What did – and didn’t – SHP achieve in its GCSE books
c.1980 to c.2010?
If pupils in school repeatedly fail to see that history has any use they are likely to reject it. A syllabus framed with the educational uses of history in mind … and frequent discussion with pupils about history, its interest and its values, are suggested as ways in which pupils may come to see that
history has its uses for them.From A New Look at History, 1976
Introduction
A New Look at History set out the philosophy and aims of the Schools Council History Project. David Sylvester, the founding Director, was the inspiration behind the Project and what most excited me as a young teacher was David’s belief that we could enable students to understand the value of studying history if we made that value explicit to students. SCHP created the opportunity to do this in its 14-16 exam course to link second-order concepts (evidence, causation, change etc) to specific course units and to what were called at the time ‘adolescent needs’ – such as ‘the need to think critically and make judgements about human situations’ using evidence and the evaluation of that evidence. I was completely sold on the belief that students could and should be shown how to use their knowledge of the past and their understanding of how history is studied to understand and interpret their own world.
My school started to teach the SCHP exam course in 1976 and I have a half-memory of opening the boxes of new SCHP textbooks, wondering what excitements they contained and how on earth I was going to teach an exam course full of content I knew almost nothing about – the history of Medicine, Communist China, a local History around Us unit we hadn’t yet devised! Thank heavens I was also teaching Elizabethan England, not the American West! Much of my first two years of teaching SCHP was therefore focussed on getting my mind around the content and exploring assessment – fortunately SCHP was making marking schemes available to teachers, a quite revolutionary moment. No such luxuries were available at A level or for other O level courses unless you were an examiner.
However, over those first years of teaching SCHP, I realised that despite the radical nature of the course (with 4 components – Development, Depth and Modern World Studies plus History Around Us unit – and focus on second-order concepts, all of which was utterly new and different from other courses), the SCHP textbooks were surprisingly unradical. They told students what happened and why in a narrative style similar to other textbooks and, like those other books, they included few tasks (suggestions in the TRBs) and illustrations were in black and white. The main difference was that SHP books included many more sources. Looking back, what stands out most, however, is that the books did not discuss why we were studying concepts such as evidence and did not discuss SCHP’s core aim of helping students understand how they could use their knowledge of the past and their understanding of how history is studied to understand and interpret their own world. That was left to us as teachers, assuming we’d read the TRBs and A New Look at History.
What happened after those early teaching years was something I didn’t imagine in 1976 – I found myself in a position to influence SCHP’s textbooks and other publications, working from 1983 to 1990 as Director of what had become known as SHP (the C in SCHP was dropped when Schools Council funding ended in 1983) and as Publications Director from 1996 to 2012. This article is my explanation of how SHP’s GCSE publishing developed over those thirty years. I’ll discuss three phases and then briefly explore whether these books still have a CPD value for teachers today:
i) The 1980s – a diversity of books, mostly now forgotten or unknown, in which we were exploring different approaches to structuring the teaching of the Development and Modern World Studies
ii) The 1990s to the early 2000s – the Discovering the Past series (known by their white covers) which offered teachers a wider range and depth of content but were structurally more conservative.
iii) c.2008-09 – we put a much stronger emphasis on visible learning - strategies to help students explicitly understand how to improve their learning – including new ideas about the structure of books, despite the time and space taken up by these being the first SHP books to contain guidance on assessment for individual specifications.
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It’s important to emphasise that this article is very much my interpretation of what the books were aiming to achieve and how they developed. At the heart of my interpretation is a paradox – that despite SHP publishing becoming highly successful and the books very widely-used, it was very difficult to make SHP’s core aim explicit in our GCSE books. This has necessarily meant discussing some aspects of SHP’s history as context.
I have not written about SHP books published after 2012 when I stopped working for SHP. I did edit and write for another GCSE series in 2016 but that wasn’t under the auspices of SHP.
Notes for younger readers – history education in the 20th century had a different language. We had exam boards and a syllabus, not awarding bodies and a specification, we had O level and CSE until 1986. ‘Key Stages’ and numbered year groups (Y7 etc) started with the National Curriculum in 1991. The cursed idea that textbooks should contain guidance on assessment did not raise its ugly head until the 2000s. Therefore to help those who weren’t teaching in olden times I’ve anachronistically used the terminology current in the 2020s rather than the terminology of the time.
In addition – the original SCHP course contained 4 units – Development, Depth and Modern World Studies plus History Around Us unit. The latter two were assessed by coursework and there was an Unseen exam assessing students’ ability to use sources. Gradually this course changed (for example with the abolition of coursework) but between 1986 (when GCSE began) and 2016, awarding bodies each had two major specifications – one based on the SHP course, the other being Modern World 20thC history.
