As a starting point, it is helpful to be aware of the range of groups of pupils who do not always achieve their potential in the UK system of education.
Some boys
Some LGBT pupils
Some white working class boys
Some EAL learners
Some traveller pupils
Some SEND pupils
Some quietly disaffected or ‘coasting’ pupils
Some pupils in rural schools
Some cared for pupils
Some carers
Some able pupils
Some pupils with disabilities
Some bullied pupils
Some refugee and asylum seeker pupils
Pupils who would like to learn but whose learning is disrupted by the poor behaviour of other pupils
Some pupils from low income backgrounds/who are on free school meals.
If you are interested in recent developments related to ‘decolonising’ the history curriculum, OBHD has provided a link to an interesting blog by Jen Thornton, ‘Decolonising the curriculum one step at a time: lessons on race in the early British Empire.’
Euroclio (10 March 2021) also has a useful introduction to ‘Decolonising the curriculum’, which includes a link to further resources.
3 dimensions of diversity in curriculum planning – Anne Hudson and Gabrielle Reddington
This is an extract from a blog featured on the H/A’s One Big History Department blog. Click the link above for the full blogpost, which contains exemplification of the 3 dimensions outlined opposite.
Another very good resource for including all of the human past in your teaching is Claire Hollis’s ‘Seeing the whole board’.
A framework that can support integration of teaching about diverse experiences in the past and share some examples of this in action.
‘We have found that the best history teaching is 3 dimensional. It enables students to learn about our human experience in 3 dimensions:
- Time – ancient through to contemporary
- Space – local, national and global, picking up threads of human connectivity and interaction within and beyond the ‘national frame’
- Identity – recognising all communities’ multiple and interconnecting layers of meaning, including ethnicity, gender, sexuality, religion, language, disability and class.’
This does not mean that you have to try and shoehorn all aspects of all 3 dimensions into every unit of work, but it means that over longer term planning, you look out for opportunities to tell the full human story of the past, not just a limited version of it which leaves out some of humanity.
Diversity resources and links for secondary history – Historical Association – The H/A have provided a helpful link to a collection on diversity in teaching history.
How Britain has handled diversity over time. A useful new resource: Teaching Britain’s civil rights history’, Elias, H. and Spafford, M. (2022), Teaching History 185: 10-21. The 2021 HA survey suggests that under 15% of history departments teach the history of civil rights in the UK – far fewer than teach the history of civil rights in the US (Whitburn and Yemoh, TH 147: 2012, 16-25). The article has links to excellent resources and very good suggestions for planning and teaching this topic, and advice not to present this as a simple story of progress.