So with very little fanfare, the grade descriptors for the new GCSE grades 9-1 were released on Friday. Those schools who have opted to use these as a progression model, assessment system and general replacement for both NC Levels and GCSE grades must be delighted that they can finally start implementing their systems.
​
In this blog I want to take a look at how these grade descriptors can be utilised from Years 7-11 to provide a clear and coherent flight path for pupils in history. 

Using the grade descriptors to create a flight path

Many schools for instance have opted for the following basic flight path:

As such, the grade descriptors will help to define what this path might look like for pupils in lessons. They could be used as part of the reporting process, discussed with parents and form targets for written feedback….

I have long been a fan of Tom Bennett’s no nonsense approach to behaviour management. I have recommended Bennett’s blog many times to trainees and NQTs nervous about expectations in the classroom (as you will see from these pages). As such, there are many things I like about the ITT behaviour report (one of the long-awaited responses to the Carter review) which was published on Wednesday:

• I think it is good for trainees to learn about classroom routines at uni as well as at school (I can’t think of many providers who won’t cover this, although SD/SCITT courses may use their own particular school approaches which might be accused of lacking breadth).
• I think it is a great idea for trainees to have considered how they might respond effectively to common misbehaviour or issues in the classroom (again this is covered through observations of experienced teachers, discussions of approaches to behaviour management, use of videos etc.)
• I think it is good for trainees to be aware of the importance of relationships with students (again this is covered and dealt with in our course and certainly by the schools we partner with. Of course things break down more when schools have their own ideas about those relationships which jar with university input eg. When schools allow children to take a time-out by their own choice, or when pupils can ‘appeal’ a teacher’s sanction.
• I think it is very important for trainees to get support with behaviour management. This does however need to come from the most credible sources – often this means in schools.
• I love the idea that trainees should have to observe people with excellent behaviour management – behaviour experts. However I also feel that schools tend to define these as the people who don’t have behaviour problems. Far more useful might be to observe a teacher for whom behaviour is an effort, but who does not let their standards slip and deals with issues. The risk with the “behaviour expert” approach is that it becomes all about personalities and those behaviour demagogues which all schools have.
• I think it can be a powerful tool when trainees video and watch their lessons critically.

​So far, so vanilla. Yet I also feel there are a number of fundamental issues with the approaches suggested by Bennett and his team. The following points are very much a response to the report and to Tom's blog "Let's fix this together" published today.

Just wanted to say a huge than you to people who attended my (rather history focused) talk on life after levels at ResearchEd today. I am posting the powerpoint and links to other useful resources on this blog post. Please do get in touch if you would like to discuss further.

• ​Progression in history -a support pack
• Progress & progression - special issue of Teaching History
  
• Making progress in understanding progression: a blog series
  
• Dealing with GCSE grades replacing NC Levels: advice
  
• Example task-specific assessments
  

​I have also uploaded my notes from two other sessions, in case you missed them:

• ​Peter Henderson from the EEF on effective marking
• ​Philippa Cordingley from CUREE onwhat makes an exceptional school (this is particularly interesting)

Just a short post to say thanks to everyone who came and contributed to my HA session on the Making of America today. It was great to talk to so many enthusiastic historians.

You will be able to find relevant blog posts for C19th America by clicking on "GCSE/A Level Topics" above and following the LINK to "America 1789-1900". The blog posts are indexed and contain some interesting bits I have found whilst reading around the topic.

​I will also be uploading a range of teaching resources which you can find by clicking on the "NEW UNIT" resources on the right hand side of the page. These will be updated as I add new things. I have also added a CPD folder in which I will put today's PowerPoint. My old American West A Level resources are also available here for download.

If you do trial any of the materials; make useful modifications; or want to share your own resources, please do get in touch via the contact form and I will make them available on the blog and in the file store.

Finally, here are some links to recommended books. Many of these are available as audiobooks so you could even get a copy with a free Audible trial and listen to them on your commute:

After a bit of a pause, Fri-deas is back. This time, everything has a bit of a Cold War theme. Thanks to Sarah for sending these through. If you like these ideas, or indeed try them in class, do let us know how you get on! Equally, if you have a Fri-dea to share, do send it on through.

​Fri-dea 1: Revising knowledge and chronology through "match reports"

During CBT days last week I set my Year 9 classes the task of summing up the events of the Cold War that we have looked at so far in a sports/ football match commentary. The aim was that they could revise and consolidate everything they have looked at over the last few weeks, and also decide at each point which superpower could be said to have "scored a point/goal".

