Historical Knowledge and Historical Skills A Distracting Dichotomy
Historical Knowledge and Historical Skills A Distracting Dichotomy
Historical Knowledge and Historical Skills A Distracting Dichotomy
Introduction
By the late 1990s all of history teaching discourse in England and Wales has
become infused with an assumed dualitythat of knowledge and skill.
Dominant professional languages matter because they end up informing new
mechanisms for accountability, be they National Curriculum levels, OFSTED
inspection criteria or GCSE assessment objectives. It is so easy to become a
prisoner of such languages, to assume that if we espouse given models of progression
and assessment they will automatically offer us the stages, strategies and goals for
moving pupils forward.
This chapter argues that history teachers and researchers need to analyse much
more closely the relationship between those things that we have traditionally
called content and skill. Such labels conceal great reaches of hidden mental
activity that might be better characterised in different ways.
Skill and knowledge: an uneasy alliance
During the 1970s and 1980s, history teachers, curriculum developers and
researchers completely reconceptualised school history. Through the work of
thinkers such as Coltham and Fines (1971) and a variety of Schools Council
Projectsmost notably the Schools Council 1316 Projectmany history
teachers began to think differently about what constitutes progression (Shemilt
1976, 1987). Instead of emphasising the cumulative memorising of a body of
facts, curriculum developers produced and researchers analysed new cognitive
domains that were deemed to be more closely derivative of the practice of the
academic discipline itself (e.g. Booth 1987; Ashby and Lee 1987).
The new history brought a new professional language, one which
experimented with new taxonomies of skills, concepts and attitudes. These
influenced everything from GCSE assessment to resources and textbooks, and
ultimately the National Curriculum itself. Yet throughout this revolution,
substantive knowledge has remained high on the agenda in examination boards
and assessment schemes at both GCSE and Advanced Level. It sits rather uneasily
alongside other objectives but it never goes away. Much of teachers agonising
55
56
Christine Counsell
Marie was challenged now. How could she argue that her choice of category
was superior to that of the boys? It was at this point that she tried a new line.
Perhaps it was not possible to have both of these categories in one explanation.
One could either have the heading things to do with money (along with other
things) or one could have the heading triggers (along with quite different things).
To bolster her case she found herself using other picture-cards on the table to jog
her memory about the kinds of events and situations that go under triggers,
pointing to peasant discontent and wider political pressures within the Holy
Roman Empire. Previous lessons had given her some fingertip knowledge of
these narratives. The pictures and their captions helped her to define the mininarratives in her memory and to call them up.
Maries achievement was impressive. Her argument, backed up with detail,
amounted to a defence of one classification system over another. This moment
came as a result of a very long-term programme of systematic planning for progression
to take place. All along, her exposure to new substantive knowledge and opportunity
to process or play with it had dovetailed closely with systematic work in helping
her to define or see abstract issues. Some observers, using the language of historical
skills, would say that the lesson described above was an example of the pupils
practising multi-causal explanations or seeing the relationship between causes or
applying common categories of cause. Indeed they were, but this was not the
language of the incremental stages that brought the pupils to this point. By the
time I was managing this faculty, having lived through the first National Curriculum
(and having experimented with all the latest ways in measuring paths of conceptual
progression before that) I had completely abandoned much of the language of
progression within discrete skill domains. Overwhelming frustration with
inadequacies in all given models (such as movement from mono-causal explanation
to multi-causal explanations; or from stereotypical empathy to differentiated
empathy of the early GCSE) led to a different way of thinking about progression.
Like many teachers I was theorising in a messy, but cumulatively helpful, way from
my own experience. It was useful to start with the big ideas in history, but in terms
of how to reach them (that is, how to plan for progression) my colleagues and I
came to use very different terms. We spoke of active linking or finding shapes,
always alerting pupils through the kinds of pattern that historys natural discourse
repeats. Becoming secure in the language and structure of a rebellion story or a
social change story required both acquaintance with the detail as singularities and
with the generalising concepts that helped us to talk about them.
57
58
Christine Counsell
concepts or skills. None of these suggest that these concepts are unhelpful or
unfitting goals, but only that over-reliance on specific second-order concepts as
a progression framework may limit the effectiveness of planning, teaching and
assessment.
