British Academy Research Project Summary of Findings

1. British Academy Research Project Summary of Findings Kate Hawkey and Jayne Prior (University of Bristol, 2009)

2. Background context of the research 1 • Post 9/11 increased focus on ethnic identity in media and political discourses; • Concern with British citizenship and identity in a globalised world; • Investigate children’s conceptions and narratives of history in the changing social and cultural contexts in which they arise (Lave & Wenger, 1991; Wertsch, 1998)

3. Background context of the research 2 • Research in USA (Epstein, 2000; 2007) and N.Ireland (Barton, 2001; Barton & McCully, 2005) • Epstein: children of different ethnic backgrounds have a different ‘take’ on the American national story; influence of family on ideas (Barton & McCully too) • Gap in the English context • Similar methodology to Epstein’s

4. Background context of the research 3 • ‘Investigate aspects of personal, family or local history and how they relate to a wider context’ (HNC 2007) • ‘Many pupils are failing to gain a good overview of history or an understanding of the significance of some key events and individuals’ (QCA 2005)

5. Research Questions • What overview narratives of British history do adolescents from different ethnic backgrounds hold? • What history is learnt in and out of school? • What are the links between history learnt in and out of school?

6. What we did • 3 schools in 3 different inner cities; 2 ethnically mixed and 1 largely from Indian subcontinent backgrounds • Images which reflected the school’s particular curriculum used as basis for interview with students to elicit their narratives of history • Further questions on history learnt in and out of school

7. Similar curriculum • Underpinned by a similar national story • Influenced by the prescription of National Curriculum? • Despite a relaxation in prescription, the ‘canon’ appears to continue - this could be the result of previous investment in resources?

8. The role of the subject leader • Subject leaders’ vision appeared to underpin the curriculum; • Subject leader influenced the overview adopted by pupils, sometimes explicitly: Amreen, ‘Like there are different cultures and Mr H he tries hard to tell us how the Asians had an influence on the world wars, also teach us about how other races had influence as well. It depends on who you are and the sort of school you’re in. Mr H gives us an insight into what is more interesting. It’s more personal to us.’

9. What pupils know and understand: • ‘Parcels of information’ rather than narrative overviews; • Echoes of QCA report which said: ‘Many pupils are failing to gain a good overview of history or an understanding of the significance of some key events and individuals’ (2005)

10. Pupils making sense of history • History often viewed in ‘binary terms’ (see Egan, 1997) • Many identified the same “heroes” (eg MLK, Gandhi) and “victims” (eg the Jews, slaves); • Some developing more sophisticated level of understanding (eg human/civil rights themes) • For some, growing ‘political awareness’ - eg questioning media, awareness of ‘reliability of sources’ was apparent.

11. Home history & school history 1 • Tendency to keep separate - few overlaps; • Children with non-British heritage tended to know more about family history than children with British heritage; • Children from non-British heritage tended to know more about family history than school history.

12. Home history & school history 2 • Some children encounter memory cultures from home which take a critical perspective on school history • Tremaine says he learns about black history from his dad at home, ‘My dad thinks they don’t really include it in schools as much as they should. At the moment he’s telling me about Willy Lynch. He was like a man who wrote a diary of how to treat slaves. He was mean. He said that a black person was no more than a cow and stuff like that. …..: (At school) they scrape off all the horrible stuff. They don’t want to see or to admit it was as bad as it was. At home you hear how it actually was.’

13. Home history & school history 3 • Some children either have little interest in family history or appear to distance themselves from family history: Amar talked about his grandfather’s stories about growing up in Pakistan: ‘.. about how they had to cycle down to school…. My granddad was in the Pakistan War. They go on about their stories, go dragging on!’

14. History learnt in other cultural/educational centres • Eg Islamic Saturday School, Sikh Temple Camps • When discussing history learnt in these centres, tends to be a blurring of history and ‘myth’. Eg Amreen places the Prophets in the same category as MLK and Malcolm X (as people in history that her family admire); • Few overlaps between history learnt inside and outside school.

15. Inside / outside identities 1 • Students with minority ethnic heritage tend not to identify themselves with British history - • ‘Industrial Revolution, that was when they excelled, they moved up (England), trading all over the world.They had control of the seas. They owned about a quarter of the world.’ (Nasir); • although there are exceptions - • ‘… so if we didn’t fight back [against Nazi Germany] we wouldn’t be free now…’ (Jonny - came to England 8 years ago)

16. Inside / outside identities 2 And for some, the sense of ‘outside identity’ was more explicit - • Abdi: ‘I like learning about the history of my people’ (Somalia); ‘We are in Britain and need to know about the history of empire. In world war 1 it (Britain) was a powerful country because it owned a lot of countries, then after the first world war they didn’t have a big army and the aim was to disarm’

17. Multiple forms of Identification • Identities not ‘fixed’ or necessarily predictable; • Many factors influencing our teenagers - gender; ‘teenage identity’; personal interests - eg Elvis, computer games, classical history; • The term ‘cultural, ethnic and religious diversity’ has potential to stereotype - in fact, more fluid, changing and evolving.

18. Possible futures: curricular challenges • Composition of the inner cities is constantly changing • Units on migration • Global - local • Visibility of some communities (Somalians; white working class)

19. Possible futures:Researching teachers’ perspectives • Research in the Netherlands: ‘History teachers involved shared a belief about history as a critical discipline instead of being an instigator of patriotism. They are less explicit and seem unsure about how teaching history relates to developing democratic citizenship’ (draft article, 2008).

20. Dilemmas for history teachers

21. Dilemmas for history teachers

22. Possible futures • Historians are seen as more than passive providers of historical knowledge, which means that there may be promising ways of studying national history which avoid essentialism and take into account in some way the multiple pasts of diverse memory cultures (draft article, 2008)

23. References Barton, K. (2001) ‘You’d be wanting to know about the past’: social contexts of children’s historical understanding in Northern Ireland and the USA. Comparative Education, 37, 1: 89-106. Barton, K. & McCully (2005) Learning history and inheriting the past: the interaction of school and community perspectives in Northern Ireland. International Journal of Historical Learning, Teaching and Research 5, 1. Egan, K. (1997) The Educated Mind: How Cognitive Tools Shape our Understanding. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Epstein, T. (2000) Adolescent perspectives on racial diversity in US history: case studies from urban classrooms. American Educational Research Journal, 37, 1: 185-214. Epstein, T. (2007) The effects of family/community and school discourses on children’s and adolescents’ interpretations of United States history. International Journal of Historical Learning, Teaching and Research 6, 1. Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: legitimate peripheral participation. New York: Cambridge Lave, J. & Wenger, E. (1991) Situated Learning: legitimate peripheral participation. New York: Cambridge University Press. Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (2005) History 2004/5 Annual Report on Curriculum and Assessment. London: Qualifications and Curriculum Authority QCA (2007) http://www.qca.org.uk/secondarycurriculumreview/subject/ks3/history/index.htm. Accessed 16.03.07 Wertsch, J.V. (1998) Mind as Action. Oxford: Oxford University Press.