I also thought it would be useful for them to consider chronology, because we've jumped around a bit in the last few lessons. I've taken their books in to mark today and what they have come up with has by far exceeded my expectations. They were able to use their knowledge really cleverly to make some brilliant, and creative reports. Here is an example in which the student is describing the Berlin Airlift:
"The Americans go flying over the top of the reds, a defiant goal for the blues!"
Maybe, more importantly than being really impressed at what they've produced, reading their reports is certainly making marking much more entertaining for me!

​Fri-dea 2: A game of chicken with this egg-cellent approach to understanding MAD

My Year 9s have recently been studying mutually assured destruction (MAD) in the context of the Cold War. We were about to move on and look at the Cuban Missile Crisis. However, when I marked their homework ("overall did MAD make the world safer?") they had ALL argued that it did! This made me wonder if they had failed to grasp the implications of MAD , particularly that the USA and USSR both had highly destructive weapons [nice focus on the substantive concept here - Mr F].

To help demonstrate the implications and dangers of the MAD situation and the fact that there are no guarantees in nuclear war, I tried to make the concept a bit more accessible. I invited a "brave volunteer" to join me at the front and play the part of the USSR to my USA. I then produced a box of eggs and held an egg over the student's head, and armed them with an egg also to hold over mine. The class loved it, and were very much encouraging their class-mate to egg me. We then had a discussion (eggs still suspended) about what the guarantees were (or weren't) in this situation, and how safe everyone ought to feel.  I also acted out being very nervous, egg-agerating (groan) ​[Omlettin' this slide] being in a dilemma over whether I should get in there first and drop my egg.

Thankfully I avoided an egging, but the activity had meant that when we went on to look at the Cuban Missile Crisis, the class seemed to really appreciate the tension and danger of the situation, and that there were no guarantees. They thankfully lost the modern mind-set and benefit of hindsight that had been hindering them, and they were certainly engaged in the lesson! ​[A really nice use of an accessible demonstration to help make the abstract more concrete here. Importantly this is linked back to the core content really well. Cracking! *sorry*]

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:

This is a primer post which goes with my upcoming blog on progression in history. You can find the main post HERE. You can also find my other primer post, in which I attempted to do a demolition job on the idea of linear progression models HERE.

Linear progression models are riddled with problems. In this post, I want to focus on one response to the confusions created them: research-based progression models. Let me be clear from the outset, research-based models of progression were not designed as a replacement for National Curriculum levels, rather to address their myriad shortcomings and help teachers to really get to grips with what progression in history looks like.

The best thing to do to understand research-based models of progression is to read Lee and Shemilt’s seminal article in Teaching History 113, “A scaffold not a cage”. Research based models differ from linear models because they take students’ work and understanding as a starting point to describe what improvement in history actually looks like. In the above article, Lee and Shemilt offer some descriptions of what pupils’ thinking about historical evidence looks like. They then divide this into “stages” of development. The upper four stages of their model are given here.

This blog is a primer for my upcoming post on thinking about progression in history. You can find the main post HERE.

Linear progression models have dominated the way we talk about progression in history for many years now. Once upon a time, they were an odd perversion created by the mis-use of National Curriculum levels, but now they are absolutely everywhere, infiltrating everything from A Level to GCSE.

Linear progression models attempt to create a series of steps which pupils must climb in order to improve at a subject. In maths for example, pupils might begin to understand the concept of angles and their relationships to straight lines by looking at how angles on a straight line add up to 360 degrees, then moving on to deal with angles on parallel lines, and so on. In maths this has the potential to work because there are clear steps for pupils to take to improve in their knowledge of angles and lines.

In history the situation is quite different. Linear progression models, such as those used by many schools up until the abolition of the National Curriculum level descriptors, were generally based on the idea that students could improve through a focus on their second-order understanding, rather than knowledge; that is to say, the ways in which we understand history, for example through our understanding of significance, cause, or change. See the example below:

So buried in amongst the tax tweaks, smoke and mirrors of today's budget announcement is a major statement from the government about the future of education in England. George Osbourne (yes the Chancellor, not the Secretary of State for Education) has announced that all schools will need to have left Local Authority control and have become academies between 2020 and 2022. There are many reasons to be wary of such a change, but I really want to focus in on one of those here: the loss of the National Curriculum.

