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Behaviour in ITT - A response to the "Bennett Report"

7/14/2016

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I couldn't find one with the cart also before the horse
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.

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ResearchEd Rugby 2016 - Life After Levels and Other Notes

6/25/2016

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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)
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C19th "Making of America" HA Resources

5/21/2016

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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:
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Fri-deas: the Cold War, eggs and mutually assured destruction

5/20/2016

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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*]


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The historic environment: linking local and national histories through meaningful enquiry

5/16/2016

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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...


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Traditionalists, Progressives, Academies and Creative Destruction

5/11/2016

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As a rule I try to let some of the more extreme posts on Twitter pass me by. I find it is better for my blood pressure. However, the recent blog by Anthony Radice, the self-styled “Traditional Teacher” was just so abrasive and wrong-headed that I have felt the need to pick up on some of the points he raises.

In his post, “The Ideas Behind Forced Academisation,” Radice uses Hirsch to create a kind of apologia for the policy of forced academisation being pursued by the government. I do not really want to get into my own views on this issue, save to say that the process tramples on much democratic accountability and needlessly removes co-operation from the school system. Instead I want to focus on why Radice’s argument does not stand up to scrutiny, whether it is closely based on Hirsch or otherwise.

Radice begins by taking Hirsch’s assumption that progressive notions in education “became so widespread, to the point where young people could spend many years under the care of expensive professionals, and emerge lacking even the most basic knowledge of the history, geography and literature of their own country.” This assumption rests on an unstated belief that there must have been a golden age of some sort before progressives took hold of education in schools when all children left with a clear grasp of all required adult knowledge. The simple fact is that this is not upheld by historical investigation. For a really detailed study of how history education in particular has performed and developed over the last century, Radice may wish to look at Cannadine’s “The Right Kind of History.” One core aspect of Cannadine’s findings of history teaching in the 20th century is that the idea that there was a golden age of history teaching is largely a myth. What he does show is that more and more children have been given access to history education as time has moved on, resulting in a thriving discipline which values both pedagogy and knowledge.

Radice goes on to suggest, in line with Hirsch, that the spread of progressivism was the result of parents being “pushed out of educational decision making” to make way for the educational experts. Even a cursory glance at the Academies programme shows that parents are being completely sidelined in the new world of MATs. Indeed, the CoOp who have suggested an alternative MAT model, in which parents maintain a democratic role, has been rejected multiple times by the DfE. Radice also suggests that parents values of hard work and discipline were overridden by progressive teachers. Once more, I am not sure the realities agree. To go back 75 years, my grandmother’s brothers both opted not to attend school, not because of the “crazy” educational theories being peddled there, but because they were seen to be more valuable if they put their hard work and effort into earning a wage to help the family survive. I don’t doubt that if they had gone, they would probably have found the experience much more rewarding in the long run, but the simple fact is, that was not a choice they could make. In many ways, progressives sought to encourage a generation of children to stay in education. Granted, they may not have always got the balance right; and granted, they may have at times denigrated the value of subject knowledge; but to term them “high priests of the new gnostic religion” is stretching the truth somewhat. One might also criticise the “dusty guardians of pointless facts”, but I won’t because I don’t believe that!

Not content with his attack on progressive teachers, Radice continues to show how Hirsch proves that university education departments were also part of a master plan to control the teaching of subjects and claim their academic credibility. What is interesting here is that there is seemingly no engagement with the current state of university education. Whilst I am sure I could find examples of people in education departments playing down the role of knowledge, I have yet to meet one in person at any HEI I have been in. A brief glance at the course of the Cambridge History PGCE would reveal a course steeped in knowledge, but also supported by pedagogical thinking. Indeed, I have spent every PGCE session since joining my current HEI showing how knowledge is a core around which meaningful pedagogy is practiced. To say that there is no pedagogy worth knowing trashes decades of fantastic work by professionals dedicated to developing pupils’ knowledge. It is also interesting that Radice does not note that history as a discipline had to establish its own place in universities during the nineteenth century, and that almost all subjects barring theology have had to fight to validate themselves as worthy of study. Just as historians spent a generation or more arguing over whether history was a science or an art, so educationalists have debated the role of knowledge within their field. What we see today is diversity, but certainly not a group of people who are endeavouring to “rule supreme” over a domain divorced from knowledge.

