenty-five years ago. If we compare Riley's approach to historical enquiry with some of the discourse around enquiry questions in recent years, we find some stark contrasts. Instead of beginning by asking about the needs of pupils, much energy is now expended in deciding first upon the core knowledge which pupils need to grasp through their enquiry. Indeed, Ofsted (2023, n.p.) identified effective enquiry questions as those which "wove together specific substantive and disciplinary knowledge" so that "pupils developed detailed and secure knowledge that enabled them to answer the enquiry question meaningfully." The use of "answer" here is interesting in its own right, but that is maybe for another blog. While there is nothing wrong with considering the substantive and disciplinary knowledge carefully, it elevates knowledge selection to the place in curricular thinking normally occupied by aims and purposes. It also begs the question: how should this knowledge be selected?

Building on the ‘knowledge-rich’ (Gibb, 2015; Hirsch, 2006) or ‘powerful knowledge’ (Young, 2016; Young & Muller, 2010) agendas set out by the last government, the advice for knowledge selection has tended to be for teachers to look to external authorities. In the best cases this might mean looking at the work of historians in setting the knowledge parameters of an enquiry. There is some merit in this of course, and many exciting and powerful enquiries have had real historical debates at their heart. In the worst cases however, it has meant defaulting to a vague concept of what might class as ‘cultural capital’ (Alderson, 2019; Ford, 2022). In addition to this, there has been a tendency to focus primarily on the substantive knowledge at the expense of the disciplinary thinking that ultimately shapes pupils' relationships with- and understandings of- that substantive knowledge (Harris, 2021; Smith & Jackson, 2021).

When historical enquiry makes the selection of knowledge its primary aim, the main role of the enquiry question is transformed too. With other purposes sidelined the enquiry question becomes primarily a tool to guide students in acquiring the identified content as a neat package. This effectively boils down to a process of sequencing the knowledge over time into manageable chunks to master. Again, having a clear sense what knowledge we ideally want pupils develop, and how we intend to sequence these encounters, are of course important considerations for any enquiry. However, I would argue they should not be the primary concerns. Two really important aspects of historical enquiry are lost in this process of externalising knowledge selection and reducing enquiry planning to acts of sequencing.

The first casualty of this approach is the teacher being cognicent of how pupils’ needs, experiences and thinking might interact with and be shaped by the knowledge they encounter. The trend in recent years has been to use the moniker of ‘powerful knowledge’ as a catch-all term to suggest that knowledge acquisition is valuable where it underpins future curricular learning, or provides the ‘cultural capital’ which is might be necessary for young people to be successful in professional careers (Ofsted, 2019; Young & Lambert, 2014). However, the knowledge pupils encounter through school history has far wider reaching potential to enlighten or enrich and has value far greater than these two narrow aims suggest.

The second casualty has been, the opportunity for pupils to develop their own thoughts and ideas in response to historical enquires. This seems rather odd considering a core purpose of the enquiry framing is to enable pupils to respond meaningfully to the question set. However, the excessive focus on securing a narrow set of knowledge-based outcomes seems, in too many cases, to render the enquiry just another tool to deliver this knowledge to memory. Again, this is partly because empowerment in the ‘knowledge-rich’ framing has become synonymous with the acquisition and securing of ‘cultural capital’ rather than empowering pupils to interact with and make meaning of the knowledge they encounter, nor to develop their historical consciousness (Lee, 2004; Smith & Jackson, 2021). Many historical enquiries framed in the ‘knowledge-rich’ way therefore pass by opportunities for pupils to puzzle over, discuss or debate content, for risk it might corrupt the pre-identified ‘powerful knowledge’. Nor is there space offered for pupils to consider their reactions to the knowledge they encounter or develop an historical consciousness which connects their present with the pasts they are studying. Indeed this is very often dismissed as somehow ahistorical or moralising (Ofsted, 2023).

In fact, there is also a third casualty, in the form of teacher autonomy. By looking to external sources of authority to set the parameters of an enquiry we also underplay the hugely important role of the teacher in knowing and understanding their pupils and context. History teachers should not be simple conduits for disciplinary or substantive knowledge, their professional expertise is in seeking the understanding their pupils need. This is an authority we should not give up lightly.