As academies have the freedom to set their own currciulum and are not bound by the nationally agreed document, the movement of all schools to become academies means an end to over two decades of government-set curriculum. "Good!" you may cry. But actually I am not sure it is all that good. Like it or not, the National Curriculum has done an awful lot of good to British education, as well as the more widely publicised negative impacts. The reason it does some good is mainly down to the fact that it balances out other pressures which the government puts on educations, notably the drive to produce ever improving exam results (but not have more people passing).

You may remember that between 2010 and 2014 there was an enourmous fuss made as Michael Gove and the education people (or otherise - you decide) in Whitehall attempted to re-work and re-write the various statutory frameworks for study. History of course was famously controversial, with a list of content which initial looked like it had been dreamed up by a drunken Nigel Farage on a bender at the Premier Inn with David Starkey and Nial Ferguson. Yet the thing which was always striking about these reforms, was that the academies Gove created did not have to follow this curriculum at all. Why then go to all that trouble if some schools could just ignore the results? Indeed, some schools who became academies were also some of the worst for teaching a narrow, C20th heavy history curriculum. With academy status they had no need to change. Indeed, they were even permitted to continue using National Curriculum Levels if they so chose (and many did!). But at the moment, this is intertia, already there are some major and worrying changes to the curriculua of academies which are setting a potential future trend for English education. The National Curriculum was far from perfect, but it did (and currently does) enshrines a number of principles which may risk being lost if academies continue to be allowed to plough their own curricular furrows. For the purposes of brevity I just want to deal with two of these.

Richard White's "Remembering Ahanagran" is a book which I have been unable to put down. At times witty and amusing and at other times deeply moving, White tells the story of his mother's early life and emigration to the United States through her own memories, gathered over a lifetime. 

"Lives are not stories. A day, a month, a year, or a lifetime has no plot. Our experiences are only the raw stuff of stories...We turn our lives into stories, and, in doing so, we...[give our] lives a coherence that the day-to-day lives of our actual experience lack."

One one level, White helps us to get a glimpse into the intimate stories of his family and shows us the strangeness of the world they inhabited. We see the impact of British policy in Ireland, we feel the social stigma attached to mixed marriages, we appreciate how people were both driven by the own desires but also controlled by factors outside their control. I was particularly drawn in by the detailed focus on the construction and reconstruction of ordinary lives. White is by no means glorifying the life his mother led, however, he shows it to be of the same interest and importance as so many other "famous lives" which have of course received far more attention. He demonstrates this beautifully when talking about the house in which his mother spent her early years in the USA.

"There are no histories of Chicago in which 6420 South Mozart Street...matters very much...But for Sara, Chicago always existed in relation to South Mozart Street. And all of America existed in relation to Chicago. South Mozart Street, where she started and ended her day, was the center of America."

On a different level, the book is also a history of the United States in the early 20th century. The characters of the story, whilst very ordinary, are also touched by the major events of the time. During Prohibition illegal stills are kept in the basement. When the Great Depression arrives its toll on the immigrant Americans can be seen. The racial tensions in the South also receive mention as do the corrupt legal systems of Chicago which find themselves in thrall to the Irish gangs. Towards the end of the book, themes of anti-Semitism and racism tinge the story, whilst the War throws the lives of the characters into disarray. If nothing else, the book is well worth a read to see how these "great" events impacted on the lives of everyday people. It is a story about what it means to be American and how American identity has been shaped.

Finally, and most importantly, "Remembering Ahanagran" is something of a historiography. The memories of White's mother are the raw materials of the book, however White has taken a very different approach to this. Much of the book sees him discussing and dealing with the gulf which exists between the memories of his mother and the evidence he can find historically. He begins by outlining the tensions between memory, story-telling and history.

"I once though of my mother's stories as history...Then I became an historian, and after many years I have come to realize that only careless historians confuse memory and history. History is the enemy of memory. The two stalk each other across the fields of the past, claiming the same terrain."

In every aspect, White compares his mother's memories and stories with the evidence he can find. In most cases there are huge tensions between the two version of the past and the book deals with how these might be reconciled. This is often a difficult process, and on more than one occasion it is clear that White's mother is not entirely happy with the direction the book is taking, she would rather keep the version of history she has created for herself. However White persists and the most fascinating aspect of the book is how White deals with these tensions and how he attempts to construct a history from the fragments. This is one of the most brilliant and eloquent explanations of the historical method I have read. It is like picking up White's thoughts and notes as much as it is a finished book. He also clearly struggles with his own memories of his mother and father as these are challenged by the evidence.

