So if you are a certain age and went to a CofE school you’ll almost certainly remember singing “When I needed a neighbour.”

But did you know Sydney Carter’s 1965 hymn actually has a much more radical message?

My inner historian was curious!
🧵🪡

/1 music.apple.com/gb/album/when-…
First a little context. I’ve always found “When I needed a neighbour” to be perfectly fine as a hymn but just a little lacking. It’s not especially uplifting and its message is very simple - a moral lesson for small people. But the school and live versions are quite different /2

So after a full year of messing about @educationgovuk have decided to release more guidance on what an ITAP actually is. Always good to have more guidance when we are already interviewing for these courses! So what jumps out? /1 First, we are reminded why ITAP exists and the links to the Carter Review. What jumps out immediately is that ITAP as isolated blocks of “intensive practice” are at odds with their own evidence base – creating an artificial “other” category for learning. /2

This year I am exploring the things I wish every new #historyteacher knew in their first years . andallthat.co.uk/blog/some-thin…

In part 4 I want to talk about developing knowledge in history classrooms - something which has been a hot topic for a while. #PGCE #ECF The ECF and CCF have quite a lot to say about how pupils learn. However much of this stops at the point of considering knowledge transfer and the role of memory. If you are not aware of these basics however it’s worth reading @mfordhamhistory in @histassoc TH166

NEW: Welcome to part 3 of “Things I wish every new #historyteacher knew”. Today I want to explore what all new history teachers would benefit from knowing about the way history works and how we can open this up for young people. As ever I am drawing on @1972SHP Principles 🧵🪡 Before we begin, a little exercise. If you drew a diagram to show how historical interrogations are created, what would it look like? This is a task I get trainee teachers to do every year. If we want to explain our discipline we need to have a sense of how it works.

OK Part 2 of my @1972SHP “things-I-wish-every-new #historyteacher was-taught” thread.

Last time we looked at how new teachers learn. Today I want to think about why we are teaching history at all. /1 Marc Bloch’s “The Historian’s Craft” opens with a child’s question: “Tell me, Daddy. What is the use of history?” It is a question deceptively simple because it requires an exploration of deep truths about what history is and is for. /2

A new year means 100s of history PGCE / ECT teachers starting prof. journeys.

Our current (& future) ITE system, means many get very limited subject specific input.

This year I’m using a @1972SHP lens to explore the core things I wish every new history teacher knew. 🧵/1 Before we get there I want to begin by thinking about how we learn as professionals, and new professionals especially. It really helps to ensure we are open to growth and less likely to run into potential barriers /2

So last week my 5yo received the book commemorating the Platinum Jubilee. Govt constantly refers to “balance” in history but v little evident here. Just scratching the surface reveals why history can and should never be presented as a single, simple story. 🧵🪡 I don’t have a big prob w/ people commemorating 70yrs. But this book’s scope is wider than the life of Elizabeth II. It attempts to tell a story of the transformation of the UK from the 1950s to now - this means it carries much greater historical responsibility.

The American West has been a core GCSE topic in the UK for decades. But often the way it is taught perpetuates damaging narratives which erase Indigenous voices - much like this US example. Here are some of the things I wish I'd thought more about 16 years ago. A thread... /1 Let's begin with preconceptions. This image comes from an amazing book by Philip Deloria: Indians in Unexpected Places. He shows how such an image reveals many preconceptions which shape how we think about Indigneous presence in North America. /2

Reading another eg of conservative voices in ed suggesting that seeking to diversify history ed, and ensure it better reflects scholarship, is a pursuit of niche interests, at the expense of improving edu for all.

Why this claim is false: a thread /1
fordhaminstitute.org/national/comme… First @rpondiscio classifies the pursuit of “teaching history honestly” - an approach to history which suggests e we need to acknowledge racist and imperial roots in schools - as a “luxury belief”. Something of concern to the woke, young staffers but not the pupils they serve /2

So today I read an @Ofstednews report on an ITE partnership which has been judged inadequate. The more I think about it the more annoyed I get. Frustrated at the approach of inspectors. Angry the shortcomings of the CCF/ECF and #ITTMarketReview. Let me explain… 1 I am not disputing the judgment - for which I don’t have the evidence, but the phrasing raises some serious concerns about the thought processes of (often non-ITE specialist) inspectors and their interps of the CCF/ECF. I would have the same concerns had the outcome been good. 2

A few things to take issue with @StuartLock (and choosing to ignore the use of "histrionics")
1) On what metric is ITT quality too low, or curriculum poor? What would be an acceptable measure of quality + what % of the sector should be meeting this? Recent inspections are v pos 2) Heresy normally involves challenging an orthodoxy. The orthodoxy in the DfE has been that ITT is poor ever since Michael Gove took on the role of Secretary of State. This is also the orthodoxy of a vocal portion of Twitter.