​The need for a radical reset
There are of course a number of clear exceptions to the rather grim picture I have painted. I could list a large number of exciting enquiries which do begin from the needs of pupils, or offer genuine opportunities for pupils to think about their responses. There are too many to list in one blog, but they are still out there, and we need to be sharing them with one another (more on the Curriculum PATHS project which aims to exactly this later). I do want to mention two particular inspirations for me in recent years. First, I want to note the hugely important role of Mohamud and Whitburn’s ‘Justice to History’ project (Mohamud & Whitburn, 2016, 2019, 2021) in helping revitalise our understanding of historical enquiry as an ethical endeavour. Equally I have been much inspired by the importance placed on beginning with pupils' own life experiences and knowledge bases which has been central in Jason Todd et al.'s work with the Centre for Empire Migration and Belonging (McIntosh et al., 2019; Todd, 2019).

Despite these rays of hope, I think it is important to acknowledge that historical enquiry in England has been trending towards greater control and narrowing its purposes to focus almost exclusively on knowledge acquisition for a long time now. It is difficult to know how the trend might be reversed when the good models which do exist seem to have limited impact. My suggestion therefore is that we maybe need to think more radically about re-finding the lost potential of historical enquiry. A radical reset if you will.

But what would this look like? Certainly I think we want to revisit the original SCHP (SHP) conception of the role of historical enquiry in the classroom, but bring this into conversation will all that we have learned in the intervening years. In fact a good starting point would probably be Mohamud and Whitburn's (2019) 'Anatomy of an enquiry'. Equally we might look to the work of other jurisdictions. If we gaze across the pond we can see how the Canadian Historical Thinking Project (Seixas, 2008), which was also inspired by the work of SHP, has developed its own approach to historical enquiry. Unlike in England, this has been much more focused on the importance of allowing pupils to make sense of the enquiries for themselves. A really helpful framing for this can be found in Gibson and Miles’ work on enquiry questions (Gibson & Miles, 2020). They suggest that a core decision in enquiry planning is to consider how much autonomy pupils should get through the enquiry process. This of course depends on the expertise of the pupils, and the aims of the teacher. It is a framing I have used with my own trainee teachers for some years now.

​In the English context there has been (with some mild justification) a great moral panic over allowing pupils too great a set of freedoms in their learning. I don’t use ‘moral panic’ lightly either. More than once I have been told that allowing children to choose some of what they might want to study is the ‘soft bigotry of low expectations’. The panic itself has so exceeded the risk that pupils are now routinely locked out of any autonomy in their learning – killing interest and motivation in the process, and ironically trampling over much of the cognitive psychology of effective learning (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, 2018; Sweller et al., 2019; Willingham, 2012). 
 
The result of this panic has been that, in the English context, we have increasingly tended to control all aspects of historical enquiry. Although I have focused on recent examples up to this point, I think it is also fair to say that historical enquiry in English schools had begun to be clipped and limited, even before the advent of Gibb and Gove. There is a longer tradition of history teaching discourse which is critical of enquiries that place too much emphasis on pupil autonomy for instance. In most historical enquiries set in English classrooms:

• We set the question (and in the worst cases know the answer we expect).
• We select the information and sources (and in the worst cases use them as illustrations rather than engaging with them as evidence).
• We set the modes of analysis and dictate the debates (and in the worst cases scaffold the thinking to the point that it is just repetition).
• We dictate the outcome product without ever asking pupils what implications it has for them (and in the worst cases just link it to a GCSE question).

 
While this level of control can be helpful when apprenticing pupils, we cannot keep that control indefinitely if we also want young people to become critical historical thinkers in their own right. In fact, in the long run this excessive control will have a stifling effect on pupils’ engagement with history, as we are seeing play out across the country right now. Why carry on with the pretence of engaging in an historical puzzle when in fact you are just reproducing the arguments the teacher had always planned for you to make? In fact we end up with the "exuberant voiceless participation" discussed by Rupert Knight (drawing on Segal and Lefstein) in his recent presentation at the HTEN conference.
 
There are other perverse impacts of the high level of control too. In some cases, it means teachers, as enquiry planners, setting themselves up as experts in topics on which they have limited knowledge, while ignoring pupils’ own family and community knowledge of those same histories. I have seen this many times in Bradford and Leeds as the British Empire in India, or Partition are taught on the assumption that all pupils are ‘novices’ in relation to these histories. Nothing could be further from the truth; and nothing is more likely to persuade a child of Indian or Pakistani descent that history education in England has nothing to offer them, than experiencing such staggering hubris.
 
