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Introduction: Values in
History Teacher Education and Research
Alan McCully
My expectations prior to holding the HTEN Conference, 2001 in
Coleraine on the theme of ‘Values in History Teacher Education and
Research’ were mixed. Organising a conference on this theme in
Northern Ireland seems, at first, ideal, in that the connections
between history teaching and value positions are often stark. As Dan
McCall so sharply illustrates in his paper historical representation
graphically spills over into everyday contemporary life through
symbolism and the visual imagery of wall murals and banners; and
these representations carry with them strongly partisan messages
quarried from the cultural and political values of the communities
from which they emanate. A further benefit is the opportunity for
participants to draw on the experience of formal education’s
response to conflict during the period of thirty years of the
present Troubles in Northern Ireland. For example, the formal
history curriculum (DENI, 1996: 4) claims a mediating role in a
divided society, by encouraging teachers to seek opportunities for
students to examine ‘how their identity …has been shaped’, to
explore ‘shared and distinct aspects of cultural heritage’,
‘to understand and respect others’, and ‘to challenge
prejudice and stereotypes’.
Forgive, then, the initial apprehensions of the conference
organizer. As participants walked the walls of Derry on the Sunday
of the Drumcree march, the streets eerily empty, save for police in
unzipped riot suits resting in the sun, there was a distinct
possibility that the focus of the conference might be diverted
solely to the Northern Irish situation and the opportunity lost to
use the conference setting as the catalyst for exploration of the
values dimension across the range of contexts represented. It was a
strength of the three days that this did not happen and, as
illustrated in this collection of papers, the values debate was also
addressed in the contexts of history teaching in Great Britain, the
emerging democracies in Europe and South Africa.
Two central tensions emerge from this collection of papers. The
first is that encapsulated in the paper of Bernard Barker – the
degree to which a curriculum which is essentially “top down”,
prescriptive and of an instrumental nature, and framed by
accountability and target setting, can foster teachers with the
capacity to critically reflect not only on the teaching of their
subject but also on the values on which their teaching is
predicated. The second tension has links with the first. It acts
around differences in the perceived purpose of history teaching;
should teachers, however imaginative their practice, confine their
goals to those solely framed by the academic confines of their
subject, or should they overtly promote learning through history
which seeks to impact directly on contemporary attitudes and values.
This dilemma equates with what Counsell (1999: 2) refers to as
‘the intrinsic and extrinsic justifications of history.’
Barker’s paper is framed as a swansong at the end of a long,
distinguished and contested career in education. Poignantly, he
outlines his personal experience of the battles between what he
terms his ‘egalitarian values and practice’ and the ‘wolf pack
with its dismal howl about standards’, underpinned by
individualist conservatism. We follow his campaigning through
several stages of his career; as a classroom teacher engaged in the
curriculum reform movement over thirty years ago, as a head of
department promoting the “new” history in the seventies and
finally as a head teacher, then history educator, wrestling with the
constraints of educational policy in the nineties.
His account has echoes in John Elliott’s (1998) analysis of the
national curricula and the school effectiveness movement. Elliott
sees continuity in the thinking of the curriculum reformers of the
1960s with that of those who challenge the advocacy of “school
improvement’ today. Using the ideas of Lawrence Stenhouse, Elliott
emphasises the importance of making connections between cultural
heritage and the things that matter to young people in order to
foster autonomous thinking and a commitment to learning. Stenhouse
saw culture as ‘a resource’ for students to develop their own
understanding of the things that are important. He rejected an
objectives model of curriculum with its ‘inbuilt control
values’, instead seeing educational outcomes ‘as personal
creations, grounded in the personal interests and concerns of
pupils’ (Elliott 1998:113). Projecting these ideas to the present
Elliott argues that the national curricula are inherently
conservative, extracting ‘the greatest degree of conformity from
the greatest number to a restricted and narrow construct of national
identity.’ (p.112) By disconnecting knowledge acquisition from
student values, he maintains, students are prevented from using the
cultural capital of society to construct a meaningful vision of
their future as individuals in society.
