Terry Haydn

Two quotes which have some resonance for teachers working in the UK over the past few years: First, a quote for which I have no attribution, 'The floggings will continue until morale improves.' (Chris Woodhead perhaps, a former Chief Inspector of UK schools?) Second, a quote which I have seen several times on departmental notice boards over the past few years, by Caius Petronius, Roman soldier: 'We trained hard, but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up in teams we would be reorganised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganising and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation.'

It would be interesting to see how many school leavers were familiar with Tom Paine's life and work. When I was at University as an undergraduate I did a (fascinating) course on 'Utopia and Anarchy', focusing on the ideas of radicals and 'outcasts, and the ways in which their ideas had been marginalised, history written by the winners etc. I would also be interested to find out how many school leavers had a reasonable understanding of democracy and 'democratic deficits' in today's political systems. I suspect that beyond 'the right to vote', school history as it is currently constituted would not give young people much idea of the complexity and flawed nature of contemporary democracies. Anyway, Tom Paine would go onto my history curriculum for the 21st century, but not probably as 'top person'. My suggestions are not particulalry original, but I would make a case for Gandhi and Mandela,and perhaps also, Woodrow Mann. To have so much moral courage, to suffer so much and be surrounded by such evil, hatred and bigotry and yet still to have the vision and drive to make their part of the world 'a better place'. What the world needs now.... The middle east, Ireland, the trampling of social justice and a decent standard of living for all under the heel of market capitalism and globalisation... testimony to the absence of figures of the stature of Gandhi and Mandela.

One of the things that helps is if we can get a collection of good SIMPLE ideas which have 'high transference' potential. A problem here is copyright issues, even in terms of collections of images, newspaper articles archived on the web etc. Putting a hyperlink to the newspaper archive is one way round this problem, but even this represents a barrier or disincentive, so the examples and resources have to be really skilfully chosen so that there is a high 'hit-rate' of really good examples, rather than lots of mediocre/indifferent ones. Terry

One way forward is 'network to network' learning; I am involved in several networks, and some of the work which we will be doing will be of interest to them. There is a network of about 40 Norfolk history teachers who meet regularly, a Norfolk Ntworked Learning Community project and a 'Creative Approaches to the use of ICT in history project. As well as the internet and forums, CDs can be a cheap and effective way of disseminating examples, ideas etc. Disadvantages in terms of time to copy CD, cost of posting etc, but gets round some other problems, Terry

I would agree that 'ideological' resistance to the use of ICT has declined over the past 8 years. There is evidence to suggest that most history teachers and trainee teachers have positive attitudes to the potential of ICT to improve teaching and learning in history, but access is still a problem in most history departments, both in terms of access to computers for pupil activity, and access to whole class projection facilities. I think some good ideas are emerging about how to use ICT in a more genuinely interactive and thought provoking way, but agree with John that there is some use of ICT (and PowerPoint in particular) that is not making full, effective and imaginative use of what ICT might offer. One area of interest is the various electronic systems for eliciting and 'publicly' registering pupil response or opinion. These tend to be quite expensive at the moment. but they are transforming the experience of lectures in some areas of higher education, and might have the same effect in history classrooms if the price came down. The best example I can think of is the section at the end of the Anne Frank house museum where the audience registers an opinion on a range of problematic moral and ethical issues, and you can quickly see how many people voted which way. It is the first step in 'drawing out' learners, and geting them to engage in discussion and debate (an area of history teaching that requires high-order skills). It harks back to Stenhouse's ideas from the Humanities Curriculum Project, where pupils actively think about and debate controversial issues, with the teacher (and the ICT system) guiding them in the skills of argument, debate and the marshalling and evaluation of evidence. This sort of use would have a more radical influence on classroom practice in history than many of the current uses of ICT.

I suspect that in the UK at least, there will be a move away from the idea of marching the pupils down to the ICT room for a 'special' lesson which uses ICT, and towards the integrated use of ICT in 'ordinary' day to day lessons, where ICT is routinely used as a component of lots of lessons, in clasrooms which have a data projector or electronic whiteboard (and hopefully, internet access). One of the key tings to develop, therefore, would be 'integration literacy'; the skill with which teachers can use 'bits and pieces' using ICT (Ben Walsh's idea of 'building learning packages'), and building up a powerful archive of ICT resources and activities which can support this.

