Interpretations

The fact that both the National Curriculum in England and the national assessment objectives that frame public examinations at GCSE and A-level include a focus on ‘historical interpretations’ (plural) as well as referring separately to students’ own use of evidence – makes it very clear that there is an important distinction between the disciplinary concepts of ‘evidence’ and ‘interpretations’. While the former is concerned with students’ use of sources to develop their own interpretation of events; the latter is concerned with students’ exploration and explanation of how and why interpretations developed by historians differ from one another.  (Both have a critical role to plan in students’ historical learning – and both need to be carefully planned!) Giving students the confidence and the knowledge to handle competing interpretations is undoubtedly challenging, but the materials in this section show how careful planning within and across the key stages (including Key Stage 3) can help students of all ages to engage effectively with interpretations examining the relationship between historians’ accounts (in books and on television) and the particular questions that they have chosen to answer, as well as the sources on which they claim to have drawn.  Read more

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  • 'But why then?' Chronological context and historical interpretations

    Article

    When Michael Fordham was introduced to Dr Seuss's Butter Battle Book he immediately recognised its potential value in the classroom as a popular interpretation of the Cold War. Wanting his Year 9 pupils to explain how and why the past has been interpreted in different ways he shows the potential pitfalls...

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  • 'Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?'

    Article

    How can the Holocaust be represented? In this article, Andrew Wrenn takes as his example the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. He helps teachers encourage pupils to get beneath the surface, and look analytically at the Museum itself as an interpretation of the Holocaust. Such an investigation provides pupils and...

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  • A question of attribution: working with ghetto photographs

    Article

    Holocaust imagery is very familiar, clichéd even. How can we get pupils thinking about it in novel ways and seeing differently? Phillips reports work completed with his PGCE students, proposes a scaffold of questions with which to deconstruct images and applies it to  archive images and to Hollywood representations. Images...

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  • Absence and myopia in A-level coursework

    Article

    It is a charge commonly laid at history teachers that we, myopically, teach only the same-old same-old. Steven Driver has taken extreme steps to avoid this by focusing on a particular neglected event – the American occupation of Nicaragua in the early twentieth century – as part of his preparation...

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  • Approaches to planning interpretations-focused enquiries.

    Article

    Michael Riley, member of the HA Secondary Committee and History PGCE Tutor at Bath Spa University. In recent years, teaching about different interpretations of history has been one of the most exciting and challenging aspects of Key Stage 3 history. Interpretations-focused enquiries allow pupils to see that argument and debate are...

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  • Bringing historical method into the classroom

    Article

    Shortly before their final A-level examination, Peter Turner was alarmed to discover some fundamental weaknesses in his Year 13 students’ understanding of the nature of historical interpretations. Determined to address this concern at a much earlier point with his next cohort of students he developed a new six-lesson enquiry. His...

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  • Building Key Stage 5 students’ analysis of interpretations

    Article

    Students of A-level history are required to analyse and evaluate historical interpretations. Samuel Head found limitations in his Year 13 students’ understanding of how and why historians arrive at differing interpretations, which impeded their ability to analyse them. He set about tackling this with carefully sequenced planning and a processual model...

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  • Creating confident historical readers at A-level

    Article

    How can we help pupils learn to read historically? Gary Howells explores this question by explaining how he builds reading challenges into the course of his pupils' post-16 studies and by describing some of the tasks that pupils are set and the principles that underpin them. Howells argues that over...

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  • Cunning Plan 142: Why do historical interpretations change over time?

    Article

    History teachers have been talking about the need to teach broad narratives, overview and chronology for a long time. They have also recognised how essential it is for students to have an opportunity to study the ways in which the past has been interpreted, and the reasons why these interpretations...

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  • Cunning Plan 151: When and for whom has 1688 been 'Glorious'?

    Article

    This enquiry is about how interpretations are formed and why they change. It aims to show Year 9, right at the end of their study of British history, the ways in which meanings of 1688 have shifted over time. It will test students' knowledge and strengthen their chronology of 300...

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  • Cunning Plan 161: Magna Carta's legacy

    Article

    Both Dawson and Hayes have recently written Cunning Plans that show how exciting Magna Carta is. So why not stop there? Bring the barons to life with a flare of Dawson and send Magna Carta flying across the continent with just a hint of Hayes. Hey, from the same edition,...

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  • Cunning Plan 165: Helping lower-attaining students

    Article

    My GCSE students were about to embark on their controlled assessment, which asked them to weigh up conflicting views on the British military’s contribution to the D-Day landings. Students were asked to engage  with a range of historians’ views and textbooks as well as some contemporary source material to assess...

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  • Deepening post-16 students' historical engagement with the Holocaust

    Article

    Peter Morgan represents what is best about the reflective practitioner - an experienced teacher of some 15 years' standing, he continues to challenge himself and to seek ways to improve and develop his classroom practice. Deeply influenced by the pedagogy and resources that he encountered on the CPD of the Institute...

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  • Developing sixth-form students' thinking about historical interpretation

    Article

    Understanding historical interpretation involves understanding how historical knowledge is constructed. How do sixth formers model historical epistemology? In this article Arthur Chapman examines a small sample of data relating to sixth form students' ideas about why historians construct differing interpretations of the past. He argues that understanding interpretation requires students to...

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  • Do we need another hero? Rorke's Drift

    Article

    Do we need another hero? Year 8 get to grips with the heroic myth of the Defence of Rorke's Drift in 1879 Mike Murray shares a lesson sequence in which his students examined changing interpretations of the Battle of Rorke's Drift in 1879. Building on earlier work on teaching interpretations...

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  • Emotional response or objective enquiry? Using shared stories and a sense of place

    Article

    In this article, Andrew Wrenn explores some issues that teachers might consider when supporting 14 and 15 year olds in their study of war memorials as historical interpretations. Tony McAleavy has argued that ‘popular' and ‘personal' interpretations and representations are just as worthy of study at Key Stage 3 as...

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  • Emotional response or objective enquiry? Using shared stories and a sense of place in the study of interpretations for GCSE

    Article

    In this article, Andrew Wrenn explores some issues that teachers might consider when supporting 14 and 15 year olds in their study of war memorials as historical interpretations. Tony McAleavy has argued that ‘popular' and ‘personal' interpretations and representations are just as worthy of study at Key Stage 3 as...

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  • Exploring the challenges involved in reading and writing historical narrative

    Article

    ‘English king Frederick I won at Arsuf, then took Acre, then they all went home': exploring the challenges involved in reading and writing historical narrative Paula Worth draws on three professional traditions in history education in order to build a lesson sequence on the Crusades for her Year 7s. First,...

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  • Exploring the relationship between historical significance and historical interpretation

    Article

    Jane Card’s previous work on the power of images in conveying particular interpretations and her advice about how to use visual material effectively in classrooms will be familiar to readers of Teaching History. In this article she focuses specifically on the capacity of visual representations to convey a compelling message about the...

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  • Film: What's the wisdom on... Historical Interpretations

    Article

    We’ve been talking to our secondary school members and we know how difficult life is for teachers in the current circumstances, so we wanted to lend a helping hand. 'What’s the wisdom on…' is a new and already popular feature in our secondary journal Teaching History and provides the perfect stimulus for a...

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