While most teachers use enquiries to organize specification content and so avoid their courses descending into ‘one damn thing after another’ there’s a danger that ‘one damn enquiry after another’ isn’t a great deal better. Students benefit from having courses which are centred round an umbrella enquiry question which gives students a ‘takeaway’ understanding of the whole period and not only of the individual topics and people within it.

In our recent GCSE series we adopted this approach for the British Depth studies by building each of them around an investigation of the reputation of a key individual or individuals – of William I, Kings Richard and John, Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. The overall enquiries differed slightly in their wordings but were variants on ‘How should X be remembered?’ or ‘What reputation does Y deserve?’ Another variation is ‘How should we think of the Norman Conquest?’ although we felt that there was more intrinsic interest for students in focussing on individuals.

These enquiries do not dominate every aspect of the course but provide a light-touch continuity, holding the whole course together. The overall enquiry fits into the course structure as follows:

a) it is set up in one or two initial lessons that introduce students to the question and to criteria for assessing a reputation. Then students are asked to generate a hypothesis using what they already know (boosting confidence when they discover they do have existing knowledge to build on) and an overview of the course content which picks out key events.

b) by revisiting the enquiry as each major section of the course is completed. For example, a course on Henry VIII could ask students to select which events or policies support or challenge the statement that Henry was a great king whose glorious successes improved the lives of his people. This could be done for events up to 1529 and then up to 1540 and again in 1547.

Importantly this also requires students to revisit and revise content at regular intervals, helping to embed their knowledge far more firmly than if they leave such revision until after the course is complete. (For more on this see our section on Visible Learning HERE … )

c) as a brief conclusion to the whole study, giving it an overall coherence and again allowing content to be revisited and aiding recall/memory.  At this stage students could engage with historians’ verdicts if they have not done so earlier and achieve a sense of satisfaction at having emerged with a clear, albeit complex, answer.

Such an approach does not depend on ‘interpretations’ being an assessment objective for the unit (see point 2 below). In fact in the Depth Studies identified above do not have ‘interpretations’ as an AO but this light-touch thread on interpretations provides variety amidst what could be a too-constant diet of cause and consequence etc. In addition it creates opportunities for debates about the individuals in which students have to use their knowledge as evidence and clarify their arguments before starting writing tasks. Finally it keeps ideas about interpretations in students’ minds, supporting work on this concept in other parts of the course.

If you adopt an overall enquiry based on interpretations it’s important to think about what kinds of interpretations –contemporary to the period, modern popular views or those of historians - you introduce at what stage of the course. It may be most useful to start with popular interpretation. Film works well here, for example for work on Richard I the film ‘Robin Hood Prince of Thieves’ can be used to explore the ‘heroic’ portrayal of Richard I, then contrasted this with the more negative portrayal of Richard at the start of Ridley Scott’s ‘Robin Hood’ (2010). This works very well in class as pupils can see instantly that two contrasting interpretations of Richard exist today and this helps to set up the differences that modern historians have over Richard’s interpretation. Contemporary views could then be introducedand finally perhaps the views of historians. Jumping straight in with historians can put some pupils off but this will depend on the topic and the length and complexity of the material.

Interpretations enquiries are obviously not the only means of creating an overall enquiry which holds a course together. Other possibilities are questions about significance, for example which monarch, event, development etc was most significant between 1485 and 1603? While the answer is of interest the real value lies in the debates and arguments cementing knowledge of the course content and in helping students feel comfortable with handling criteria for significance.

Another approach, perhaps at A level, is to explore a paradox at the heart of the period that may confuse students’ understanding. For example, in a recent book on The Wars of the Roses I set up the question ‘If loyalty was important to people and they did not want civil war then why did war keep breaking out in the later 15th century?’ I don’t think I ended up answering it very well in the book conclusion (I think the answer lies in the competing loyalties – to country, king, lord, family – that individuals had to try to juggle) but it did help prevent the topic becoming just one damn king, battle etc.

For examples, see Pages 1-4 in the Resource File HERE …