I taught history in an inner-city secondary school in Manchester for about 20 years before moving into history teacher education in the early 1990s. Throughout this period I have been interested in the use of new technology in history teaching and it was the subject of my doctoral thesis, tracing the development of ICT in school history over the past 30 years. The main bit of my current job is training history graduates to be secondary history teachers, but I also undertake research into the use of ICT in history. I was Co-editor (together with Christine Counsell) of History, ICT and Learning (London, RoutledgeFalmer 2003), a collection of chapters from several leading UK practitioners in the field of history and ICT, and have a (modest) website at: http://www.uea.ac.uk/~m242/

One of the biggest changes in history teaching in the UK over the past 30 years has been that instead of school history being mainly about the transmission of a body of knowledge about the substantive past, some time has also been given to developing pupils’ understanding of history as a form of knowledge, with its own procedures, conventions etc. Lee and Ashby emphasise that this was not a retreat from the importance of pupils acquiring historical knowledge, ‘instead, “knowledge” was treated seriously, as something that had to be understood and grounded. It is essential that students know something of the kind of claims made by historians and what those different kinds of claim rest on’ (Lee and Ashby, 2001: 200). As Lee and Ashby point out, 'Many stories are told, and they may contradict, compete with or complement one another, but this means that students should be equipped to deal with such relationships, not that any old story will do…. Students who understand sources as information are helpless when confronted by contradictory sources.' I think that it is essential that pupils do develop some understanding of ‘what history is’- that it is a construct, not ‘how the past happened’. It’s not an ‘either-or’ thing, it is also helpful for them to have a mental framework of the past, and to understand that the deployment of ‘historical perspectives’ can offer insights into current problems and issues. A bit about ‘identity’ is OK but I think that this has been over-emphasised by some commentators (such as, for example, Nick Tate). In terms of what is most essential, I think it is school history’ s potential for helping young people to handle information intelligently. It can also help them to understand issues about power, and the extent to which this can be used for the general good (or not). It should help to develop pupils’ ‘democratic literacy’ (including democratic deficits); an important facet of citizenship education. Two chapters which I thought were really helpful on this point: Lee, P. and Ashby, R. (2001) 'Progression in historical understanding 7-14', in Seixas, P. Stearns, P. and Wineburg, S. (eds), Teaching, Knowing and Learning History, New York, New York University Press: 195-220, and Christine Counsell’s chapter in Phillips, R. and Arthur, J. (2000), Issues in history teaching, London, RoutledgeFalmer.

Although it might be considered a 'slight' novel, little more than a hundred pages, J. L. Carr's 'A Month in the Country' is probably the novel which has had the most profound effect on me. Part of this, I think, is the resonance with your own personality and character. It seems a faily ordinary if well told tale until the last page, and then it assumes a much greater power and makes you think hard about what you are doing with your life, and whether you take your chances when they come.

