Resources and ideas about children's understanding of Time

Research, writing and ideas about children’s understanding of time

It goes without saying that these are ideas, suggestions and hypotheses, not rules, truths and laws. Lawrence Stenhouse argued that the job of the educational researcher was to provide reference points for teachers to try things out against their own experience. The following thumbnail summaries are things which teachers might bear in mind when teaching their pupils about time. Some might be more pertinent and helpful than others. Full references for the research mentioned are given in References about Time.

Thumbnail summaries of some recent research and writing about children’s understanding of Time

• Several researchers and academics have make the point that understanding time concepts is very difficult for younger pupils (under the age of about 11), and that it is important that teachers do not underestimate these difficulties or assume understanding of basic time concepts. Jahoda (1963), Bradley (1947), Blackie (1967), Wood (1995) and others have stressed that the past before living memory is a nebulous idea for younger pupils. Sturt believed that primary children lump anything before living memory into an undifferentiated skip where grandparents, Robin Hood and Henry VIII can talk to each other. Cockburn (1998) makes the point that time is a highly abstract concept, and a complex one, in that we have different bases for talking about it, none of them revolving around the number 10.
  

• Pistor and Jahoda felt that additional emphasis on trying to teach time concepts to younger pupils might not be a productive, but more recently, researchers such as Stow (1999) and Hoodless (1996) suggest that teaching with the use of historical images and timelines can develop children’s sense of time and ability to sequence periods. 
  

• Geoffrey Partington (1980) warns against teaching time concepts and dates in isolation, without the accompanying development of context of the events which are dated- if they don’t really know who the Normans were, knowing "when they were" is fairly meaningless. In Partington’s words:

"Unless children have…. some knowledge ‘from the inside’ of a person or group, unless there is some genuine three dimensionality of understanding there is no point in representing ill-defined figures, half-understood events or pictures which do not tie up with children’s grasp of character and plot. If children cannot envisage an Iceni, A Roman, a Saxon, a Dane or a Norman in any way ‘from the inside’ there could be no purpose in their being able to place them in correct order in a time chart, let alone to space them accurately. That is what inert learning means par excellence."

• In the same vein, Tawney (1978) cautions against sequencing for sequencing’s sake. Is there any purpose or gain in understanding from the sequencing involved, is there any connection between the events being sequenced, does it matter if pupils know whether the Boston Tea Party or the invention of the steam engine came first?
  

• Anthony Beevor (1999), author of the recent best seller Stalingrad, asserts that the move away from traditional "through the ages" syllabuses has left pupils without a well developed chronology or mental map of the past:

"They know who Queen Victoria was, but have no idea what century she lived in. They know Napoleon was a general, but have no idea of what is meant by the Napoleonic Era. Today very few students have any idea what came before or after what."

(This is an assertion- Beevor is not a history teacher and does not work in schools, but might there be some truth in the idea that the change towards sourcework and themes may have weakened pupils’ overall grasp of the framework of the past? Do teachers need to compensate for this?)

• Thornton and Vukelich (1988) make the point that time concepts need to be explicitly addressed with pupils, and taught in a systematic way- that pupils’ abilities in the area of time are "crucially dependent upon instruction." They stress that specialised time vocabulary, including understanding of ‘centuries’, and terms such as ‘epoch’ and ‘generation’ "will not be mastered unless specifically taught." They also thought that only between the ages of 12 and 16 would children begin to match dates and events in a consistently accurate way.
  

• Wood (1995) points out that history teachers have been immersed in the subject for so long that they are perhaps prone to overestimate other people’s grasp of the framework of the past, including that of adults- "I suspect that most adults would be merely guessing the answer when faced a question like ‘Who invaded Britain first, Saxons or Vikings?’" He also argues that for sequencing to provide meaningful connections for pupils in terms of their sense of the past, in addition to placing things or people in the right order, they need to understand the distances between them, and to have some contextual understanding of the items or people being sequenced.
  

• Hodkinson (1995), Wood (1995) and Friedman (1978) all stress the importance of developing pupils’ understanding of DURATION, Wood arguing that research suggests that duration is both more difficult and more important for pupils to grasp. Do pupils have a sense of "how long the Roman occupation of Britain lasted, or of the slow pace of change in one period, and its rapidity in another?"
  

