Teaching History to Non-specialist History Students

Description

Round 4 Teaching Development Grant

The Education Studies degree at the University of Winchester is an interdisciplinary programme leading to a BA (hons). Students may take Education Studies or Education Studies (Early Childhood).

The degree is focussed on text based study, there are no placements. Students are expected to base their study on extensive reading of primary texts. Modules are thematic rather than disciplines based so that whatever their area of interest they will need the skills identified in the history benchmarks in building confidence in analysing and reading a variety of source material. Our students come from a wide variety of backgrounds with differing degrees of historical skills. Some may be taking an Education Studies and History Combined Honours degree, others will have abandoned history almost as soon as they entered secondary school. All our students take the same four modules in the first year. One of these, '1944/88 The Acts' in semester two is designed to give them a contextual overview of the development of state education in England and Wales since 1830. In their first assignment they are asked to analyse an extract from the Norwood Report (1943) Curriculum and Examinations in Secondary Schools. For many this is a challenging task as they are unfamiliar with the techniques required and there is limited time in the lectures for detailed explanation.

The Subject Centre grant provided for the addition of a variety of supplementary resources in order to develop student skills and confidence as they completed this assignment. Students in the 2004-5 cohort had been asked to fill in a questionnaire asking what additional help they would have liked. The grant enabled us to follow up suggestions in the 2004/5 survey and students in the 2005-6 cohort were provided with an introductory lecture giving an overview of the period 1830-1988; an optional reading pack focussing on the cultural, social and political themes of this time period; five additional seminars and workshops focussing on analysing primary sources and a web based timeline offering links to more detailed websites.

At the end of the semester the 2006 cohort of students was given a further questionnaire asking about the efficacy of the different types of supplementary help. Opinions were divided, demonstrating the different learning styles of our students. All the resources provided had proved to be of some help to the students and were received positively. As the resources were all supplementary to the main lectures students with the requisite expertise did not feel that too much time was devoted to issues with which they were already familiar. Most students attended the seminars and the introductory lecture. The timeline is still in the process of development and will remain as a resource on the Education Studies website. Seminars will be retained next year but may be re-organised to provide fewer workshops for smaller groups of students rather than an expectation that all students will attend all workshops.

It was clear that our students were beginning undergraduate study with little confidence in their own, or their peers' skills of analysis. Following our presentation at the annual conference of the Subject Centre for History, Classics and Archaeology it became apparent that these anxieties are not limited to non history specialist students and that our experience is not limited to those on interdisciplinary courses. The team would like to thank the Subject Centre for the grant which has enabled them to build the confidence and ability of our first year students and we trust that our experience will be of use to others.

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