Evidence

The use of sources within history lessons has consistently been included within the National Curriculum in England and as a specific assessment objective at GCSE and A-level, on the grounds that unless students know how claims about the past are generated and validated within the subject community, they will be poorly equipped to make sense of or to discriminate between conflicting claims about the past. While the use of sources depends on a process of critical evaluation, history teachers and curriculum designers are now very aware of the risks associated with reducing such evaluation to a series of mechanistic formulae in which ‘source work’ is detached from the enquiry process of answering specific and worthwhile questions about the past.  The materials in this section help alert teachers to those risks as well as illuminating important misconceptions that may prevent students from developing a more powerful conception of the nature of historical knowledge The resources here offer a range of practical strategies, rooted in academic and practitioner research, for equipping students to use sources of many different kinds as evidence (rather than merely passing judgment on them). Read more

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  • The teaching and learning of history for 15-16 year olds: have the Japanese anything to learn from the English experience

    Article

    What would you expect the differences to be between Japan and England in how pupils learn history in the post-14 phase? Perhaps your guess would be: Japanese school students learn a lot of historical facts and focus upon their own identity and English school students talk a lot more in...

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  • 'Really weird and freaky': using a Thomas Hardy short story as a source of evidence in the Year 8 classroom

    Article

    Can 25 so-called ‘low ability’ girls access 30 pages of difficult text? Yes, much more easily they can access the tiny, sanitised, made-easy ‘gobbets’ that they are normally exposed to in the name of ‘access’. Mary Woolley makes the point that boring texts are those that tell you only essential...

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  • Why Gerry now likes evidential work

    Article

    Phil Smith resurrects the lovable Gerry who was first introduced to Teaching History readers by Ben Walsh. Gerry now pops up in another history classroom, and, sadly, has had a few terrible teachers since Ben was looking after him. Phil brings Gerry back to the path of righteousness. Through an...

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  • Gladstone spiritual or Gladstone material? A rationale for using documents at AS and A2

    Article

    Rather than taking a sledgehammer approach to planning for the new AS and A2 courses Gary Howells has used the opportunity to reflect on characteristics of students' historical learning in the post-16 phase. He argues for a much fuller rationale for using documents than mere preparation for exams or coursework....

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  • 'Didn't we do that in Year 7?' Planning for progress in evidential understanding

    Article

    Christine Counsell describes a lively activity, ideal for Year 9, in which pupils compare and interrelate a collection of sources. The activity leads pupils into thinking about the sources as a collection, and about the enquiry as an evidential problem. Or at least it can do. The article discusses the...

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  • Beyond bias: making source evaluation meaningful to year 7

    Article

    In this article, Heidi Le Cocq demonstrates how to introduce Year 7 pupils to sophisticated techniques for evaluating sources. Taking up Seán Lang's criticism of the inappropriate use of the term ‘bias', she shows how even very young pupils can be encouraged to move beyond this wearisome response to questions...

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  • Evidential understanding, period knowledge and the development of literacy: a practical approach to 'layers of inference' for Key Stage 3

    Article

    Claire Riley explains how she developed and improved the ‘layers of inference' diagram-already a popular device since Hilary Cooper's work-as a way of getting pupils fascinated by challenging texts and pictures. Working with the whole ability range in Year 9 she analyses her successes and failures, offering many practical suggestions...

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  • Frameworks for linking pupils' evidential understanding with growing skill in structured, written argument: the 'evidence sandwich'

    Article

    History teachers are increasingly good at designing exercises which develop skill in evidence analysis. The ubiquitous ‘source' is invariably analysed for utility and reliability. But how do pupils integrate such understandings with extended written work? How can they be helped to use these understandings in the creation of written argument?...

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  • The use of sources in school history 1910-1998: a critical perspective

    Article

    The arrival of sources of evidence into secondary school history classrooms amounted to a small revolution. What began as a radical development is now establishment orthodoxy, with both GCSE and now National Curriculum in England and Wales enshrining its principles. Tony McAleavy pays tribute to some of the thinkers and...

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  • Working with sources: scepticism or cynicism? Putting the story back together again

    Article

    Many history teachers will remember the feature on Jamie Byrom's teaching in Times Educational Supplement of July 1996 where he attacked the recent fashion of history textbooks for encouraging only short (and usually formulaic) responses about reliability of sources. He demonstrated the systematic teaching that pupils need if they are...

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  • Teaching pupils to analyse cartoons

    Article

    In this practical account of a key aspect of history departmental policy, Joseph O'Neill presents a rationale for the systematic teaching of analytical techniques. Alert to the dangers of mechanistic and formulaic examination responses, the author draws a distinction between the limiting rigidity of the learned response and the systematic...

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