Re-empowering young people through historical enquiry
So, what would it look like for us to change our approach to historical enquiries? To round this blog off I am going to try to summarise some of my reflections. These are based on a great many inspirations and I hope you will also see the work of the history teaching community shining through despite the gloom. 

1. Make our first focus the purposes of our enquiries, and ensure those purposes centre the needs and experiences of the young people we work with. One of the most important things we can do if we want historical enquiries to inspire and empower young people; to ensure their needs are met, and their voices are heard; is to put them at the heart of our planning decisions. Mohamud and Whitburn (2019) have already made a really powerful case for the importance of considering our Enquiry Ethic. This Ethic should guide not only our selection of content, but also our pedagogical approaches as well. There are now many teachers, trained through the UCL PGCE who are confident in thinking about this dimension in their planning. Their work was formational in inspiring the SHP Curriculum PATHS project, which has sought to identify seven broad ethical purposes for history teaching, all of which focus on the needs of young people. 
2. Consider how we are preparing children to think critically and historically. Just as Riley suggested, we need to consider how our enquiries are enabling young people to think in what Wineburg called "unnatural but essential" ways. This is not just a case of ‘doing source work’, it means making space for pupils to ask historical questions, pursue their own historical enquiries, and reach their own justified, but tentative, conclusions about the past. We need to consider how we can empower young people to understand that historical claims are rooted in evidence but are always tentative and provisional, to embrace complexities and uncertainties rather than seeking simple solutions. As the Jewish historian, Marc Bloch commented as he wrote from his cellar in occupied France in 1944: “it is a scandal that [in an age of fraud and false rumour] the critical method is so absent from our school programmes” (Bloch, 1992).
3. Make space for children to understand themselves and others. Whenever we plan enquires, we should reflect on where children will have opportunities to consider the identities and world views of people in the past, as well as their own identities and world views as individuals, and as members of wider communities. This process helps us also in not seeing pupils as empty vessels to be filled, but as people who come with their own sets of knowledge and metanarratives, as well as the preconceptions and misconceptions we have been trained to spot.
4. Focus on how we can develop pupils’ consciousness of the connections between the past, present and future, and empower them to consider how they might respond to these challenges. I have been reflecting a lot of late on the power of dialogue in the classroom. This dialogue does not always have to be in relation to unpicking the history itself. There is a great power in helping young people make sense of the present through the past, and in encouraging them to consider what the implications are for their own lives. This is what ensures history continues to be a living discipline and not a set of specimens on the pinboard of a butterfly collector.
5. Reflect on how we can make the power structures and processes, which have foregrounded some histories and sidelined others, visible. As Trouillot (2015) suggests, it is fundamental that we understand how power and history interreact and how groups and peoples become marginalised. This is no less true for our pupils. There is already a good body of work exploring how this might be done in the classroom (Lyndon-Cohern, 2023; Priggs, 2020).
6. Ensure that our enquiries are enjoyable, accessible and promote pupil agency. History is at its very best when it inspires pupils’ curiosity and encourages young people to want to find out more about the past. Children of all abilities and backgrounds want to feel they are part of building a shared understanding of the past (and the present) in which their voices matter. How certain are we that they feel this way? And what could we do to find out? To pick up on the idea of the puzzle for a moment, I am a great fan of Culpin’s phrase: “no puzzle, no history.” However, I wonder if framing history as a puzzle suggests it might itself be solvable, something we can reach certainty on. It might be better to say “no debate, no history” which it much closer to the uncertainties we want pupils to embrace in the classroom, and reminds us that we are always seeking to promote dialogue. 

 
Apologies for another long blog. There is so much to say on this issue, and I am sure I have not said half of it. However, after such a long exploration of what is going wrong in history teaching, I do want to focus on the hope that we have it within our power to make the changes and get this right. There are so many people out there who want to put the needs of their pupils at the heart of their work as history teachers. But if we really want to achieve this, we need to acknowledge when we have turned into blind alleys. Like many things, historical enquiry is not a universal force for good. It can be done in ways which empower and in ways which stifle pupils’ voices and deaden their love for history. But if we really want pupils who care about history and who feel empowered by studying it, then I still believe a radically reset version of historical enquiry, with careful consideration to its purposes and ethical dimensions, is our best vehicle for achieving this.
 
If you head on over to our Curriculum PATHS page you can access some amazing enquiries rooted in the needs of young people (and contribute or share your own too). We’d love you to join us. 
 
As ever, I would love to hear your thoughts and comments. Find me over at @apf102.bsky.social
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References

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