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THE PROBLEM PAGE FOR HISTORY MENTORS

This feature of Teaching History is designed to build critical, informed debate about the character of teacher-training, teacher education and professional development. It is also designed to offer practical help to all involved in training new history teachers. Each issue presents a situation in initial teacher education/training with an emphasis upon a particular, history-specific issue.

Mentors or others involved in the training of student history teachers are invited to be the agony aunts.

THIS ISSUE'S PROBLEM:

Eddie can't find the connection between fun and serious learning

Eddie Coburg is now well into his main teaching placement. He came to the PGCE course with a strong history degree and, apparently, considerable enthusiasm for the subject. Indeed, he gained a reputation early on for his ardent championing of historical novels, and passion for castles! His views about history teaching and learning, however, are marked by a rather odd ambivalence. Despite his interests and the obvious inspiration provided by his own history teacher, he seems resigned to the fact that a lot of lessons, especially at GCSE, are inevitably boring: 'You simply can't interest everyone all the time. Some topics are just intrinsically dull!'

As a result he has adopted a rather disjointed approach to lesson planning, most evident in the differences between his teaching at Key Stages 3 and 4. With Years 7-9 he sees it as an important part of his job to attract pupils to the study of history by using a range of active approaches - lots of games and role plays - as well as encouraging them to produce PowerPoint presentations and poster displays. For his GCSE group, however, he is acutely concerned with the requirements of the syllabus, and teaches in a much more 'traditional' style, relying on teacher exposition, question and answer, textbook reading and written tasks. He seems preoccupied with what the pupils need to know (often expressed in terms of what he has to cover) and with getting things written in their books.

In both cases the mentor is concerned. Some of Eddie's Key Stage 3 activities bear only a tenuous relationship to real historical issues; while those that do reflect genuine situations or key concepts are rarely exploited through further discussion or follow-up work. At GCSE, not only are the pupils being regularly bored, but the scope for their learning is significantly reduced by the narrow range of approaches that Eddie adopts. So far he has been shielded from the worst effects of their boredom, using the whole-school behaviour management policy to good effect, and winning pupils round with his lively sense of humour. This perhaps makes him reluctant to take his mentor's concerns seriously. His only response has been to inject the occasional fun activity into his GCSE teaching, as a bit of 'light relief. As at KS3, however, these are essentially divorced from any clear learning objectives.

Private email from Eddie to Bill Maxwell, a friend on the PGCE course

Hi Bill,

How did it go with your tutor last week? I'm not sure I can face a tutor visit at the moment - it's hard enough keeping my mentor happy! He goes on and on about varying the strategies I use at GCSE- complaining that I do too much straight out of the textbook -and then when I do a bit of role-play he comes down on me for not including enough 'detailed historical content', and'specific learning objectives'. I knew we were going to have to churn through all the details of the post-war treaties, so thought I'd start with a group activity, working out the demands of different countries at Versailles. OK, it got a bit rowdy, but they got the main idea of how different Woodrow Wilson's line was from the French or British delegations, and had a lot of fun arguing with each other. All I got though was grief for not giving them enough information about the issues that were actually to be decided at Versailles, so they could work out where they stood on each, and forgiving the misleading impression that the Germans were actually allowed to join the debates. It was just intended as a warm-up, and he's lamenting a 'missed opportunity'. I've done plenty of good solid work with them; what's wrong with a bit of light relief?

Note from regular class teacher to the mentor

Stan - as you'll see from my observation sheets - we need to talk about Eddie. I think my early enthusiasm may have been a bit misplaced. 8WSC still really like him, but I'm increasingly concerned about how much they're actually learning. Perhaps we shouldn't have joked with him about how we win the Battle for History Numbers! He seems to think that making sure the kids have fun is the only thing that really matters. I exaggerate, but the learning objectives always take second place. It seems odd to accuse him of laziness - he spends ages looking for interactive websites, and making props (like for that medieval barter game) - but he never quite applies his intellect to sharpening up the activities he creates, and exploiting them fully. I suspect he thinks I'm too fussy about things like anachronism or oversimplification, but even when he captures the history really well (that Black Death scenario - or the Roman Army training with 7WS) he never quite builds on it as effectively as he could. They end up remembering the props rather than the reasons for what happened! It's such a shame that someone who can be so creative ends up selling the kids short.

Kath Moore is Head of History at Comborton Village Collogo [11-16 Gomprohonsive], near Cambridge.

Anna Smith teaches history at Hills Road Sixth Form College, Cambridge.

NEXT ISSUE'S PROBLEM:

Beth is worried about how to make history accessible to the students with English as an Additional Language (EAL) in her classes. For full details of Beth's Mentor's Problem, contact Alison Kitson, University of Warwick Institute of Education. E-mail: a.kitson@warwick.ac.uk Responses are invited from mentors or trainers of trainee teachers. Responses for the June edition must be received by 30 April 2005.

Eddie and Beth are fictional characters. Thanks to Katharine Burn, Oxford University Department of Educational Studies, for devising this Move Me On problem.