Later, Radice echoes Hisrch in characterising progressives as “anti-knowledge” in an absolute sense. This again does not hold up to scrutiny. More accurately we might say that many progressives are against a particular type of knowledge, or value other forms of knowledge in addition to that cultural capital Hirsch is so keen on. An important point here is that cultural capital is of course a currency set by the dominant culture. Whilst traditionalists might say we can liberate students by giving them this capital, many progressives argue that we should change the currency. I wonder if Radice believes that we should still learn our church history and catechisms by rote? This was definitely the cultural capital of the pre-Enlightenment world, but it is no longer! To take another example of the above, many of the problems which have come about in the Deep South of the USA in the last decade might be traced back to the fact that education authorities there are controlling what has currency. Texas textbooks tell the tale of loyal slaves fighting for the Confederacy, whilst a recent McGraw Hill publication referred to slaves in the C18th and C19th as “workers.” The cultural capital here is controlled by interests which seek to create a particular type of society. It is this blind acceptance of the currency of education which many progressives seek to challenge.

There are however two points on which I will agree with Radice. First, I think that there is an issue in the teaching profession in terms of awareness of educational debates. For me, this has been caused by two main factors: an excessive focus on high stakes, nationally published examinations; and the decline of educational theory as a core part of university courses. The former has been driven by successive governments of all colours. The latter has come from a demand for more “practical” teacher training and a push for teachers who can be deployed to deliver externally controlled curricula. Whilst there is some truth in the “knowledge light” classroom claim, it is certainly not driven solely by extreme progressive agendas.

Finally, I would agree with Radice that forced academisation is a kind of “creative destruction” (incidentally not really connected to the points being raised before). However, I would take this in the way Schumpeter originally intended: that Capitalism is fundamentally a process of change, and that in being a process of change it is ultimately doomed to fail. I will outline Schumpeter’s explanation here in brief because I believe it illustrates nicely why the Govian approach to educational reform is also doomed to fail:
  1. Capitalism, and therefore the free-market forms of dealing with schools, relies on a process of continual change and innovation.
  2. The process of change “incessantly revolutionises” and destroys the structure from within. That is to say, what is now seen as good approaches in schools will necessarily need to change for them to remain competitive. The destruction of old approaches will create new ones.
Schumpeter argues of capitalism’s creative-destructive tendencies that, “In breaking down the pre-capitalist framework of society, capitalism thus broke not only barriers that impeded its progress but also flying buttresses that prevented its collapse…The capitalist process in much the same way in which it destroyed the institutional framework of feudal society also undermines its own.”  Such, I would argue is the situation for schools in this new world of competition. The forced academisation breaks down many of the buttresses which have held schools together and ushers in an age of creative destruction in education. Sadly, just like Schumpeter, I think that it will be the “destruction” element of this which triumphs.

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Shackled to a Corpse? Why can’t we make progress in our understanding of progression?

4/11/2016

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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:

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PRIMER: Why should I care about research-based progression models?

4/5/2016

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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.


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PRIMER: The bottom line on linear progression models

3/24/2016

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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:


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A Budget Deficit: Why I am crying about the loss of the National Curriculum

3/16/2016

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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.


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Book Review: Remembering Ahanagran. Searching for the overlap between history and memory

3/9/2016

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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."

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Teaching Personnel: Planning for Progression Session

2/23/2016

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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.
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Fri-deas: Teaching the Holocaust Pt2 - a trainee's reflection

2/12/2016

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A slightly different take on Fri-deas this week, but equally valid and useful. In last week's Fri-deas I offered a summary of Darius Jackson's excellent session on teaching the Holoaust in schools. As a result, one brave LTU trainee, Jack, had a go at teaching part of the lesson to his Year 9 students. These are his thoughts on how it went.


Teaching the Holocaust: A trainee teacher's reflection
Having attended a 'Teaching the Holocaust' training day as part of my LTU PGCE course I was inspired to try out one of the activities that I had experienced.

Firstly I told the story of Barney Greenman and his death at Auschwitz during the Second World War - this hooked the pupils into the lesson. They then had to write down who they thought killed him ( we would revisit this again at the end of the lesson)

The first main task was to come up with adjectives to describe how we defined the following words:
Perpetrator, Collaborator, Bystander, and Rescuer.

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.
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Fri-deas: Teaching the Holocaust

2/5/2016

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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
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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.

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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.

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Teacher knowledge, training and the potential role of Professional Learning Communities in schools.