Further information about the aims and structure of the original SCHP course and how they were inter-related (see especially page 17) is available at:
www.schoolshistoryproject.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/NewLookAtHistory.pdf
Download this article in full
This webpage presents only the introduction and concluding reflections.
A PDF of the full discussion, covering three major GCSE series, can be downloaded HERE …
Reflections:
Can ‘old’ textbooks be of value to teachers today?
My first reaction to revisiting these books was how enjoyable it is to look again at individual pages, activities, artwork and ideas about learning and teaching that still look enticing and challenging – and very useable. The creativity of much of this still makes me smile! I do hope teachers take the opportunity to seek out forgotten treasures in these books (many of which are available very cheaply if they’re not in your cupboards!)
In addition, I think there’s also a broader value in these books for teachers and departments. The books may not be new but their ideas on planning, teaching and learning still provide valuable insights into effective GCSE teaching. Here are some of the possibilities based on the work we did on these GCSE books, both what we did well and what we didn’t do nearly enough of! Some of these notes refer to my last GCSE series in 2016, published by Hodder for the Edexcel specification on three Thematic Studies and four Depth Studies – the content may be different from yours but the teaching and learning ideas are widely applicable.
I’ll start with some of the ideas we included that I’m pleased with!
1. Structuring GCSE units around the learning problems students have – for example, some or many students struggle to build a ‘big picture’ of a theme across time. This means they get lost chronologically and miss the point that these units are studies in change, continuity and causation, not just about the topic content. Hence back in the 1980s, we first developed an overview section at the beginning of Thematic Studies but did so more effectively in the 2008-9 books and again in the 2016 books Dale and I edited for the Edexcel specification.
2. We also built in new activities to tackle more detailed problems students have in courses. Constructing a course involves planning around the problems students have in learning as well as around the content and the assessment objectives. For example, many students lose confidence because they struggle to keep track of ‘who’s who?’ – they meet so many names that they lose track and this undermines their confidence in their ability to learn. In our 2016 Depth Studies we used pages to help overcome these problems and it now feels essential – it may not feel that the course is moving forward covering necessary content but it really helps in the long-run – for details see HERE …
3. In our later books in 2008-9 and 2016 we focussed heavily on ‘visible learning’, giving students techniques to help them learn effectively about history – concept maps, factors diagrams, memory maps, washing lines and other techniques – AND explaining how to use them and why they are useful. These techniques can be used at all ages, including A level. Many had strong visual components and are available HERE …
4. We continued to use enquiry questions and the enquiry process, the process being something very different, more explicit and more valuable in the long-term than simply asking ‘enquiry questions’ which, however we dress them up, may be just ‘questions’ to students! In some of our Depth Study books c2000 and in more recent books in 2008-9 and 2016 we used this process of asking questions, constructing hypotheses and revisiting those hypotheses really helpful in giving coherence to whole units such as Elizabethan England and Medicine through time. In addition, we used the enquiry process to ‘layer’ work on a new topic or period e.g. using artwork reconstructions of medical practice in London at the beginning of each historical period to provide a first layer of information for students and to get them hypothesising about changes and continuities. This gives students confidence that they can think about possible answers before they’ve covered every detail of the topics and more confidence when moving onto a deeper layer of knowledge. Discussion of the importance of developing understanding of the process of enquiry can be found HERE …
5. We asked a full range of historical questions on each topic rather than restricting questions in books to those examined as assessment objectives. Limiting questions in a Thematic Study or Depth study etc to those on the specified assessment objectives deprives students of opportunities to keep answering other types of questions and distorts the nature of studying history. My worst moment in thirty-five years of textbook writing came in 2016 when an awarding body reader was critical of our inclusion in a book of sources and questions on their value as evidence plus questions and discussion on significance because neither evidence nor significance were among the assessment objectives for this unit of the course. In this person’s mind the only questions we should have been asking were about the specified assessment objectives of change, continuity and causation. I was appalled by this reduction to ‘lowest common denominator’ teaching and publishing but happily my editor at Hodder agreed with me and my original questions on evidence and significance stayed alongside the questions linked to the assessment objectives.
6. The ‘white cover’ books of the late 1990s in particular were admired and widely used because of their wealth of historical information and sources, creating opportunities to deepen students’ knowledge of GCSE topics beyond the basics of specifications. School-produced resources have the opportunity to do this too, making good the loss of richness of material when textbooks have far fewer pages and just cover the basics. This extra depth then gives students the material to debate the answers to questions and issues about their GCSE topics and so build their ability to argue, using evidence to support their views and appreciate that conclusions are often interpretations rather than right answers.
And now for some of those things we didn’t do enough of but are really important.