I think that Richard makes several important points. One of my concerns is that pupils should develop an understanding of history as a form of knowledge as well as a body of knowledge. I have been influenced partly by reading the work of Peter Lee, Alaric Dickinson and Ros Ashby, and feel that the outcomes of the CHATA project (Concepts of History and Teaching Approaches) offer several interesting and useful ways forward for history teachers. As John Arnold notes in 'History a short introduction', history is an argument, and one of the benefits supposed to derive from the study of the past is people who are able to choose wisely between different accounts- an important ability for citizens to possess in the 21st century. Keith Joseph's paper in The Historian, 1984 is another very powerful argument for the vitality and relevance of school history. Richard Aldrich's idea of 'historical perspectives' as one way of making sense of the world is also a helpful one, noting that history is about the present and the future as well as the past: is there any problem, question or issue into which we cannot gain more insight and understanding by looking at what has gone before? For me, a big part of how history might be rendered more useful and more relevant to young people is in developing their information literacy and political awareness. In England this is now 'legitimate' as part of citizenship education, but there is still a lot of practice which does not link the past to the present, and which does not provide 'overviews' over time so that pupils can make sense of some of the big themes of history. (For instance, many teachers do not link the Peasants' Revolt to the issue of how opposition to monarchy/government has changed over time and how opposition is manifested in today's world, they do the Norman occupation without any link to the problems and issues of occupying/liberating Iraq. In 1990 the DES argued that history should ‘prepare pupils for adult life by imparting a critically sharpened intelligence with which to make sense of current affairs’ (DES, 1990: 1-2), only for Kenneth Clarke to bring in the '20 years rule' forbidding the joining up of past and present, and for some on the right to complain that history was becoming 'too political' (as if teaching pupils about kings, queens and peasants was not in some way political). One example of this which I would like to focus on is the use of school history to develop pupils' 'democratic literacy'. At the moment pupils leave school with a very naive idea about democracy, government, power etc. They think, unreflectingly that democracy is 'a good thing', and that it simply means the right to vote. They do not have an understanding of 'democratic deficits' which ought to be an important part of their political education. Also, some content issues; in the UK pupils learn very little about how their society has changed over the past 50 years. We generally 'pull the drawbridge up' at World War 2, and although some pupils do the Cold War, social change is a black hole, and could be a very powerful demonstration of how vital history is. It is interesting to look at the general aims and values which are now part of the National Curriculum. It is a part of the National Curriculum which many of our PGCE students are not particularly familiar with. The 1999 revision of the National Curriculum for History noted that pupils should be able to ‘research, sift through evidence and argue for their point of view- skills that are prized in adult life.’ There was explicit reference to the use of history to develop intellectual autonomy; ‘What they learn can influence their decisions about personal choices, attitudes and values. In history, pupils find evidence, weigh it up and reach their own conclusions’ (DfEE/QCA, 1999: 148). In addition to this rationale for history as a school subject, the overall aims and values of the National Curriculum stipulated that all subjects should develop ‘enjoyment of and commitment to learning’, and ‘build on pupils’ strengths, interests and experiences and develop their confidence in their capacity to learn and work independently and collaboratively.’ The general aims of the National Curriculum also put significant emphasis on the development of critical intelligence, intellectual autonomy, and active citizenship- school leavers are to be equipped to ‘think creatively and critically, to solve problems and to make a difference for the better… to make informed judgements and independent decisions.’ (DfEE/QCA, 1999: 11) I think that most history teachers in the UK would be broadly supportive of these ideas, but would shake their heads if asked whether current arrangements offer a propitious environment for realising these aspirations. The main obstacle in the way is the current assessment and testing regime.

Just to agree with John and Andy; I think that the Learning Curve is a brilliant example of what the web can offer to teaching and learning in history. The quality of the instructional design is what provides genuinely 'interactive' and worthwhile learning, and many of my students end up setting better quality tasks when not using ICT after they have had experience of using the site. On a sadder note, I was dismayed to hear that some schools are having to stop using internet based homeworks because of concers about viruses, worms etc. History homework often puts pupils off the subject and is seen as a dreary and pointless chore. Using the net offered the prospect of transforming the quality of homeworks which could be set, and getting pupils to be really enthusiastic about the importance and relevance of history to their lives. The Learning Curve is already excellent in lots of different ways, I just wonder whether it could be used by more history teachers as a source of 'safe', interesting and enjoyable homeworks.

Just to say that one of my science colleagues attended a workshop which you gave on the use of digital video (not at SHP) and he said it was exceptionally good and interesting. One of my questions is about how complex/time consuming it is to get going on digital video. My experience is that if it is quite convoluted and technically difficult, it puts a lot of history teachers (including me) off, or they just don't quite get round to doing it in spite of good intentions. About how long would it take for an 'avarage' history teacher to master the rudiments of digital video editing and what is the best way of gaining induction to digital video? Best wishes, Terry Haydn

I thought that the suggestions were really interesting and will explore their use with my trainees this year. One important point that Christine Counsell made at a workshop a few months ago; plenaries do not have to come at the end of the lesson, there are often occasions when it makes sense to have a plenary at other points in the lesson.

