Promoting improvement
ITE dissemination conference:
secondary history
Michael Maddison HMI & National Lead for history
Angela Milner HMI & National Lead for ITE including
FE
Birmingham, 16 October 2013
Outline
Promoting improvement:
training for secondary history
teachers

The evidence base from the
thematic inspections

Key strengths

Areas for improvement

Messages from school and
subject inspections about history

Next steps and recommendations
Promoting improvement: secondary history
How do we best nurture highly
effective history trainees?
The evidence base
Evidence base: thematic inspections
(Six HEIs and two EBITTs)
Observations
Interviews
Trainees
NQTs
Course
Leaders
School
Mentors
HEIs
14
5
EBITTs
5
1
Total
19
6
HEIs
27
7
8
18
EBITTs
6
2
3
6
Total
33
9
11
24
Plus: one training session observed (EBITT)
Total number of trainees in the eight providers: 82 HEIs and 7 EBITTs
Promoting improvement: secondary history
Evidence base: dissemination events
2012–13: 13 history dissemination presentations to
trainers, trainees and mentors
 5 primary HEIs: Cumbria, Keele, Kingston, Liverpool


Hope, and Liverpool John Moores
7 secondary HEIs: Edge Hill, Institute of Education
London, Keele, Liverpool Hope, Roehampton, UEA and
Worcester
1 Teach First: London
Promoting improvement: secondary history
Key strengths
Key strengths: secondary history
Trainees

high-quality trainees recruited
– 1st degree commonly 2.1+

high completion and
employment rates

highly competent professionals
with potential to be
outstanding teachers
Promoting improvement: secondary history
Key strengths: secondary history
Trainees
Promoting improvement: secondary history

subject knowledge and subject
knowledge for teaching




hardworking and committed
enthusiastic and reflective
high expectations
a willingness to try
different teaching approaches
Key strengths: secondary history
Training courses



well structured

challenging training courses on
which trainees flourish

high attainment: HEIs
consistently at least good,
EBITTs variable
well delivered
knowledgeable and enthusiastic
course leaders
Promoting improvement: secondary history
Key strengths: secondary history
School support

Promoting improvement: secondary history
supportive and dedicated
history mentors and history
departments
Areas for improvement
Areas for improvement: secondary
history
Course leaders

providing greater guidance on how to plug subject knowledge gaps
including greater use of subject community resources

focusing more directly on a range of practical strategies to ensure
trainees have a greater understanding of how to
 enhance students’ historical thinking
 develop progression in students’ conceptual understanding in

history
 differentiate effectively to meet the needs of all students
ensuring assignments focus on subject-specific teaching practice as
well as generic teaching practice
Promoting improvement: secondary history
The importance of questioning in
developing historical thinking

When you have been teaching for around 14 and a half years, you could
be about to ask your 1,000,000th question. Teachers ask up to two
questions every minute, up to 400 in a day, around 70,000 a year, or 2 to
3 million over the course of a career (TES, July 2006)

Questioning accounts for up to a third of all teaching time, second only to
the time devoted to explanation

Most questions are answered in less than a second – that’s the average
time teachers allow between posing a question, accepting an answer,
throwing it to someone else or answering it themselves

So, how can we improve trainees’ use of questions?

How do teachers present themselves as mentors coaxing out answers,
not as interrogators seeing who cracks first?

And how do you get students to ask you questions, so learning
becomes an interactive dialogue rather than an uninterrupted diatribe?
Promoting improvement: secondary history
Areas for improvement: secondary
history
Subject mentors

give trainees sharply focused subjectspecific targets and advice as a matter
of routine from the start of the course.
Non-HEI partnerships

focus much more on subject-specific
pedagogy

ensure trainees are able to teach
effectively in a range of settings.
Promoting improvement: secondary history
The mentor training cycle
1. Review of previous week /
matters arising / evaluation
of previous targets &
activities.
5. Targets / activities
related to topic of the
week.
2. Issues of the week (dayto-day teaching / school
experience etc)
4. Topic of the week (see
handbook).
3. Set targets relating to
issues of the week.
Promoting improvement: secondary history
Areas for improvement: secondary
history
Future for all

ensuring trainees are able to create schemes of work which
 develop students’ historical knowledge through learning about,



and understanding, important aspects of local, national and
world events and the histories of cultures other than their own
are distinctive, highly imaginative and underpinned by a clear
and coherent rationale
ensure that students understand key historical concepts and can
confidently articulate the place history has in their own lives, in
society and in the modern world
provide constant opportunities for discovery and challenge, and
for pupils to take greater responsibility for their learning.
Promoting improvement: secondary history
What are the messages about history
from school and subject inspections?
Overview: a mixed picture – a successful
subject in school but under pressure and
some significant aspects in need of
improvement
Primary headlines
Primary strengths

Pupils have better knowledge and
make better progress where
history is discrete.