It can mask hidden reaches of mental activity that may be the proper focus of
teacher attention
The extract from a 15-year-olds work (see Figure 5.1) was produced after
extensive work on reliability, utility and typicality of sources, as was common
in the late 1980s. This was the teaching focus. This pupils difficulties, however,
proved to be much more basic and mundane. The writing shows that Michael
was unable to distinguish between a proposition as an example and as a
generalisation or main point. The piece of writing is full of examples. It is crawling
in the particular and lacking in the general. He does not know how to show us
that they were examples. He does not know how to make a main point and
then indicate where the support lies. Work on Big Points and Little Points
later transformed this pupils approach, equipping with him with the ability to
select and arrange material and to make his reasoning for such selection
transparent. This proved to be his real difficulty and therefore the place where
the solution lay (Counsell 1997).
This is the kind of pupil who seems refractory in his ability to understand
anything. Only by abandoning attempts to extend his thinking within one
particular domain and by adopting a completely different way of looking at the
problem did the breakthrough come. The result was an improved ability to
59
When teachers are using concept- or skill-based models for assessment purposes,
such as in a GCSE mark-scheme or using aspects of the National Curriculum
Level Description, a frequent question concerns the quantity and specificity of
information that it is appropriate for the pupil to deploy at a particular stage.
Perhaps the question should be asked in a slightly different way, however. What
is at issue is the amount of propositional knowledge or content awareness that
made it possible for a pupil to operate at this stage.
To some extent, the content-skill dichotomy and its associated problems are
mirrored in school science. Amongst science educators, the distinction is
sometimes described as that between propositional knowledge and procedural
knowledge. In a study of pupils understanding of magnetism, Gaalen Ericksen
attempted to analyse the relationship between content, process and progression.
Groups of pupils aged four, seven and ten were conducting experiments with
magnets:
What sort of knowledge were these pupils displaying in this assessment
task? Typically this type of knowledge of pupils actions in an inquiry
setting has referred to as procedural (or process-oriented) as opposed to
propositional (or content-oriented). But this distinction between method
and content has become increasingly blurry.
(Ericksen 1994:89)
In the same vein, Millar and colleagues have argued that it is misleading to
portray the methods of science as discrete processes. In particular, within what
they call inquiry tactics, content knowledge has an interactive effect since
selection and control of variables depends on the pupils knowledge of the
phenomena being examined (Millar 1991; Millar and Driver 1987). What kind
of interactive effect takes place in history between their general second-order
ideas and their substantive knowledge? Too mechanistic an analysis is not likely
to be helpful, but it raises questions, if not about the goal of progression itself,
then about how it might be secured.
In their study of pupils rational understanding in history the CHATA
researchers identified a broad pattern of progression with such categories as
bafflement, explanation in terms of personal wants or reasons, and
60
Christine Counsell
explanation in terms of the wider context of ideas and material life (Dickinson,
Lee and Ashby 1997:11819). This gives teachers a valuable language for
defining a focus, but it is possible that the pupils ideas were shaped, to some
extent, by their period knowledge. Those performing at the higher levels, for
example, took account of the temporal context in which people in the past
were operating. In trying to explain the actions of the people in the past they
saw the Anglo-Saxon ordeal by fire as fitting into beliefs about hierarchy and
so were beginning to take into account the wider framework of social and
material life. Indeed, Lee concludes with the suggestion that a useful further
research might explore the relation between substantive knowledge and secondorder progression (ibid.:123).
3
61
62
Christine Counsell
63
64
Christine Counsell
listening and speaking, watching and making are usually closely woven in even
the shortest of activity sequence. The distinction here is between two types of
history teaching emphasis:
1
2
Who is saying/writing this and what difference does that make? (status)
How do (or might, or should, or dont) these things fit together and what
shall we call them? (structure)
65
nobleman, many pupils need much extra help in defining the object of study.
When the scope and power of such a word becomes the focus of pupil reflection
and class discussion the pupils difficulty is turned into a teaching solution
(Counsell 1997).