7. Time needs to be built into courses to identify students’ likely misconceptions and preconceptions about the content and topics, about their understanding of second-order concepts and about the process of studying history. This discussion of misconceptions was often squeezed out of our GCSE books but identifying and challenging those misconceptions and preconceptions is fundamental to effective learning. If these aren’t identified and challenged EXPLICITLY then they may well stay embedded in students’ minds.
8. Students need to understand why their GCSE course contains a variety of types of history – thematic units, depth studies etc. Unless this is explained and discussed, it’s all just more content. It was only in the 2008-9 books that we included explanation of why courses were devised to offer varied perspectives and periods of history – something we should have done from the 70s.
9. My final point arises from our consistent inability to include material in GCSE books to help students understand why studying history is valuable to them, i.e. how their knowledge of the past and their understanding of how history is studied can help them understand and interpret their own world. Looking back, this is my greatest regret at all levels – do departments focus enough time on this or, as in our books, does this get squeezed out by material that’s of much shorter-term value?
And in broader conclusion …
Looking back over these series, my final thought is how varied they were, moving from the focus on how to structure teaching Development and Modern World Studies in the 1980s to more conservative structures in the 1990s but a great richness of material and activities and then, in 2010, to a strong emphasis on learning – how to study history effectively – alongside a very different use of overviews and overall enquiry questions. That variety came about because the people who created the books had different emphases and were working in changing contexts – and yet the books were all very successful in providing ‘CPD in a textbook’, offering teachers new ideas about planning, teaching and learning.
All this, of course, has been my interpretation of these GCSE books, an interpretation vulnerable to the erratic patterns of memory and my own emphases and subjectivity. As Penelope Lively wrote in her book According to Mark,
‘What people remember is distorted not only by the shortcomings of memory but by the myth-making of the rememberer.’
But then, as historians, you’re well capable of coping with potentially unreliable sources!
List of Publications Discussed: GCSE Books
SHP publications in the 1980s
Joe Scott, Energy through Time, OUP, 1986
Joe Scott, Medicine through Time, Holmes McDougall, 1987
Paul Davies, China, Holmes McDougall, 1987
Tony McAleavy, Conflict in Ireland, Holmes McDougall, 1987
Discovering the Past for GCSE (the ‘white cover’ series)
(all published by John Murray/Hodder)
Ian Dawson and Ian Coulson, Medicine and Health through time, 1996
Greg Lacey and Keith Shepherd, Germany 1918-1945, 1997
Terry Fiehn, Russia and the USSR 1905-1941, 1996
Carol White, Margaret Samuelson, Rik Mills and Terry Fiehn, The USA between the Wars 1991-1945, 1998
Dave Martin and Colin Shephard, The American West, 1998
Greg Hetherton, Britain and the Great War, 1998
Ian Dawson, Crime and Punishment through time, 1999
Ben Walsh, The Struggle for Peace in Northern Ireland, 2000
Andy Harmsworth, Elizabethan England, 1999
Dave Martin, Britain 1815-1851, 2000
Christopher Culpin, South Africa since 1948, 2000
Ian Dawson and Ian Coulson, Medicine for Edexcel, 2001
The Essential Series
(all published by John Murray/Hodder)
Ann Moore, Ian Dawson and Ian Coulson, Essential Medicine and Health, 2002
Dave Martin and Nigel West, Essential American West, 2005
Ian Dawson and Ben Walsh. Essential The Struggle for Peace in Northern Ireland, 2004
Dale Banham and Christoper Culpin, Essential Germany 1918‑1945, 2004
The Medicine Trilogy
(all published in 2009 by John Murray/Hodder)
Ian Dawson, Dale Banham and Peter Smith, OCR Medicine and Health through Time
Ian Dawson and Dale Banham, AQA Medicine and Health through Time
Ian Dawson, Dale Banham and Dan Lyndon, Edexcel Medicine and Health through Time
Edexcel Series
(edited by Ian Dawson and Dale Banham for Hodder Education, all published in 2016)
This final series is not discussed at length above because it wasn’t an SHP series, but I’ve included it because it has a wealth of teaching and learning suggestions.
Ian Dawson, Medicine through Time c1250-present
Alec Fisher and Ed Podesta, Crime and Punishment c1000-present
Sarah Webb and Ed Podesta Warfare through time c1250-present
Ian Dawson, Esther Arnott and Libby Merritt, Anglo-Saxon and Norman England c1060-1088
Dale Banham, The Reigns of King Richard I and King John, 1189-1216
Dale Scarboro and Ian Dawson, Henry VIII and his Ministers, 1509-1540
Barbara Mervyn, Early Elizabethan England, 1558-1588