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Knowing History? How to Choose the Best History Textbooks

2/26/2017

2 Comments

 
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.
​
  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. 
2 Comments
Lindsay Gibson
3/27/2017 07:28:59 pm

Alex,
Congrats on the thorough and thoughtful series of blog posts on selecting the best history textbooks. Like many current and past educational controversies, the debate about history textbooks has often resorted to false binaries and caricature which has been unhelpful at best and divisive at worst. Much of this debate has centred on how textbooks are used by history teachers, and not the qualities of the textbooks themselves, which is something that your blogs focus on.

Although I think the criteria you have developed for evaluating textbooks is sound, I am not sure that your 2nd criterion "Knowing Whose History? Are students being introduced to the idea that they are being shown a narrative rather than the narrative?" is as important as others? Although textbooks can implicitly and explicitly alert readers to the idea that they are being shown "a" narrative, not "the" narrative via a variety of methods, I feel as though ultimately it is the responsibility of the teacher to teach students about the interpretive nature of secondary accounts regardless of whether the text does this or not. Furthermore, teachers should introduce students to the criteria for judging the plausibility or justifiability of the conclusions of secondary accounts.

As a young history teacher in Canada during the early 2000s I was able to get my hands on several substantial Hodder History textbooks (I think they were designed for A Level students) that focused on different topics in modern history (Russia in Revolution (1890-1924, Weimar and Nazi Germany, Italy the Rise of Fascism, US history). I was impressed by the depth of investigation and knowledge (I used pieces of them for my Grade 12 World History Course), the diagram and visuals, and the fact that they included historiography and excerpts from historians' accounts. Furthermore the Hodder textbooks highlighted the important historical questions that have continued to capture historians' interest and debate over time, and yet presented them to students in ways that they could engage with them. This was a revelation and not something ever included in Canadian history textbooks. In my opinion, we need more of this in our textbooks. Most history teachers I know are not knowledgeable about the historiography of different topics in history (and it is impossible to expect that they should), and so it seems of the utmost importance that textbooks present authentic and significant questions for students to answer, and also provides them with the information and evidence that can be used to answer the question.

Given the popularity of Seixas' historical thinking framework in Canada, every major textbook publisher has now produced one or several history textbooks in different provinces (education is a provincial concern in Canada) that embed and explicitly focus on "the Big Six" in addition to the narrative that is provided. In most cases this means that students are presented with questions or activities throughout different chapters (and at the end of chapters) that focus on the content and one of the second-order concepts. Unfortunately, no historiography is included, excerpts from historians' accounts are never included, and many of the questions that are asked are not of significant concern or interest for historians, teachers, or students. The place and role of the narrative in these textbooks is also problematic and no one seems to have a come up with a workable solution. Some have concluded that a narrative textbook is antithetical to historical thinking and so we should give up on producing them. Instead textbooks should focus on providing students with important historical questions, contextual information relevant to the questions, and historical evidence that can be used to respond to the questions. Although this model holds some promise, no one has produced a concrete example to work with. Personally I am less concerned with a text that provides a coherent and comprehensive grand narrative, and more concerned with a text that is organized around key questions/inquiries that students and teachers can organize their thinking around. Textbooks should provide a scaffold for teachers to organize their courses around, including the requisite content and disciplinary knowledge included in the curriculum.

Sorry for the long post, just wanted to share one perspective from Canada.

Reply
Alex Ford
4/3/2017 03:49:51 pm

Hi Lindsay,

Thanks for the comments and sorry it has taken me so long to get back to them.

I would agree that not all of these criteria are equal in weight, and their order largely reflects the order I wrote about them. I also think a good teacher can overcome many of these issues. I suppose the bigger issue is the larger drive to have textbooks which drive curriculum, or even a single, approved textbook. In this case, all the questions become important.

The Hodder books you refer to are some of my favourites, especially for advanced levels. They provide a wealth of content and are usable for many purposes. I do think it is odd that Seixas et al. put so little focus on interpretation, but then I suppose that is part of the different focus of history in the Canadian context.

I am always fascinated to learn more about approaches to history in different countries, so it would be great to follow up on this discussion at a future point too... maybe a research study??

Reply



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