Such strategies are often associated with helping pupils to construct coherent
prose but they are just as much reading strategies, being a development of the
valuable Directed Activities Relating to Texts (DARTs) strategies already
widely used by history teachers (Lunzer et al. 1984). By defining and labelling
ideaseither their own or othersand making this the primary focus of pupil
discussion or teacher explanation, the abstract comes to the foreground of the
lesson. Time to dwell directly on the appropriateness of the noun rebellion or
the adjective political, in relation to a few limited, defined and commonly
visible issues helps some pupils, sometimes for the first time, to know what
everyone is talking about.
There are many other ways of achieving this, but these examples illustrate a
core principle. Knowledge is not free-floating information that gets in the way,
but a mental resource for future learning. Substantive knowledge becomes an
organising device, an analytical tool for creating and discerning structures, and
especially when those pupils who fail to learn through exposure are systematically
taught to see its organising functions. Nor is there any need for this to detract
from work on the status; in fact, to teach pupils to analyse by playing with terms
and labels is to give them increasingly flexible tools for naming things and for
realising, straight away, that such labels are contingent, slippery, shifting and
problematic.
This is simply another way of describing the area of understanding identified
by Key Element 5 of the 1995 National Curriculum for history, or Organisation
and communication (DfE 1995). Key Element 5, like all the Key Elements, is
not a skill to be taught and ticked off; it is simply another angle on the approaches
and dispositions pupils must adopt to make sense of history. Some pupils may
need more direct emphasis on its issues than others. Sometimes differentiation
(if it is really to secure access as opposed to making things easier) is about lifting
out the Key Element 5 dimension in any taskselecting, arranging and
experimenting with labelsand giving it more direct a focus. To make the abstract
interesting and so to build knowledge at the same time is to foster that virtuous
circle in which pupils start to gain the power of a store of knowledge as a set of
building blocks for understanding or analysing new material.
66
Christine Counsell
1995:25), but how one bit of knowledge might contribute to another is not an
area about which teachers and authors have theorised in depth. Even having
acknowledged that knowledge might be important in some way, most
commentators fall back on hierarchies of skill with which to define progression.
The National Curriculum Mark 3 of 2000 will leave teachers with even more
freedom to select and combine content elements for programmes of work. If
teachers can shake off assumptions that historical knowledge consists of neutral,
value-free, atomised pieces of information to be learned, and, instead, see
knowledge as a cumulative process of active critical construction, it will be timely
to theorise about the function of knowledge in securing learning across longer
time-scales.
Deep within the professional knowledge of effective teachers, there are no
doubt all kinds of tacit criteria for positioning content elements within wider
planning. In the early part of the term, I might choose to teach particular political
concepts and institutions, precisely so that the pupils can manage these with
ease and confidence during a depth study that I plan to undertake some weeks
later. This, in turn, helps me to judge the kind of content detail or the range of
particular examples that it is necessary for pupils to understand during the earlier
study. This type of professional reasoning gives a clearer rationale for choice and
order of content components, micro and macro and short- and long-term timescales. It may be helpful to conceptualise knowledge-building as a layering process
and to judge its effectiveness by its power in securing new understandings,
especially for those pupils who struggle.
All kinds of professional language may be helpful here and it would be useful
to explore the type of reasoning, or the tacit, teacher theories that exist already,
in order to build a stronger professional body of knowledge about the analytical
facility that greater knowledge can bring. For example, one very helpful distinction
is that between the temporary or working knowledge that pupils build up during
a detailed study, and the broader and lasting understandings such as broad
chronological awareness, awareness of institutional structures or cultural values
of a period. The first might be called fingertip knowledge. It is the kind of detail
that one needs in ready memory and that is acquired through familiarity after
extensive enquiry. It does not matter if much of the detail then falls away. The
second type can be likened to the residue in a sieve. It is not just the ability to
remember that the Tudors came before the Stuarts and that they used Parliament
a lot. It is also that loose, amorphous objective of a sense of period the retention
of all manner of mental furniture, gleaned from a rich visual and active experience
of period stories and scenes. Such a residue is bound to enrich current and future
study by preventing anachronism and sharpening judgement, even after the
particular stories and scenes have long receded.
