LO: To understand the primary source and interpretations elements of your NEA

1. LO: To understand the primary source and interpretations elements of your NEA

2. Assessment of NEA

3. AO2 The Investigation must contain an evaluation of at least three primary sources. At least two different types of primary source should be evaluated. These may be different types of written primary sources, for example: official publications; reports; diaries; speeches; letters; chronicles; observations of elite or ‘ordinary’ people (from the inside or from the outside). Other appropriate sources may include artefacts, archaeological or visual sources. The Investigation must also demonstrate an understanding of differing interpretations presented by two academic historians about the issue.

4. AO2 • The skills already developed for AO2 on the examined unit should be utilised. • Some questions will lend themselves better to the acquisition of contemporary material. • In commenting and making judgements on the value of sources, students will be expected to apply their own contextual knowledge and perspectives of time and place in order to assess the value and limitations of their sources as evidence • They will expected to comment on the following, as appropriate to the investigation and chosen sources: • the differing perspectives of the sources chosen • the social, political, intellectual, religious and/or economic contexts in which the sources were written • the credibility, authority, authenticity, consistency and comprehensiveness of the sources • the bias, distortion or propagandist elements found in the sources. • Students should seek to integrate their three primary sources into the overall analysis and ensure that they offer a range of type. • Crucially there must be commentary and judgement about the value of the sources.

5. Examiner’s Comments from 2018 regarding Primary sources and Interpretations – AO1 That this AO carries the greatest amount of marks, should encourage students to realise that the main purpose of the NEA is to produce an argued response to a historical question, much as with any essay set in the examined units. The NEA is not primarily a research task, nor is it about finding the most obscure or difficult to access source material. The focus of the NEA is the quality of the argued response and it is this that AO1 addresses. Hence, lengthy narrative or descriptive pieces that, for example gave little more than potted biographical detail of key individuals, unfortunately lost an overall direction. At the very worst, NEAs that divided up the response with separate headings or even chapters, undermined any sense of a coherent and sustained analysis. It is within this analysis that the evaluation of the sources and of the interpretations should be integrated. Attempts to provide a summary of a source or of an historical interpretation could work but only if such a summary was brief and was clearly linked to a judgement about the overall value of a source or how convincing an interpretation was. On occasions, students quoted the historical interpretation as an accepted truth and thus failed to maintain a good level of analysis. Students should, by the time that they write the NEA, have an excellent awareness of how to write an essay and of the differences between narrative and description, and analysis and commentary.

6. Therefore you need to… • Make sure your sources and interpretations form part of your argument (they are fully integrated!) • Don’t just describe the source – you are assessing its value • Don’t just describe the historians’ interpretation – you are judging how convincing it is • Remain analytical

7. Examiner’s Comments from 2018 regarding Primary sources and Interpretations – AO2 This was generally approached in an effective manner. Most students seemed fully aware of the need to evaluate the sources and to do more than simply quote them. However, a number of NEAs did not really focus on the value of the source, making rather generic statements about the reliability or accuracy without then explaining how this might affect the value. As on the examined units, some students seem not to be fully aware that a source can be inaccurate but still be of value and that value cannot exist in the abstract but must be valuable in effectively doing something. Hence, commentary about the tone of a source is very useful if there is some explicit attempt to explain how an emotive tone, for example, affects the value of the source. As last year, most NEAs contained reference to the sources scattered throughout the final piece and this seemed to be the most effective approach. In this model, sources were referred to when appropriate to the answer being argued.

8. Therefore you need to… • Don’t just describe the source – you are assessing its value • A source can only have value with regard to something = your question!! • The source doesn’t need to be reliable to be valuable – you can discuss it’s reliability as long as you place it in the context of how/why it is valuable • Make sure you discuss the sources when it is relevant to your answer (don’t do them in their own section)

9. How to track your progress on AO2

10. AO3 • Within the Historical investigation there must be explicit analysis and evaluation of two differing interpretations by academic historians where students analyse and evaluate the differences between the interpretations, show an awareness of the time and/or context of the interpretations and demonstrate an understanding of the limitations placed on historians.

11. AO3 The task required of students in responding to AO3 will be different from that in the examined components in that students will be expected to: – show an understanding of the limitations placed on historians. – show an understanding of the significance of the time and/or context in which an historian writes. – compare and evaluate differing historical interpretations. Students must base their analysis and evaluation of historical interpretations on the work of academic historians. It is not acceptable that the analysis and evaluation is based on textbook historians or course books. There will be a natural moment when criticism of two (or more) academic sources fits more naturally into the flow of the argument. This should not take the form of an additional section tagged on the end of the NEA.

12. Examiner’s Comments from 2018 regarding Primary sources and Interpretations – AO3 There remains some variation in approach to this AO. It is worth remembering that the interpretations selected do need to be differing and that the student should make an effort to account for these differences. Sometimes, such differences were so subtle as to be virtually non-existent and it would have been better for the student to have identified a greater historiographical debate. A student fully conversant with the time period selected for their NEA might be expected to have some awareness of the approaches that have been taken by other historians to the key questions of the period, and might have a judgement that they are able to express about which view they find the most convincing. Such interpretations are often most easily managed by the student if they relate to a relatively narrow concept or shortened chronology rather than two interpretations that attempt to come to conclusions about the entire period. In a similar vein, students that quoted entire monographs made their task much more challenging. The most effective responses to AO3 were often from students that had identified a couple of paragraphs that plainly expressed the view of a historian, and then set about integrating their evaluation of this view into their overall judgement about the set question. Part of this evaluation should include commentary about time/context or limitations but the focus of the AO remains an evaluation of the historical interpretation using clear and precise subject knowledge to support or refute the views of others.

13. Therefore you need to… • Select 2 different interpretations – clearly different views • The 2 interpretations don’t have to cover the entire question but can focus in on part of your overall question • Identify part of the work (a couple of paragraphs) of the historian to use as your ‘interpretation’ you can then quote from it in your final piece • You are judging which interpretation is the most convincing – mostly use your evidence to make this judgement (like in the Stuarts module) • In the analysis you should include the time/ context of the interpretation and discuss any limitations placed on the historian in helping you making your judgement • The conclusion you come to should also fit in with your overall judgement on the whole NEA

14. How to track your progress on AO3