Just to agree with the authors that film/video extracts provide for learning which has a real impact on pupils' thinking. There is a lot of fuss made about computers, but I would guess that over 90% of the bits of lessons which I taught which worked really well, and had a powerful effect on pupils' thinking about the past involved the moving image. It is now quite easy to build up an 'archive' of short video extracts which problematise aspects of the past and which really disturb pupils' thinking about issues such as slavery, the Holocaust, empire etc. I am currently trying to build up a collection of reseources which get pupils to think a bit more deeply about democracy, and to understand 'democratic deficits'. I suspect that many pupils leave school not understanding much about democracy and its problems, even if they have studied history to 16 or 18. Building up 'collections' of short video extracts is invaluable in helping to persuade pupils that history is incredibly important and relevant to their lives.

Just as a point of interest, I work with history PGCE students, and a lot of them pick up revision sessions on second placement and mentors say this works well because it is somebody else going through the work with pupils, with a different approach, different resources, different ideas etc. I think this is one of (the many) advantages of having PGCE students working in the department.

I was a Head of History who had lots of non-specialists working in the department, but fortunately, they were all strong in their overall professionalism (preparing thoroughly, good with the kids, conscientious in parking etc. This helps but obviously it is not enough, and I should have done more to help them, to make sure that they set tasks and did lessons which were genuinely valuable in historical terms. Regular, friendly meetings to share resources and ideas help, Teaching History (the journal) is an excellent resource to develop colleagues' skill in addressing valid historical agendas. It's not perfect, but on balance I'd reather have a good professional who is not a subject specialist than someone who is history trained but is not a strong professional.

I am Terry Haydn and the main bit of my job is working with secondary PGCE history students at the University of East Anglia. As well as being interested in the history curriculum in schools, I am interested in the use of ICT in history.

I agree with much of what John and Hetha suggest. One important thing is to get away from the idea of a model based on 'coverage' of the national past from the year zero. This model produces pupils who end up not really knowing or understanding anything about history or why they might benefit from doing history. You have to make the amount of content manageable so that pupils can make sense of the history that they do, and picking out 'themes' is one way of doing this. The themes should also be influenced by what would help pupils to make sense of the world they are living in, so John's list is a good starting point although I would not agree with every bit of it or the titles of all the themes. There should be a balance of different types of history, not just British, European, World/ Political, social, economic, but also some elements of philosophy, sociology, political thought (treated from a historical perspective). The main thing is that topics are 'opened up', so as to make pupils think about the issues involved as they effect the present and future. 'Overview' studies looking at issues over time are one way of doing this. One of my main sources of dismay when I see trainee teachers teach is when they have not thought to 'open up' the topic and think, 'Why are we making them learn about this stuff, in what way is it relevant to the lives they will lead?' So sometimes they just teach 'Castles' of the past. Why? No-one has built a castle for about 500 years. But the issue of controlling populations and protecting citizens (which is part of what castles were about) is still a very pertinent issue. Similarly, they sometimes teach about the factory system, and devleopments in textile machinery, without thinking about how modes of production, supply and demand and technological change will affect the lives of the pupils they teach. Or 'roads and canals in the c17-18', without linking it in any way to transport issues and dilemmas today. Every time somone teaches a lesson where the pupils haven't got a clue why they are learning about it is a nail driven into the coffin of the subject.

I am just going off to put it in the post. Can I echo John's thanks and congratulations to Richard for pulling it all together so adroitly, best wishes, Terry

It's very important that we educate young people to understand exactly what democracy is, and what it depends on. Many people leave school just thinking that it means that people have the vote. History, Citizenship and Personal and Social Education can help pupils to realise what a fragile, complex and nuanced creature a liberal democracy is. They also need to be taught about 'democratic deficits'; the imperfections and corruptions in democratic systems, whether in the UK, US, Italy or wherever. I saw a school history question last week which asked 14 year old pupils to identify some characteristics of a democratic system, and thought that this would be a really good test of pupils' grasp of democracy as a concept. They could also be asked to make a list of all the flaws and imperfections which make democratic systems imperfect.

Can I just stand up for mentors. I'm not saying that they are all perfect, but in my experience of working in PGCE, the vast majority of them do it not for the money, or the chance to 'dump' classes on trainees, but because it is an interesting, worthwhile and rewarding bit of the job. They like working with trainees because most trainees are committed, bright and quick to learn and are good to have about the place. It is for this reason that trainees' overall professional attitude and approach are so important. Will they be good colleagues? Will they be a pleasure to work with? I think that you have to be strong in 'resonable human being' qualities to be a good teacher (or a good mentor). You have to be, in Tim Brighouse's words, to at leat some extent, 'a giver'. Most of the mentors I work with give above and beyond the call of duty and the official requirements.