Fingertip and residue do not create an absolute distinction. The distinction
becomes helpful in relating the function of each type of knowledge to other kinds
of learning. One kind of knowledge can be used by the teacher to create another.
One of the purposes of fingertip knowledge is that it leaves a residue. I once had
a close knowledge of the details of late eighteenth-century British politics. Dates
67
and events were not a problem. Now I can no longer do any of this. I have
forgotten huge amounts of detail. The knowledge has never been warmed up. In
one sense it is as though I never knew it. But to leap to the conclusion that my
learning was somehow a waste of time would be absurd. What I have retained is a
broad understanding of the institutions of the period and some of its central
themes.
This is why it is essential to think of knowledge in the context of medium-and
long-term planning. What professionals need is a language for describing such
knowledge for the purposes of planning. It is rather meaningless to state, in a
lesson objective (although we do it all the time), that the objective is By the end
of this lesson pupils will have gained knowledge of Henry VIIIs wives or of
the Act of Supremacy. What matters is the teachers awareness of the role of that
knowledge in future learningthe types and layers of knowledge that will endure
and the types that will function as temporary working knowledge the details of
which will, quite naturally and properly, fall through the sieve. This defines and
delineates the amount or type of knowledge the teaching is trying to deal with.
Lesson objectives are more helpful when they indicate the proposed function of
a knowledge area within wider planning. Words like anticipate, revisit, prepare
for tell us much more about the layer of knowledge being worked onthe
teachers rationale for its specificity or generality.
It is somewhere here that we begin to get close to the complicated task of the
effective history teacher. Coming to know is a valuable experience in its own
right but it may be a different thing from the concomitant awareness that results
and endures. A study in depth in Year 8 or Year 10 is valuable in its own right for
the opportunities that in-depth knowledge gives, allowing the pupil, for example,
to examine sources closely and critically. Yet overview understandings probably
lurk in every depth study. The paradox that needs to inform the planning of
school history is that pupils do not necessarily acquire overview knowledge by doing
overviews. This is why it is essential to distinguish between curriculum outcomes
and teaching processes. Although it may seem logical to teach the pupil an
overview if one wants an overview, it is not that simple. Depth knowledge,
memorable and thrilling in its period detail, creates certain kinds of overview
knowledge. In turn, overview understandings might support pupils work in a
depth study. It likely to be the interplay of depth and overview components
within a work-scheme that is critical to quality, not their mere incidence (Riley
1997; Counsell 1998).
68
Christine Counsell
What types of moves do they make that come from their knowledge of the subject
and their experience of pupils, and which might tell us more about the actual
engines of progression? It is important for the profession to look more closely at
how effective teachers secure transfer of understanding in a time sequence if we
are to find better conceptual frameworks for describing what happens.
In a small-scale, qualitative study, three experienced teachers were interviewed
in 1996 about their planning and practice (Counsell 1996). They were videotaped teaching a sequence of two lessons and then interviewed again about the
moves they had made in that sequence, using the entire video as a means to
stimulate recall of their detailed moves in the lesson (Calderhead 1984). Video
evidence, interview transcripts and planning documentation were then analysed
together in an attempt to construct a model of these teachers choice and ordering
of subject matter components.
The teachers differed widely in their preferred styles, using very different
balances and blends of story-telling and explanation, group discussion and activity,
but it was nevertheless possible to theorise about strong common themes. The
lessons of all three teachers were littered with implicit and explicit references to
organisation of historical content. These formed the teachers main way of
reminding pupils of the existence of a content area. One teacher referred
repeatedly to this story, and the Germans view of the story; another to show
me the link, this type of link, and the way the Irish would now see this link.
These teachers were weaving content into memorable shapes ready for future
use. What the teacher wanted to stress about organisation or about status was
affected by the role of this content element in the wider lesson or the wider
planning sequence.