I think my favourite aspect of the book has been, what White would term, its anti-memoir quality. There is no attempt here to construct simple stories with simple meanings. Every aspect of Sara Walsh's life story is scrutinised. In many cases the result is complex and the result seems strange. But as White notes:

"Any good history begins in strangeness. The past should not be comfortable. The past should not be a familiar echo of the present...The past should be so strange you wonder how you and the people you know and love could come from such as time..."

Ultimately the book feels like a discussion, a conversation about the past and how and why we construct it. It is a brilliant way to get thinking about the historical method and a highly recommended read to really get you thinking about what it means to be an historian and what the role of history should be. It also asks us to consider the meaning of historical significance, taking seemingly innocuous events and showing the enormous shadows they cast over the lives of the people in the book. White also demands that we think about the nature of time itself. He shows how some stories occur in ordinary time, whilst others, such as those of the heroes of The Troubles, take place in a "monumental time", where lives and deaths can span centuries instead of decades. Of course, ultimately the question of historical truth is raised. The conclusion on this is far from clear cut. The themes of the book are universal, they ask us to consider the merits and dangers of memory, and the shortcomings of History as a discipline. This book has not always been a simple read, but it has been absolutely riveting. I am not sure I have done it justice here but I cannot recommend it highly enough. I will finish with one last quote (from a book I could quote every second page of).

"Memory is a living thing vulnerable to a dead past until memory itself dies with its creator... History is a dead thing brought to new life. It is fragments of the past, dead and gone, resurrected by historians...It threatens our versions of ourselves."

Below you will find a link to the Teaching Personnel, Planning for Progression Session I ran on 23rd February. Please do feel free to download the materials. I would just ask that any attributions are left in.

This short task got the pupils thinking about how we view the roles played during the Holocaust. The idea behind the lesson was to challenge students perceptions of the Holocaust through the use of character cards and real stories.

Each pupil would have a personal story of someone in some way be linked to the Holocaust. This was an excellent chance to highlight differentiation, as I planned which person would best match a pupil's ability in terms of the complexity of the story. By differentiating in this way, I was able to ensure that students were all able to participate in task. Once they had filled in their worksheet about their person, they discussed them with the other members of their group (again these groups were differentiated).

Pupils were than asked to make a judgement about their person, whether they were in fact a Perpetrator, Collaborator, Bystander or Rescuer. I then instructed pupils to move into one of the 4 corners of the room, which I had previously labelled Collaborator, perpetrator etc... Pupils then had to rank their person against this scale and justify why they were there - something which enabled me to really stretch and challenge all pupils.


Finally the pupils were once more asked to consider Barney Greenman - many pupils had changed their opinion.

Some post-lesson thoughts
The lesson was, overall a success, which was lucky as it was observed by my ITT coordinator! The lesson required a good pace, and quick transitions between tasks, which has been something I have been looking to work on. The pace of the lesson was good, a definite improvement on previous lessons. The pupils were engaged throughout, and the differentiation ensured that the majority of pupils were on task the majority of the time. I am confident that all pupils progressed in the lesson, as I was able to circulate and discuss individual people's stories with pupils throughout.

Improvements

The pace at the beginning of the lesson could have been improved, perhaps too long was spent on the first task which meant that the plenary task was slightly rushed [might this be a 2 lesson sequence of work? AF].

I would also have like to include some AFL, which could have been done very simply: at the start of the lesson I could have asked 'Who killed Barney Greenman,' and asked the pupils to respond, on a scale of 1-5, of how confident they were they could answer the question. I could have asked this question again at the end.

Today's Fri-deas is more of a follow-up to Darius Jackson's excellent session on teaching the Holocaust. The purpose for this is just to provide you with some extra resources which you might use to address some of the Holocust teaching issues Darius raised. There is a particular focus here on rehumanising the past, avoiding the use of trauma, and respecting the victims.

I have uploaded some summary notes from the session with Darius' kind permission HERE. From a specifically teaching perspective note how Darius' use of the following helped hold that whole four hour session together, much like a sequence of lessons:

• A clear overall set of overall aims - to unpick our conceptual frameworks about the Holocaust and begin to reconstruct them and challenge them
• An overarching enquiry question to tie it all together - Who killed Barney Greenman?
• Clear and detailed subject knowledge deployed to ellaborate, illustrate, challenge and hook interest
• Activities which helped develop, deepen and challenge thinking whatever your prior knowledge on the Holocaust

Reading & Research
As ever, one of the big issues in teaching any subject effectively is knowing the content and context itself. Darius noted that too often Holocaust teaching has very general purposes and fails to engage properly and historically with the subject. In order you broaden your own historical understadning of the Holocaust you may wish to have a look at:

"The Coming of the Holoaust" by Peter Kenez. I have put a review HERE, but Kenez tries to engage in the reasons for the Holocaust, but also its varied impacts in different European countries. He also has an autobiography looking at his own experience of living with antisemitism in his "Varieties of Fear" HERE. I like Peter's book because it is written from a clear perspective of trying to explain the Holocaust in a manner which goes beyond the Hitler & top Nazis argument.