Ingenuous attempts to ‘de-politicise’ history, to separate the past from the present, and to rip the last chapter out of the story of the nation’s past, do not make it easier for history teachers to persuade pupils of the importance and relevance of history to their lives. It probably makes some pupils wonder why historians bother, what is the point? Is it a harmless but idiosyncratic hobby like stamp collecting or trainspotting? As the 1952 report of the Ministry of Education noted: The divorce between current affairs and history, so that they are regarded as two different subjects, gravely weakens both. It accentuates the natural tendency of children to regard history as something remote and irrelevant instead of something which has formed the world around them and which is continuously being formed by that world. And, it accentuates equally the tendency to look at contemporary questions as though they had no context in time, no parallels or precedents. (Ministry of Education, 1952: 32) Only if it is accepted that the past should be ‘joined up’ to the present, and that school history should address contemporary political issues will we escape from ‘the Curriculum of the Dead’ which has limited the political education of young people in the United Kingdom, and in many cases, limited the extent to which they see history in particular, and education in general, as relevant to their lives.

In response to Alf's point, the French Historian Theodore Zeldin talked of Britain's tendency to nostalgia: 'Imagining a Britain which was a green and pleasant land is one of those cliches which holds everything together and makes it seem as though it makes sense. In private, no-one believes in these cliches, in public, one needs to in order to make sense.' (from 'An essential history of Europe', BBC2 21 January 1993). There are still some powerful forces of conservatism who want to make history all about national identity and pride. One example of this is John Stokes' speech in the House of Commons: ‘Why cannot we go back to the good old days when we learnt by heart the names of the kings and queens of England, the feats of our warriors and our battles, and the glorious deeds of our past?’ (Stokes, J. (1990) Speech in the House of Commons, quoted in Sunday Telegraph, 1 April. As well as giving pupils knowledge and understanding of the substantive past, history can be taught in such a way that it helps them to handle information intelligently and sceptically. In 1973, John Rae argued the case against an education for citizenship founded on ‘The Great Tradition’ of history teaching: It is not a school’s task to produce good citizens any more than it is to produce Christian gentlemen. The school does not give people their political ideals, or religious faith, but the means to discover both for themselves. Above all, it gives them the scepticism so that they will leave with the ability to doubt, rather than the inclination to believe. In this sense, a good school is subversive of current orthodoxy in politics, religion and learning. Of course, by placing the emphasis on radical independence of mind, we run the risk of producing, for example, an intelligent traitor rather than a stupid patriot. But the risk of failing is so much greater because the result may be a sham democracy in which citizens do not have the independence to participate. Rae, J. (1973) ‘On teaching independence’, New Statesman, 21 September.

I have done some research with history teachers and trainee teachers and in spite of recent improvements in the computer to pupil ratio in British schools, access still emerges as the biggest problem. There seems to be a general antipathy to having to book computer suites for an 'all singing, all dancing' ICT special lesson, and it would appear that history teachers would much prefer to have access to use computers within ordinary lessons, through the availability of computers in designated history classrooms, electronic whiteboards or data projectors. Unfortunatley, a lot of recent investment in ICT seems to have gone into equipping schools with more computer suites. Where there is high ICT use, it seems to correspond to where teachers have easy classroom access, and can just use ICT as a regular component of many lessons rather than the occasional 'set piece' in the ICT room. The other big constraint is time to think of what to do with all the resources now available through ICT. The most precious resource in education at the moment is teachers' time. In the UK teachers are deluged with admin and testing and government strategy documents, and do not have enough time to integrate ICT into their lesson plans. Investing money in more whole class projection facilities for classroom use of ICT and giving them more free time to explore the potential of ICT would be big steps forward.

I am Terry Haydn. For most of my working life I taught at an inner-city comprehensive school in Manchester as Head of History/Humanities. I then went into teacher education in London and am now PGCE History Tutor at the University of East Anglia. I am interested in the use of ICT in history, the working atmosphere in the classroom and history/citizenship issues in secondary schools.