In fact, a key criterion that made these lessons make sense was that of the use
of similarity as an explanatory tool. These teachers were similarity spotters. The
function of the lessons was to turn the pupils, bit by bit, into similarity spotters,
too. Similarity with previously studied structures, patterns and labels is the only
thing which makes the maelstrom of historical information make sense, which
turns the past into history. A teacher, like any other communicator, is utterly
dependent upon resonance. Unlike any other communicators, the teacher, who
has responsibility for long-term progression in pupils learning, is chief resonancemanager. He can only have a meaningful dialogue with a class or can only explain
ostensibly new material if he knows that something will resonate with what has
gone before. Multiple resonances in language need to exist if the pupil is to
understand anything at all. This is how terms like Parliament or settlement
make sense. The teacher has the task of making this kind of complex resonance
possible, through activity, through talk or through any strategy available. Every
lesson is concentrated, densely packed allusion. The planning and teaching make
the difference between such allusion being fascinating and completely
impenetrable.
This notion of similarity should not be misunderstood as an attempt to
homogenise history. It is only by being aware of potential similarity that we are
capable of noticing difference. Difference has no meaning without similarity. A
69
focus on the nature of difference (in region, across period, in structure) is critical
to historys concern with the particular. To discern difference is to be aware of
potential links, connections or patterns across time and space (Rogers 1987).
Without these there would be no differences to spot and nothing to remark upon.
To understand anything is to see it as a case of something more general.
And this is precisely the point of history teaching. Teaching is about showing
pupils (or putting them in situations where they will discern) similarities that
they might not otherwise perceive. An awareness of similarity enables pupils to
make judgements that are significant to the disciplines concerns. The pupil is
able to say I judge this to be a significant cause or I judge this a critical piece of
evidence because they have a pattern that they are either copying or consciously
forming. To teach any discipline is to help pupils to see more clearly the common
interpretive devices that allow it make sense: to identify the conceptual devices
that unify. To do history is to see its information in a certain way. We have to
become familiar with its validation claims, the organisational shapes and patterns
of its discourse structures. Whether these are left as implicit or explicit, as routine
procedures or meta-cognitive reflection, depends on the emphasis a teacher is
trying to achieve at any given point (e.g. LeCocq 1999).
The three teachers described above, despite their apparent variations in practice
and widely different justificatory rhetoric, were all active managers of memory.
All used story, with its compelling mixture of the familiar and strange, as a
knowledge-carrier, working with both practised routines and new reflections about
status and structure, until these pupils had a great deal of fingertip knowledge
that would, in turn, play a critical part in immediate and future reflective activities.
70
Christine Counsell
context on a variety of scales. Riley has also been influential in reshaping the
history teachers use of the word enquiry to mean a structured lesson sequence
that deliberately plants and then picks up resonances so that substantial
fingertip knowledge is developed throughout the journey, leading to less
anachronistic and more historically grounded outcomes (Byrom 1998b;
Gorman 1998). Detaching, the word enquiry from common professional
assumptions about frighteningly open-ended investigations, Riley tamed the
idea of enquiry and linked it directly to a pedagogic rationale for layers of
knowledge. His practical examples make the acquisition of knowledge both
the servant and the result of enquiry skills.
71
The danger of drifting into teaching by exposure will always be with us. Once
new professional ideas ossify into paths and patterns, it is so easy for the focus of
professional reflection to be removed from the things pupils find difficult.
Knowledge is an enabler. Yet we have scarcely begun to examine how, exactly, it
can be harnessed to enable those pupils who find history hard. Avoidance is no
solution. Rather than avoiding the abstract, the abstract must somehow become
interesting. A useful first step is to view the shapes and patterns of historical
knowledge as a quarry for structural and linguistic activities that drive at the
heart of a pupils observed difficulties in handling new material. Pupils interest
and curiosity can be made to thrive in the most surprising of places.
Questions
1
Further reading
History teachers need to be aware of the origins of different types of progression models.
A stimulating starting point in the area of organising concepts such as causation is the
work of the Teaching History Research Group. See J.Scott (ed.) (1990) Understanding
Cause and Effect: Learning and Teaching about Causation and Consequence in History. Compare
your own thinking about the way in which pupils make progress in causation with the
Research Groups model. In the area of evidential understanding, see D. Shemilt (1987)
Adolescent ideas about evidence and methodology in history for a post-Piagetian model
of progression in evidential skill.