It is clear from reading the papers collected here that, in general,
the authors share many of Elliott’s concerns regarding recent
educational trends. Carmel Gallagher, the curriculum developer,
acknowledges the forces that are rapidly changing society and,
thereby, making a prescribed knowledge-based curriculum obsolete.
Hilary Claire, the teacher educator, laments the ‘dumbing down’
of the primary history curriculum in England, by the issuing of QCA
guidance and exemplar schemes of work which advocate safe,
unchallenging and uncontentious practice. Both argue for a
‘transformative’ curriculum. They would appear to share
Elliott’s view that young people at all levels in the system are
unhappy because education ‘has not given them the opportunity to
explore where their values lie and what they want from life.’
That takes us to the second tension – that associated with the
purpose of history. Should we simply accept that teaching the
discipline of history has intrinsic worth which may have intangible
benefits for individuals and society in future, or does the future
of history teaching depend on it demonstrating its relevance and
utility to the greater social good. The balance of the papers
included here side with Counsell’s “extrinsic” perspective. A
view emerges of history teaching being a pursuit that helps students
in a democratic society formulate a robust value system based on the
principles of social justice; and it equips them, critically, to
challenge practices in society when these values have been
transgressed. Much of the discourse contained within the collection
of papers addresses two critical questions; what form of history
curriculum best promotes such purposes and how best can initial
teacher education prepare teachers with the critical faculties to
look beyond official curriculum documents (and the technical issues
of learning outcome delivery) to examine the values implicit in
their practice.
Initial teacher education is at the heart of the work of HTEN. In
this area, too, several of the papers express concern at the impact
that the current curriculum structures have had on teacher
education. The inference is that an instrumental curriculum
encourages instrumental teaching and that autonomous thinking in
young people can only be nurtured by teachers who, in Stenhouse’s
words, ‘do not cause learning but … control the direction of
learning.’ Again Elliott’s writing is instructive. He points to
the dangers of a prescribed curriculum, which separates teachers’
responsibility for pedagogical conditions from responsibility for
curriculum decisions. In a community of learning teachers both
engage in values discourse with their students and, quoting Pring
(1995: 132-3), ‘are part of a wider community of educated people
deliberating about, and questioning the values which permeate their
teaching in the light of their practice of educating.’ In other
words, if we want autonomous thinking students we must seek to
produce autonomous thinking teachers. It is significant that the
authors of two of our papers, Anna Disney and Rob Sieborger and
Jacqui Dean, in seeking solutions to the constraints imposed by
centralised curricula both turn in the same direction as Elliott;
namely, to Stenhouse’s concept of the ‘teacher as researcher’
and the cultivation of action research as the tool of
liberation.
In summary, then, the papers fall into three categories. The first,
involving the work of Dan McCall, and Alan McCully and Keith Barton,
remind us, in the context of a divided society, of the potential
potency of history as an influence on the formation of both
individual and collective identity, and why history teaching, in
many societies, is ‘a political battlefield’ (Phillips:10). As
history teacher educators we may argue over how the subject is
mediated in a formal setting. McCall points to the realities if it
is not mediated at all. McCully and Barton’s work is important
because it records the first stage of a systematic study to monitor
the interface between the history gathered in the streets and that
learned in school. Their work will provide empirical evidence to
test several of McCall’s assertions.
The papers of Barker, Gallagher and Claire fall into the second
category. Each demands that curriculum developers acknowledge that
the structures they put in place are inherently value laden and that
unless educators and students are given the freedom to challenge
their underlying assumptions their provision will become
increasingly less relevant to the needs of individuals and society.
However, there is not agreement between the three as to how far
change can take place within existing curriculum structures. Barker
is of the opinion that the national curricula must be swept away for
teacher and student autonomy to flourish. Gallagher calls for a
second history teaching revolution but implies that the teaching
force will require external direction if this is to occur. Claire,
however, believes that if the existing curriculum is properly
interpreted there is considerable potential for socially relevant
teaching, even at primary level. In any event, none of the three
authors can be accused of hypocrisy; their ideological positions
emerge clearly from their discourse.
The third category encompasses those papers which address the theme
of teacher education directly; those of Disney, Sieborger and Dean
and Danijela Trskan. Each is significant because in different ways
each offers a positive, values-based approach to teacher education.