• Hodkinson (1995) argues that time concepts have to be "taught, retaught and reinforced" with younger pupils, Hodkinson asked primary pupils to sequence two six card sets of dates, the second set incorporating B.C. dates. Only at year 5 did pupils group B.C. dates. Hodkinson and Chapman (1993) argue that class discussion and pupil involvement in the construction of timelines helps develop pupils’ sense of the past. Chapman’s article gives examples of comparative chronologies devised by secondary aged pupils. Wood also feels that for pupils to attempt their own construction of narratives and timelines is helpful in terms of real gains in understanding.
  

• Penelope Harnett (1998) noted that the 1937 Board of Education Handbook of Suggestions for History advocated the provision of a chronological framework for the study of the subject, and expressed concern that history should not be taught as a series of unconnected events. Sydney Wood (1995) felt that knowledge of a few dates might be helpful to pupils in this respect, as ‘markers’, in helping pupils to calibrate the vastness of the past to some extent.
  

• Booth and Husbands (1993) developed simple pencil and paper exercises on technological change, events and people, and pupils’ ability to sequence them and make correct associations, which shed light on pupil progression in this area. Although they considered the tests useful in terms of providing information for the teacher about what the children’s grasp of time was like at various ages, they caution against using such tests as accurate measures of progression.
  

• In order to develop pupils’ understanding of calendars, Partington (1980) suggests asking children to speculate about the possibility of new and different reference points to the A.D./B.C. one which they are familiar one- among his suggestions are the first concert of Elvis Presley, the assumption of Revd. Jim Jones, the birth or fall of Idi Amin. These examples might be rather dated now, but others would serve the same purpose- the idea that we are living in the year 34 A.E.L.W.W.C. for instance. (After England last won the World Cup). Partington also stresses the importance of getting pupils to work with different but (visually) connecting timelines, noting that "If our charts cannot cross the sea to Ireland, Jamaica, The Punjab or Madras, then the device may be dysfunctional."
  

• Haydn (1998) trialled a "crude" pencil and paper test on pupils’ grasp of dating conventions and time vocabulary with approximately 1,000 year 7 pupils, (see T1 section). Many pupils did not know what century they were living in, or what terms such as A.D. and reign meant.
  

• West (1982) devised a series of sequencing activities for pupils to work with, using between 5 and 12 assorted picture "stereotypes", which "should always include at least one very remote item and one very modern article, and one illustration from Christ's life, The Nativity, The Crucifixion, or The Last Supper to establish the B.C/A.D. demarcation." As well as the series of card activities in his "Timeline History Pack", he advocates a range of timeline display activities, using a ten metre wall for a variety of timelines or chronologies or differing scales to help pupils to conceptualise duration, comparative chronologies and time continuums. Collicott (1990) makes the point that timelines do not have to be linear, and teachers can experiment with circles and cycles.
  

• Hoodless’ book (1996) Time and Timelines in the Primary School, London, Historical Association, pp.21-41, contains a range of suggestions for constructing a variety of timelines. Hilary Cooper’s work (1992, 1995)) also contains a wide range of activities and strategies for working with timelines and pictures of the past, as does that of Joan Blyth (1988, 1989). See also Dean, (1995) Teaching History at KS2, Wood and Holden (1994) Teaching Early Years History, and Barker et al, History: Student Handbook, KS3, KS4 and GCSE.
  

• The Holmes McDougall SHP materials for the "What is History?" unit, and the Shuter and Child Skills in History- Book 1 (1987) have a range of acitivities aimed at developing grasp of period, time vocabulary, and ability to manipulate "centuries" accurately.
  

• Lomas (1993) identifies 22 issues pertaining to time and change which children need to be familiar with if they are to have a good understanding of history (for example, "human time is only a very small part of total time", "a new idea does not necessarily mean instant change." He points to 8 difficulties involved in teaching time concepts (for instance, "pupils often find it difficult to grasp the concept of ‘beginnning’", and suggests a variety of methods and questions for developing pupils’ understanding of change. (Teaching and Assessing Historical Understanding, London, Historical Association, pp.20-30).
  

• Stow and Haydn attempt to summarise recent writing on time, and draw up a list of some of the implications for primary and secondary teachers in "Issues in the teaching of chronology", in Arthur, J. and Phillips R. (1999), Issues in History Teaching, London, Routledge.

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