Developing your subject content knowledge
(Remember that there is more to developing your subject knowledge than just acquiring more subject content knowledge) – there is also your knowledge of the curriculum frameworks for history at KS2, KS3, GCSE and A/S, A2, your knowledge of research and inspection evidence about pupils, schools and history, and the depth and breadth of your understanding of history as a form of knowledge. Nonetheless, mentors in our partnership felt that the most urgent imperative in terms of subject knowledge is that if you are going in to teach a class of pupils, you need to have solid subject content knowledge for the lesson you are going to teach if you are to retain the confidence and trust of your pupils. How can you continue to augment your subject content knowledge when you are on the PGCE course, and have limited time for reading biographies and tomes?- As a point of principle, you must aim to know substantially more than is in the text book, although that does not mean that it is not helpful to be acquainted with the approach taken by the text book used by the department. Sixth form text books can be a way of acquiring greater depth of subject knowledge for topics which you are teaching lower down the school.
- The Internet is now a much more refined and well signposted way of develoing greater depth of subject knowledge.
- There are several history magazines which can provide helpful and eminently readable summaries of contemporary historiographical developments in a range of N/C and GCSE, ‘A’ level topics; BBC History magazine, History Today, History Review, The Historian, amongst others. It might be an interesting exercise to study each of these journals to consider which has most potential for time-effectively developing subject content knowledge. (I have my own views on this but it would probably be unwise to disclose them).
- Audiotapes: many trainee teachers spend time travelling in the course of the PGCE year; listen to a history audiotape sometimes instead of music or whatever. (This is not a sad thing to do). This Sceptred Isle and Schama’s History of Britain are both options here.
- Read the reviews in the weekend papers; they are often a very quick way of updating your subject knowledge, and can provide excellent resources for lessons.
- What better way of relaxing on a Friday evening after a long hard week of teaching practice than switching on to a Timewatch programme? (Just joking, but TV can be a brilliant way of developing subject knowledge).
- Talk about history with your mentor and colleagues in the department, and with fellow students. Love of subject is one of the nice bits of the job you have to do; don’t neglect it.
- Should have been top of the list really; READ TEACHING HISTORY it is THE journal for people who teach history. It is helpful not just for developing subject content knowledge and pedagogical subject knowledge, but for keeping up to date generally, and for giving you good ideas for things to do in your lessons. It will make your life easier and more fulfilling.
Other aspects of subject knowledge
History as a form of knowledge
The recent work of Lee, Ashby and Dickinson has been very helpful to those teaching history in terms of clarifying what history is, and how this might influence how we go about teaching history to young people. I thought the following extract was a very clear explanation of the difference between substantive and second order concepts in history, if you are not sure about this, read it. From “Progression is historical understanding 7-14” Lee, P. and Ashby, R. (2000), in P. Seixas, P. Stearns and S. Wineburg, Teaching, Knowing and Learning History, New York, New York University Press: pp. 199-222. “To make sense of these changes (to the history curriculum) it is necessary to distinguish between substantive history on the one hand, and second order or procedural ideas about history on the other. Substantive history is the content of history, what history is ‘about’. Concepts like peasant, friar or president, particulars like the Battle of Hastings, the French Revolution or The Civil Rights Movement, and individuals like Abraham Lincoln, Marie Curie or Mahatma Gandhi, are part of the substance of history. Concepts like historical evidence, explanation, change, and accounts, are ideas that provide our understanding of history as a discipline or form of knowledge. They are not what history is ‘about’, but they shape the way we go about doing history. The changes in English history education can therefore be described as a shift from the assumption that school history was only a matter of acquiring substantive history, to a concern with students’ second order ideas.” Lee and Ashby go on to stress that this is not a retreat from the importance of students acquiring historical knowledge: “Instead, ‘knowledge’ was treated seriously, as something that had to be understood and grounded. It was essential that students knew something of the kind of claims made by historians, and what those different kinds of claims rested on.“
What is the relation between ‘history’, ‘memory’, and ‘narrative’?
‘History is an organised and evidence-based presentation of of the processes and events that have occurred for a people over an extended period of time; “memory” is the personal recollections and representations of individuals who lived through a series of events and processes [although there can also be such a thing as ‘collective memory]; and “narratives” are the stories that historians and ordinary people weave together to make sense of the events and happenings through which a people and a person have lived. We use narratives to connect the dots of things that have happened; to identify causes and meanings within this series of events; and to select the ‘important” events and processes out from the ordinary and inconsequential’ (Little, D., 2008 – ‘Understanding Society Blog’, 12 August).
What do we mean by ‘historical thinking’?
Grever and Van Nieuwenhuyse (2020: 489) suggest that in many countries (Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands, Sweden, England and Finland), historical thinking has increasingly been considered as one of the main aims of history as a school subject.But what exactly is meant by the phrase ‘historical thinking’? Whilst acknowledging that the ‘operationalisation’ of historical thinking might differ somewhat from country to country, they offer some general points which characterise ‘historical thinking’ which can be helpful in identifying its key characteristics. See the extracts below:
Grever and Van Nieuwenhuyse argue that the cultivation of pupils’ ability to think historically enables them to develop a nuanced understanding of the past and with uses and misuses of the past and its legacies:
‘Historical thinking requires an engagement with both past and history. Thinking historically is first and foremost about understanding and organizing information about the past, with the aim of describing, comparing and explaining historical phenomena (people, groups, events and developments from the past) in their historical context and in the long term. As the observer of the past is always situated in a present which influences his/her view of the past, historical thinking is also about building an understanding of and reflecting on the complex relationship between past, present and
future. It thus requires an understanding of both the past and history, both inextricably bound up with each other. One needs to know how knowledge of the past is constructed and needs to understand the tentative character of historical knowledge. Only then can one start to think critically of the past, including its representations and
instrumentalization (Grever and Van Nieuwenhuyse, 2020: 488-9).
They go on to enunciate general characteristics of historical thinking:
‘Generally spoken it always includes aspects related to the academic discipline of history such as asking historical questions, reasoning with and about sources and using evidence, applying historical ways of reasoning such as cause and consequence, and continuity and change, situating and contextualizing historically, taking a historical perspective (related to historical empathy), using substantive and second-order concepts and coming to substantiated historical representations. At the same time, sociocultural and civic aspects are included as well, such as an ethical dimension and building nuanced viewpoints with regard to topical societal challenges, underpinned with historical arguments.’
Grever, M. and Van Nieuwenhuyse, K. (2020). Popular uses of violent pasts and historical thinking, Journal for the study of education and development, 43 (3) 483-502.
Although the idea of ‘historical thinking’ (or as it is sometimes termed ‘historical literacy’) is not new. like ‘historical consciousness’, it has assumed a higher profile in history education discourse since the previous edition of this book.
For further reading on ‘historical thinking’:
Lee, P. (2017). History Education and historical literacy, in I. Davies (Ed.) Debates in history teaching, London, Routledge: 55-65.
Seixas, P. (2017). Historical consciousness and historical thinking. In M. Carretero, S. Berger, & M. Grever (Eds.), Palgrave handbook of research in historical culture and education Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan: 59-72.
Seixas, P. C., & Morton, T. (2013). The big six historical thinking concepts. Toronto: Nelson Education.
Van Boxtel, C., & van Drie, J. (2013). Historical reasoning in the classroom: What does it look like and how can we enhance it? Teaching History, 150, 44–52.
Wineburg, S. (2001). Historical thinking and other unnatural acts, Philadelphia, Temple.