Encourage reflective thought and action
Historians use problem-solving, evidenced-based methodologies, which should be reflected in the pedagogy of senior history teaching and learning programmes.
For example, work collaboratively with your students to help them:
- develop conceptual understandings that enable them to make links between people in different times and places
- draw on current topical issues to make links between the present and the past
- develop an informed perspective on the past and the present and justify their interpretations, based on evidence
- interrogate and evaluate historical sources from the past and present, including historical documents, documentary and feature films, newspaper articles, oral testimony, and artefacts
- describe, explain, and evaluate different perspectives on the past
- conduct research (into historical events and issues) that draws on a wide range of credible evidence
- write coherent, clearly expressed essays, based on a variety of authentic and credible evidence, that argue a case, answer a question, or express a point of view
- use a range of narratives to engage imaginatively with the complexity of the past
- reflect critically on their understandings of the past
- apply their understandings of the past to the present in order to imagine possible futures.
This list is based on an original by Tim Lomas, summarised by Rob Phillips. (Lomas, T. [1993]. Teaching and assessing historical understanding, London: Historical Association; summarised in Phillips, R. [2002]. Reflective teaching of history 11–18, London: Continuum)
Last updated July 22, 2010
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