"The Story of the Jews" by Simon Schama. This is both a book and a TV series - you can find a link HERE. If you know little about the history of Jews and Judaism, Schame is an excellent way into the background of the Jewish experience. This is especially important in seeing the contributions made by Jews to European society.

"Beatrice and Virgil" by Yann Martel. I seem to have lost my review for this one, but you can find a link to another one HERE. It deals with the issue of Holocaust fiction versus history. It is certainly a challenging read. I am still not sure if I think this is brilliant or awful, but would really like your thoughts.

The Holocaust Learning website and Holocaust Learning Project are archiving and cataloging the stories of victims of the Holocaust who now live in Yorkshire. This is a brilliant project and a great way to engage with the lives of victims before the events as well as their lives after. You will find all of Iby Knill's story here as well.

Using film when teaching the Holocaust. This was a session run by Jo Fox at Durham University unpicking how film and popular film might be understood in the context of the Holocaust. The notes are HERE. This is particularly good for challenging conceptual frameworks which hold that propaganda swayed Germans. Jo looks at the comparative failure of the Eternal Jew as a film and a piece of propaganda. Conversely she argues that films like Jud Suss were much more subtle and effective.

In the Classroom
There are obviously some brilliant resources which UCL are making available with regard to the "Being Human?" approach. Here are just a few other resources which you may find helpful as ways into teaching the Holocaust. I am not holding the PowerPoints up as excellent examples, but they may provide a starting point.

Unpicking frameworks about perpetrators: One way into considering frameworks about perpetrators is to look at those who actually took part in mass killings. Karl Kretschmer was an Einsatzkommando. His letters to his family are a way to really consider what is meant by a perpetrator. Using the first letter from the PowerPoint, students tend to assume he is a victim of the Holocaust - something which comes from their existing framework. The lesson then challenges the view and asks why Karl participated. This unpicks notions that Karl was forced to take part by challenging this with evidence. Students are effectively reshaping their conceptual framework about what it meant to be a perpetrator. It is important to note that Kretschmer was not in a concentration camp as well. The PowerPoint including the two extracts from Karl is HERE, some documentation showing what Karl Kretschmer's Einsatzgruppe did is HERE, and some extracts on how much choice people had in participation is HERE and a similar accompanying resource HERE.

Broadening definitions of victims. The story of Hans Frank is one way to engage students with the idea that multiple groups of people were targeted by the Nazis. However it is also a way to begin to understand the unique experiences of disabled victims of the Nazis. You can find the story HERE.

Unpicking frameworks about remembering the Holocaust: This needs to be used carefully but can make a useful way to draw together thinking about the Holocaust. The resource revolves around a real stag tour advert for an "Auschwitz Experience Weekend". The discussion could be taken in any direction but in the example here it has been used to address the issue of what is acceptable in remembering the Holocaust. The resource itself is HERE and an associated PowerPoint is HERE.

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.

So this week I have gone for a giant picture because I am a little short of Frideas... Never-the-less, thanks to those people who sent in something which they did this week which worked really well.

Welcome to the cheesily-named Fri-deas (yes, I was insanely proud of that). This is a micro-blog for trainee history teachers (and other interested parties) to share one idea that really worked well during the week. The idea is that these will become ways to inspire each other for lessons for the coming week.

Fri-deas can literally be anything...Getting excited about a great idea for a big enquiry you have had. Telling us about the fantastic and meaningful outcome task you have just taken in. Explaining how you have managed to successfully explain something historically complex. Letting us into an historical nugget you have unearthed which really got your kids talking. The sky is the limit.

Fri-deas don't have to be super long - ideally they are little, readable chunks of inspiration. Most importantly, we need to know:

• which class you did this with
• how it fitted into the learning sequence
• how and why you think it went so well
• if possible - grab a quick picture of the outcome and send it in too.

So, without any more of me rattling on - this week's selection of LTU Fri-deas. Thanks to everyone who sent something in - it was a tiny bit light this week, so please do send them over. Why not vote for you favourite in the comments below?