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

Promoting improvement: secondary history 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

How do we best nurture highly effective history trainees? The evidence base

Evidence base: thematic inspections (Six HEIs and two EBITTs) Promoting improvement: secondary history TraineesNQTsCourse Leaders School Mentors ObservationsHEIs145 EBITTs51 Total196 InterviewsHEIs EBITTs6236 Total Plus: one training session observed (EBITT) Total number of trainees in the eight providers: 82 HEIs and 7 EBITTs

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 – 1 st 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  subject knowledge and subject knowledge for teaching  hardworking and committed  enthusiastic and reflective  high expectations  a willingness to try different teaching approaches Promoting improvement: secondary history

Key strengths: secondary history Training courses  well structured  well delivered  knowledgeable and enthusiastic course leaders  challenging training courses on which trainees flourish  high attainment: HEIs consistently at least good, EBITTs variable Promoting improvement: secondary history

Key strengths: secondary history School support  supportive and dedicated history mentors and history departments Promoting improvement: secondary history

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 1,000,000 th 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?

Areas for improvement: secondary history Subject mentors  give trainees sharply focused subject- specific 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 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  variability in teaching time – average: 60–90 minutes a week  whole-school curriculum changes in KS3 – two-year KS3; cross- curricular teaching; competencies rather than subjects  misuse of levels of attainment  poor planning for progression in the developments of students’ knowledge, understanding and subject-specific thinking  the failure of some subject leaders to provide a rationale for the curriculum they had put in place Result  In some schools history is being marginalised.  Standards are too variable and progress is not fast enough. Promoting improvement: secondary history

 Some students continue to be restricted in their subject options at GCSE  Lower-ability students are not served well at KS4  Assessment at GCSE: formulaic teaching leading to formulaic responses  The growth of the one-year GCSE  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. Secondary Concerns – Key Stage 4 Promoting improvement: secondary history

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 Secondary Actions Promoting improvement: secondary history

Next steps and recommendations

Promoting improvement: secondary history Recommendations – please consider:  how best to assess teaching potential within the interview process  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  ensuring that trainees are aware of history in primary schools  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.

National Lead Promoting Improvement: secondary history |