Teaching Historical
Significance
This is a comparatively new aspect of
school history, at least in terms of being explicitly mentioned in curriculum
specifications (in the 1995 revision of the original National Curriculum for history, now one of the 6 'key concepts' of the
National Curriculum for history). As the book is at pains to point out, it
is important that pupils have an understanding of why it is helpful to them to study aspects of the past, so history teachers should address issues of historical significance, and the importance/relevance/implications of particular aspect of the past, explicitly.Two other helpful publications are Martin Hunt's chapter,
'Teaching Historical Significance', in J. Arthur, and R. Phillips, (eds) Issues
in History Teaching, London, Routledge (2000), and a brief section in Lomas, T.
(1989) Teaching and assessing historical understanding, London, Historical
Association.One of the most recent contributions to the teaching of significance in terms of book chapters is Andrew Wrenn's chapter in Ian Davies' book (2011), Debates in history teaching, London, Routledge (148-158). If you are a member of the Historical Association, you can get access to 12 recent articles focusing on historical significance on one of their 'Web Trails'. The URL for this collection of resources is at http://www.history.org.uk/resources/secondary_resource_2474_61.html
Given word length constraints, it was not
possible to incorporate all Martin's work on significance, so the following
sections, provide a bit more development of some of the ways in which
significance might be addressed.
Some criteria for
determining significance
Examples of
'significance' questions
Some ideas for
'significance' activities
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