Introduction

This isn’t an ‘activity by activity’ descriptive report of workshops attended – that would be unfair to the presenters as it couldn’t capture the quality of presentation and the interaction amongst the participants.

You really do have to be there to get the full benefit!

Instead this piece attempts to reflect some of the broader issues emerging from the workshops and plenaries I attended. If you would like to comment, please reply on the blog HERE.

And before we move on, our thanks go to the very helpful and supportive team at the British Library. Their conference facilities are also excellent and we can certainly look forward to next year’s London event with great confidence

Ian Dawson, SHP Fellow

Michael Fordham’s Workshop

First workshop up was Michael Fordham’s session ‘Out went Caesar and in came the Conqueror though I’m sure something happened in-between ... change and continuity in Britain in the first millennium’.

Michael is Head of History, Cottenham Village College

The Saxon period has been unfairly treated by the National Curriculum ever since 1991, cast essentially as a primary school topic while 1066 gets the lion’s share of attention in Year 7. And, of course, this problem has only grown greater as too many school managements have restricted history to a two year course at KS3, much to the frustration and anger of history teachers all over the country. Over the years I’ve met many history teachers who want to spend more time teaching about Saxon England because many aspects of the post- 1066 period only make sense if you can follow them through from their beginnings in Saxon England.

Michael focussed on explaining how he had developed an enquiry on change and continuity in Saxon England, using a card sort activity to enable pupils to pick out three key themes:

a) the growth of kingship and the development of a unified England (the real beginnings of the story of power and monarchy)

b) England’s links with Scandinavia (helping explain the events of 1066 and William’s success)

c) the growth of Christianity (illuminating the significance of the break with Rome in the 1530s)

In addition we might add ‘everyday life’, vital for creating a sense of period and for establishing continuities, perhaps the best starting point before moving into the more conceptual demands of kingship etc. Another great reason for studying the Saxons is the wealth of new archaeological finds, often the results of the work of metal detectorists, which really can convey the fact that our knowledge is constantly developing, that History as a discipline doesn’t stand still. Of course getting across the excitement of archaeology in a classroom comprising walls, ceiling and a floor that stubbornly resists a spade isn’t easy but watch this space – we may have some ideas for you by the time of the July conference.

Overall Michael’s session displayed several important themes in history teaching. Firstly how his unit of work had been developed, questioned, reformulated through use – courses aren’t just created and then continued unadapted. Good teachers continually learn from what’s worked and particularly from what children struggle with. Secondly, as Christine Counsell said in her plenary ‘knowledge is pivotal’ – Michael’s expertise in the period had enabled him to build a successful unit and helped him put the material across with such enthusiasm and conviction. Depth of knowledge helps enormously, provided you can keep the overview in mind as well as the exciting details. Thirdly the multi-layered nature of learning history – this session was ostensibly about certain aspects of Saxon society and about assessing the balance of change and continuity and the pace of change but at the same time children would be developing a sense of period, improving their chronological understanding and preparing the way for later units within KS3 – it was part of a course, not a one-off unit.

Rachel Foster’s Workshop

After lunch came Rachel Foster’s workshop ‘Passive receivers or constructive readers? How and why should we engage pupils with academic works of history?’

Rachel is History Teacher, Comberton Village College

It’s worth saying at the outset that Rachel’s examples came from Y8 and Y9 mixed ability classes who clearly did engage constructively with lengthy extracts from academic books. To think, in my 1960s schooling – I didn’t read a proper history book until I was 17, hadn’t realised that historians might disagree until I was 18 (and then it was only over a detail of fact, not an interpretation) and didn’t meet a source till I was at university.

One of Rachel’s key points is that without pupils seeing and reading extracts from academic works they never get the sense of what the purpose of ‘doing history’ is, what this acquisition of knowledge, source evaluation , analysis of causation, sequencing of events etc etc is leading to. To use another of my endless sporting analogies, it’s as if nobody ever saw or played a cricket match but only practiced individual skills in the nets, never scoring a run or taking a wicket for real. Sadly textbooks rarely lead children towards constructing or analysing a real piece of history which means that children don’t see the importance, for example, of making provisional statements.

Why else was this session valuable? Very impressive was the way Rachel built from an individual case of a woman accused of witchcraft in 1645 (told in Malcolm Gaskell’s Witchfinders) and then moved outwards from the individual to the local to the national and moved far beyond ‘witchcraft’ and even social history. This one fascinating story took us into the heart of understanding the 17th century, again as with Michael’s session, into sense of period, such a vital important aspect of chronological understanding which needs to be made explicit, ideally through comparing the features of a period with earlier and later periods to identify the distinctiveness of each. In addition, this case was from 1645, the year of Naseby, so I left wondering about the potential of this unit to help us into the Civil War by demonstrating the beliefs of the time, the importance and power of religion and whether pupils would engage more effectively with the Civil War for having had this kind of insight into contemporary thinking first?

Reviewing the day as a whole …

… one surprising outcome for me were the links between Michael Wood’s TV series on Kibworth and the issues history teachers battle with every day (read the blog on this plenary). In his series Michael Wood was battling with the challenges of:

• using individual and local stories to illuminate key moments in a national overview

• presenting history from below as well as the deeds and impact of kings and lords

• demonstrating the importance of place in understanding the past. Experiences differed from county to county, village to village. Generalisations are risky.

• demonstrating how we know what we know and how much we know – and what we’re not sure about

• making his material memorable by engaging people not naturally interested in History through activity and teamwork and enjoyment and by engaging their emotions

• developing a sense of chronology and an overview of the British past - in rather fewer programmes than he wanted!

• deciding what to put in and what to leave out because putting in too many individual details acts as a barrier obscuring the overview of both local and national stories.

Doing all that is really difficult, whether in a TV series or the classroom, but also very, very important which is why I’ll end by repeating one of Christine Counsell’s key points from the final plenary:

'Teaching history really well to the lower-attaining pupil is intellectually very demanding - it's far harder than most politicians, historians and journalists realise. But all the more reason for us not to give up. We are RIGHT to keep trying to achieve that toughest of goals: to help struggling and disaffected children into strong historical understanding. David Cannadine has confirmed what we already knew - that there is no golden age when such pupils knew a lot of history. We are therefore the pioneers. Let us not give up in bringing rigorous history to ALL, even when our efforts are frustrated or vilified.'

What the day overall demonstrated was how much history teachers care about the quality of their teaching, that depth of knowledge, chronological understanding and sense of period are both a vital and an everyday part of history teaching throughout the country, that we believe that all children have a right to a rigorous historical education, not just for a two year pared-down National Curriculum but for as long as possible, both in primary and secondary school, that history teachers are constantly working, with more perceptive insights into how children learn and into the complexity of history, to improve what they do for the benefit of those they teach.

For so many, history teaching is truly a vocation, not a job, something never more apparent than at an SHP Conference.

Other Workshops …

… that I didn't have the opportunity to experience were:

• "That seemed to work" A reflection, with plenty of practical examples, of what helps secondary students to get better at history and to enjoy all that it has to offer by Jamie Byrom, author and history consultant

• What’s worth knowing? Exploring Significance with Year 8 by Alison Kitson, Institute of Education, University of London

• Royal Manuscripts: The Genius of Illumination by the British Library workshop leaders

• Timelines: Sources from History  by David Avery, Web Content Developer, British Library

And finally, make a note of …

… the British Library workshops on Royal Manuscripts.

They're suitable for Year7-11 and A Level and are available to March 2012.

For details see their website www.bl.uk/learning/