For a different way of viewing progression see P.Rogers (1987) The past as a frame of
reference. Rogers argues that useful historical knowledge accumulates through awareness
of similarity. For a wide range of examples or real planning for progression from different
history departments integrating different aspects of knowledge and skill over a long-term
planning, see C.Counsell, and the Historical Association Secondary Committee (1997)
Planning the Twentieth Century World.
Introduction
A requirement to teach about interpretations of history is part of the National
Curriculum in England and Wales and the GCSE criteria. This article traces the
evolution of policy on interpretations since 1991. It also explores the classroom
implications of this aspect of the history curriculum and considers why work on
interpretations has been perceived as problematic.
73
A second justification for the study of interpretations can also be found in the
report. The History Working Group talked about the use of historical sources in
the classroom and made the then commonplace distinction between primary
and secondary sources: sources dating from the time and place being studied
and later reflections on the events of the past. The call for compulsory work on
interpretations was motivated by a belief that school history made insufficient
use of secondary sources, and particularly the work of academic historians:
Pupils use of primary sources in learning history should also be
complemented by the study and evaluation of the writings of historians.
The use of these and other secondary sources appears to have been unduly
neglected in schools and ought to be given greater prominence than has
traditionally been the case.
(DES 1990b:177)
The publication of statutory orders in March 1991 provided teachers with the
official view of how they should approach work on interpretations. There was no
obligation for pupils to study particular interpretations or controversies. Instead,
the detailed requirements were to be found in the assessment arrangements. The
1991 curriculum established three assessment objectives, known as Attainment
Targets (ATs). Performance in work on interpretations was described in AT2,
Interpretations of history, within a ten-level framework.
These level statements provided teachers with a picture of the intended
learning outcomes from work on interpretations. AT2, therefore, defined the
parameters for classroom activities in this area. The statutory orders contained
illustrative descriptions of the kind of activities that pupils could undertake. At
Level 4, for example, pupils were asked to explain how differences between
accounts of life in Ancient Egypt could be caused by a lack of evidence. At Level
7, characteristic of an able 14-year-old, pupils were investigating how far a film
gave an accurate account of events in the history of Germany.
A variety of interpretations
As we have seen, the History Working Group was keen to increase the use of the
work of academic historians in school history. While giving primacy to the work
of historians, the History Working Group also recognised that interpretations
should not be exclusively restricted to historiography.
The study of history necessarily includes interpretations of history and its
nature. This has three distinct but related aspects:
i
an acquaintance with the writings of historians and a knowledge of
typical historical controversies, relating to the content of the course;
ii an understanding that history has been written, sung about, painted,
filmed, and dramatised by all kinds of people for all kinds of reasons;
and
74
Tony McAleavy
iii an understanding that some histories have a high profile, others
are hardly known.
(DES 1990b:11)
In 1991 the National Curriculum Council (NCC) published History NonStatutory Guidance to accompany the history National Curriculum in England.
This document was less enthusiastic about historiography in school history. It
stressed the need for pupils to encounter a variety of interpretations and made
it clear that too limited a diet of historiographical interpretations would be
both dull and difficult: A narrow view of AT2 which confined it to the writings
of historians would remove opportunities to study a wide range of interpretations
and make this AT more difficult for many pupils (NCC 1991, Section B:6).
History Non-Statutory Guidance encouraged teachers to consider a great variety of
interpretations: historical novels, museum displays, film and television, and oral history.
This theme was taken further in 1993 when the NCC set out the types of interpretation
that pupils could be expected to consider during the Key Stage (see Table 6.1).
In practice, teachers were reluctant to introduce historiography, as they saw
it, prematurely to mixed-ability pupils. They were much keener to take the broader
view of interpretations that had been endorsed by the NCC. In particular, at
Table 6.1 Types of interpretation
75
Key Stage 3, films were often used as an interpretation that could be evaluated
by pupils. Many teachers took Hollywood depictions of Robin Hood or
Cromwell and invited pupils to use their historical knowledge in order to assess
the accuracy of the film. This was an opportunity for discussion about how
purpose and intended audience could make a big difference to the nature of an
interpretation.