Some thoughts on ITT/ITE: a thread on changing my mind based on evidence.

When I first completed my teacher training, I felt I felt woefully unprepared for the first school I worked in. I was leading a department of one with little guidance and the behaviour was awful /1 For many years I held my training responsible. In some ways it was. I had little subject specific input and was asked to do like very little subject specific reading. This was highlighted in my 3rd year when I joined a highly trained dept. /2

Right. Back to the ITT Market Review. What delights does Part 2 hold?

First on reorganisation it is interesting that HEIs are presumably lumped under this category of "other" desspite HEIs accounting for 75% of all training and being the most effeciently organsied already /1 Let's talk efficiency for a moment. 70 accredited (!!) HEIs already train an average of 443 trainees each. The average SCITT trains just 59. It feels like there may be an obvious instrastructure advantage to one model here... /2

A few years back I surveyed 253 people on experiences of ITE. Here's what I found:
1) Quality of training was seen to generally be good or better and improved after a dip in the 2000s
2) Secondary teachers (213) were even more positive about their training (not in all routes) These findings seem to challegne much of the discourse in the recent ITT Market Review Report, and a good deal of the discussion I have seen flying about today. But there is more...

Stuck waiting on a wakeful baby so time to read the ITT Review. Immediate flaws in premise. First that CCF is hardly ambitious when compared to most decent ITE programmes and is narrow and not subject specific. Second that ITE already needs to show they have met demands of CCF /1 The reason that we have an inefficient ITE market is largely down to the DfE deciding to widen the pool of providers hugely. Surely the survival of multiple providers supports free market principles which were supposed to drive this reform. Now DfE wants central control again /2

So I spent a good hour today being amazed by the fascinating @MyHeritage tech which brings old photos to life (see the Alan Turing example below). It was seemingly miraculous. All of this got me to musing on the nature of history because...Sunday. (A thread)

https://twitter.com/kerstingaiml/status/1365628452825686017

As you will note, the way in which the pictures are brought to life by the tech is uncanny. Almost immediately I felt a sense of connection with people being shown, despite their remoteness in time. Others expressed a similar feelings of connection.

https://twitter.com/jzitte/status/1365401988305981440?s=21

https://twitter.com/jzitte/status/1365401988305981440

So @OliverDowden seems to think contextualising our heritage more fully is leading to "misunderstanding". Presumably there was some golden age where heritage and history was represented "fairly" in the past? Let's see shall we? [Thread] Let's take a journey back in time to 2010. If you wanted to explore the roots of Harewood House (built using profits from the slave trade) this is what you would have found online. Hmmmm.... maybe heritage orgs weren't that good at presenting a rounded history at all...

A thread on why we can’t just rely on ‘the historical method’ as a guarantor of the pursuit of historical truth. We must engage with the underlying purposes and ethics of history creation. Even more vital when it comes to creating history curricula for schools. #historyteacher At the heart of history is a deep conservatism. Marc Bloch referred to the discipline as ‘the guild’ because of it. Although historical interps can be challenged, in reality this process is often glacial and usually needs a shove to get going. Let me illustrate

So a few years ago I took a Y11 battlefields trip to France and Belgium. 80 children, 8 staff. They were a lovely group. We had a great trip. Then, on the final day, the coach driver started feeling a bit odd. Then a couple of students started feeling a bit under the weather...

https://twitter.com/scottpughsley/status/1353768852954484737

When we had a final trip to Ypres to stock up on chocolate, two children sat with the staff to recover. All went ok. We loaded up the coaches and set off for the ferry port. On the way, the one of the two children was sick. Before long, the second was too.

Policy Exchange have a campaign to prevent "history" being "re-written & erased". Out of respect I am going to assume this is a genuine misunderstanding of history. But I still call bullsh*t. @RichardEvans36 @simon_schama @DavidOlusoga @1972SHP
policyexchange.org.uk/press-release/… First we need to be clear that whilst history might well inform our political choices, what we are mostly talking about in the statues debate is how we choose to remember history - it is an act in the present and not the past. @RichardEvans36 wrote about this brilliantly here

Timing and 2 year GCSE is def a challenge. If you are struggling in history it may be: an issue of clear spec writing; knowing when to be more concise (or stop doing excessive practice) or an @ofqual regulatory failing. Here are some thoughts on #historyteacher specs {thread} First: a standard GCSE should take 120 hours. Some schools are spending nearly 240 hours, whereas others are using only the 120. Things will be fairer when this is levelled.

Each unit is a portion of 120. Nazi Germany units:
AQA should be 30 hours
Edexcel = 36hr
OCR B = 24hr