They are important, also, because, following on from a series of
articles that tend to emphasise the problematic nature of history
teacher education today they each offer positive courses of action.
Disney’s work reassures us of the generic value (and appeal) of an
enquiry approach to history. Her conclusion that an engagement with
the procedures of enquiry-based history, even by non-subject
specialists, may help foster a more critical stance toward
professional practice in general provides a direct link with
Stenhouse’s idea of “extended professionalism”, and a
potential lead-in to action research. Sieborger and Dean’s
account, working with primary history teachers from a range of
backgrounds in South Africa is, particularly, inspiring. They, and
their colleagues, recognised the limitations of a top down model in
replacing the ‘values void’ left by the fall of apartheid.
Instead, in their small-scale project they worked to provide
teachers with their own ‘common sense’ understandings of the
social world. Using a reflective practitioner / action researcher
model, in effect the teachers practised democracy through curriculum
development. From the networking that resulted from curriculum
debate teachers entered a genuine discourse on personal value
positions which, in turn, led them to take ownership of a deeper
process of reconciliation – a vital first phase before working
with pupils in this area through history. This is Pring’s
‘community of educated people’ in action. In the final paper,
Danijela Trskan, HTEN’s first recipient of its Euroclio bursary,
describes the history teacher education structures that have emerged
in the state of Slovenia. In doing so she reminds us that while
seeking sound general principles for history education it is
important to remember that individual contexts provide different
starting points and, therefore, different problems and responses.
Overall, what issues emerge for history teacher education? Concerns
are expressed about the position of history in the British curricula
and these must not be ignored. Gallagher’s (1998) ‘plea for
relevance’ is important as is the conviction articulated in these
pages that the subject has a significant contribution to make to the
aspiration of a more cohesive and just society at ease with
diversity. Those who have articulated the relationship between
history and citizenship, and the contribution the former might play
at both primary and secondary level have given direction here (Counsell
1999, Claire 2001, Davies 2000, Davies et al, 2002). However, it is
crucial also that Counsell’s warning is heeded; namely, that this
advocacy is not itself “a form of manipulation’, however
benignly conceived’ (Counsell 1999:2). If a criticism was to be
directed at this volume on ‘Values on Teacher Education and
Research’ it would be that the positions taken are sometimes
grounded in professional experience and conviction rather than
empirical evidence. Perhaps, despite the constraints of a
competency-based curriculum, more attention needs to be given as to
how a platform for critical reflective practice and action research
might be laid in initial teacher education programmes. Not only
might this provide data to support the ‘extrinsic’ position but
might also enable young teachers to experience the professional
transformation so richly described in Sieborger and Dean’s South
African paper.
References
Counsell C. (1999) Editorial, Teaching History, 96, Historical
Association, p.2.
Claire H. (2001) Not aliens: primary school children and the
Citizenship / PSHE curriculum, Stoke, Trentham.
Davies I. (2000) ‘Citizenship and the teaching and learning of
history’ in Arthur J. and Phillips R. (ed.) Issues in history
teaching, London, Routledge, pp. 137-147.
Davies I., Hatch G., Martin G. and Thorpe T. (2002) ‘What is good
Citizenship education in history classrooms’ in Teaching history,
106, Historical Association pp. 37-43.
DENI (1996) The Northern Ireland Curriculum Key Stages 3 and 4:
Programmes of Study and Attainment targets, pp.7-18, Bangor.
Elliott J. (1998) The Curriculum Experiment: meeting the challenge
of social change, Buckingham, Open University press.
Gallagher C. (1998) ‘The future of history?: a plea for
relevance?’. Paper delivered to the SHP Conference, Leeds, SHP
Newsletter.
Phillips R. (2000) ‘Government policies, the State and the
Teaching of History’ in Arthur J. and Phillips R. (ed.) Issues in
history teaching, London, Routledge, pp. 10-23.
Pring R. (1995) ‘The community of educated people: The Lawrence
Stenhouse Memorial Lecture’, British Journal of Curriculum
Studies, 43,2, pp. 121-45.
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