Is there scope for introducing real historical debate at Key Stage 3? There
is sometimes too great a gulf between professional historians, archaeologists,
historians and museum curators. While artists, writers and dancers routinely
work in schools, there is much less of a tradition of academic historians
working with schoolchildren as part of their work in history. This is a missed
opportunity.
Perhaps the answer is to focus on aspects of the work of academic historians
that are neither too difficult nor too technical. It can also be helpful if we try to
explain to students how disagreements can come about rather than expecting
them to arbitrate on the disagreement. There are many debates that are perfectly
accessible to 1114-year-olds. Here are a few examples:
Historians are not sure how the Anglo-Saxons took control of Britain in the
decades after the departure of the Roman army.
Nineteenth-century historians thought that King John was cruel and wicked,
but today historians say that he was an effective King.
There is a debate about whether there was a blitz spirit in wartime Britain.
Discussion points
Look at the scheme of work in a school you know for Key Stage 3. Assess provision
for coverage of a range of modern interpretations. Does the scheme of work provide
the following opportunities:
76
Tony McAleavy
Pupils identify and comment upon differences between the way different
textbooks or information books address the same issue. They can be
invited to explore the issue further to see which view they find more
convincing.
Pupils learn how archaeologists interpret the past from its physical
remains. They can also learn how museum curators and keepers of
historical monuments conserve and interpret archaeological evidence.
Pupils are introduced to debates among historians about aspects of the
past. They can learn how historians use documentary sources to answer
questions about the past.
Pupils reflect upon the way dramatic reconstructions of the past are put
togetherdramatic reconstructions can include both living history
events and historical drama on TV and in film.
Pupils can discuss a specific controversial historic personality and
consider the evidence for different opinions about that person.
Pupils consider commonly held popular views about the past and try to
find out how accurate these views are.
The NCC put a gloss on the level statements of AT2 and identified three
threads or key conceptual areas relating to interpretations that could be used by
teachers when planning classroom activities:
77
Discussion points
Is it possible to develop classroom activities to increase understanding of the
following ideas relating to interpretations?
Interpretations differ because people use evidence in different ways and will
select and place emphasis on different aspects of the evidence.
The amount of evidence available to different interpreters will vary. Access
to evidence will also change through time and this will lead to differences in
interpretation.
There are often gaps in the evidence and people must use creativity and
imagination to provide an interpretation.
Differences of purpose and intended audience will lead to differences in
interpretation.
The personal background and beliefs of people making interpretations will
influence their work and lead to differences.
78
Tony McAleavy
Discussion points
Look at Table 6.2, which contrasts expectations relating to interpretations in
1991 and 1995. How have the expectations changed? What kind of classroom
activities are likely to elicit performance along the lines described in the 1995
statements?
Table 6.2 Comparison of 1991 and 1995 expectations of classroom performance
79
Interpretations at GCSE
The 1995 National Curriculum made certain assumptions about how pupils might
progress in their understanding of interpretations:
pupils can identify different ways in which the past is represented and
interpreted;
they can give reasons for these differences;
they can analyse and evaluate interpretations.
80
Tony McAleavy
81
Counsell explained how sorting exercises of different kinds could be used to aid
greater clarity in historical thinking. She outlined, for example, how students
could be asked to categorise statements as either big points (=generalisations)
or little points (=supporting particular examples). These techniques are directly
relevant to work on interpretations. They can be used not only to help pupils
think about their own interpretations but also to assist them in critically evaluating
the interpretations of others.
82
Tony McAleavy
Discussion points
1
2
3
How well are students prepared for those GCSE questions that test
understanding of interpretations?
How far do you encourage pupils to think about their own historical work,
including their extended writing in historyas examples of interpretation?
Do you and your colleagues try to link together work on interpretations with
citizenship education?
Further reading
Evans, R. (1997) In Defence of History, London: Granta Books.
Hobsbawn, E. and Ranger, T. (1992) The Invention of Tradition.
Lowenthal, D. (1998) The Heritage Crusade and the Spoils of History, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
(1985) The Past is a Foreign Country, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.