Teaching is generally good but
variable.
Primary weaknesses


Pupils’ knowledge is episodic.
Pupils’ chronological
understanding is variable and
their ability to make links across
the knowledge they have gained
is weak.
Promoting improvement: secondary history
Action: ensure trainees
know about history in
primary schools,
especially Years 5 and 6.
Secondary headlines – successes

History is successful in most of the secondary schools visited
because it is
 well taught by very well-qualified and highly competent
teachers
 well led.

The National Curriculum at Key Stage 3 (11–14) has led to
much high-quality teaching and learning in history.

Attainment is high in the secondary schools visited and has
continued to rise, particularly at GCSE and A level.

Entries at GCSE and A level are also rising.
Note: See data pack slides for details about entries and attainment in
history at GCSE and A level.
Promoting improvement: secondary history
Secondary concerns – Key Stage 3



increasing non-specialist teaching – 28% no relevant degree


misuse of levels of attainment

the failure of some subject leaders to provide a rationale for the
curriculum they had put in place
variability in teaching time – average: 60–90 minutes a week
whole-school curriculum changes in KS3 – two-year KS3; crosscurricular teaching; competencies rather than subjects
poor planning for progression in the developments of students’
knowledge, understanding and subject-specific thinking
Result


In some schools history is being marginalised.
Standards are too variable and progress is not fast enough.
Promoting improvement: secondary history
Secondary Concerns – Key Stage 4

Some students continue to be restricted in their subject options at
GCSE


Lower-ability students are not served well at KS4


The growth of the one-year GCSE
Assessment at GCSE: formulaic teaching leading to formulaic
responses
Most students who take history beyond KS3 study modern world
topics at GCSE and at A level
Question: Does the current reform of GCSE offer an opportunity?
Action: Focus on ensuring trainees can teach in any setting.
Promoting improvement: secondary history
Secondary Actions
Ensure trainees consider two critical questions:

What do I want my students to know, do and understand at the
end of their work that they didn’t know, couldn't do and didn't
understand at the start?

Why am I teaching what I am teaching; when I am teaching it,
how am I teaching it?

The link: excellent subject knowledge
‘If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.’
– Albert Einstein
Promoting improvement: secondary history
Next steps and recommendations
Recommendations – please consider:


how best to assess teaching potential within the interview process


ensuring that trainees are aware of history in primary schools

prescribed pre- and post-training-session reading as well as detailed, yet
manageable, lists of subject-specific texts, articles and websites which
help trainees to strengthen their subject knowledge and keep up to date
with the latest thinking in teaching and learning in history
training sessions which focus on helping trainees to




enhance students’ historical thinking
develop progression in students’ conceptual understanding in history
differentiate effectively to meet the needs of all students
develop numeracy as well as literacy in history
ensuring assignments focus on subject-specific teaching practice as well as
generic teaching practice
Promoting improvement: secondary history

a common approach for trainees to map and signpost the evidence in their
files for each of the Teachers’ Standards

how best to develop the role of subject mentor so that all mentors




know not just what to do but how they might improve at doing it
have clear guidance on their roles and responsibilities
place greater emphasis on subject-specific comments in lesson
observations and subject-specific targets in weekly meetings
ensure that these comments are appropriately recorded

a much more proactive approach to subject action planning by course
leaders which not only includes responses to feedback received but also
focuses on specific priorities and provides precise guidance to subject
mentors on ensuring that future trainees not only meet but also exceed
the Teachers’ Standards

Non-HEIs: focusing much more on subject-specific pedagogy and ensuring
trainees are able to teach effectively in a range of settings

All: ensuring trainees are able to respond effectively to the revised NC.
Promoting improvement: secondary history
National Lead
[email protected]
Promoting Improvement: secondary history |