1/25/2016

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I am posting this in response to a recent post by Rob Pepper on Labour Teachers about the importance of subject knowledge for teachers. Pepper raises the question of how subject knowledge might be embedded as part of teachers' professional learning. My response is adapted from a small scale literature review conducted a few years ago. It is centred around the potential use of the concept of Professional Learning Communities as a vehicle for developing history teachers' subject knowledge and pedagogical understanding. In particular it explores how PLCs can provide springboards for schools seeking to place subject knowledge and subject specific pedagogy at the heart of professional learning. Equally there is a focus on the pitfalls of PLCs when implemented badly, and how they may in fact reinforce the genericism which already exists in many professional learning programmes.

I am not looking to draw specific lessons from this piece, but it may be of interest to schools, or indeed history departments, exploring the Professional Learning Community approach to developing their CPD. I have drawn a few key basic points from the literature for those with limited time:
  1. There is has been, and continues to be, a crisis over the provision of effective, subject focused, professional learning in teaching, and specifically in history departments.
  2. Professional learning can be effectively encouraged through Professional Learning Communities.
  3. Effective Professional Learning Communities are based on shared knowledge, routines and pedagogies. They are therefore ideally suited to departmental level professional learning and can place subject specific training back at the heart of teacher learning.
  4. Professional Learning Communities can be imposed from the top-down, but such PLCs are often resisted and therefore do not provide the benefits of genuinely organic PLCs.
  5. Professional Learning Communities which are cross-curricular or generic in their approaches generally enjoy less support than those which engage with a specific subject.
  6. When they are effective, Professional Learning Communities encourage teachers to be critical of their own practice and engage in activities which stretch and challenge their approaches to teaching. This in turn can have positvie effects of teachers' feelings of self-efficacy and student outcomes.
  7. The creation of networks of Professional Learning Communities has the potential to transform and improve the whole profession and can be done by anyone at any level.

Context

PictureA good diagram always makes something seem like a good idea in education.
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.


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Fri-deas - Weekend Inspiration for Trainees

1/22/2016

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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.



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Book Review: Contested Plains by Elliott West

1/17/2016

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On the surface Elliott West's "Contested Plains" seems to address a much explored period of history, namely the Colorado Gold Rush of te 1850s. Whilst the book does an admirable job of explaining the conflict which eventually led to the formation of Colorado, the scope of this work is so much bigger.

West uses the story of the Colorado Gold Rush as as lens through which to examine the vast story of settlement and conflict on the Great Plains. Echoing the work of Turner, West asks us to consider the role of the Plains in shaping the destinies of those who have settled there. Unlike Turner however, West's Plains are not fixed and unchanging, but dynamic and shifting. He asks us to understand how different cultures' visions of the Plains have fundamentally shaped how they have been approached: the Spanish who saw them as worthless desert, the Cheyennes who viewed them as a the key to a new nomadic lifestyle, and of course the White Americans for whom the sparkle of gold caused them to see the West as a land of opportunity. In doing this, West also explains why conflict began: not the result of an every shifting frontier, but the end product of two competing, flawed, and ultimately irreconcilable views of the Plains.

West expertly combines the larger ecological narrative and the human stories which illuminate this period so poignantly. In doing so, he moves beyond traditional retellings of the Indian Wars of the 1850s-70s. There is no time here for Turnerian heros shaping the land to their will, nor indeed for peace-loving Indians, perfectly in tune with nature. The Sand Creek massacre and the death of Black Kettle are no less moving because they are not wrapped in a layer of post-colonial guilt. Indeed, the people in West's Colorado are far more real than Dee Brown's martyrs and villains. Every person in West's narrative has their own motivation, their own unique fortes and flaws, their own visions shaping and molding their thoughts and actions. The attention West pays to this aspect is what makes the book such a moving and important piece of history. Every character is a human being.

Anyone interested in the story of the Gold Rush, indeed anyone interested in the history of America and its place in the world today, should read this book. A lively, engaging, thought provoking, and ultimately ground-breaking approach to understaning the American West.
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Fri-deas: Weekend Inspiration for Trainee History Teachers

1/15/2016

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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?


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The Execution of University Based ITT - An Obituary?

11/26/2015

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​“[Hugh Despenser]…as a traitor…you shall be drawn and quartered, and your quarters dispersed throughout the kingdom…and because at all times you have been disloyal and a formenter of strife…you shall be disembowelled, and after that your bowels shall be burned. Confess yourself a traitor and a renegade! And so go to meet your doom. Traitor! Evildoer!! and Convicted!!! (Brigstocke Sheppard, 1889, p.413)”
​The story of Hugh Despenser’s conviction and later execution was the first thing which popped into my head as I fired up Twitter last night to be greeted by the news that, due to new application rules for 
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.

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Planning for the new History GCSE: Adding complexity to make it more accessible

10/30/2015

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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.


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