Letting students choose their own history

Mr Joe Alexander A.B. Paterson College Gold Coast, Queensland, Australia

Introduction

It is the contention of this paper that providing students with meaningful choice in their  learning about history, and allowing students  opportunities to co-construct their curriculum, not only empowers and motivates them in their learning, but further equips them with the capacity to be independent, and self-directed, yet purposeful learners. It is also argued that the nature of our ever-changing society, as well as research into the fundamental notions of knowledge and learning, require us to change and adjust the way many teachers decide what it is to be taught and how it will be approached in the classroom. Providing students with choices with the history they learn requires us to think carefully about the history curriculum in schools, and being prepared to let go of some of the control that teachers, curriculum planners, and schooling authorities have traditionally had over both content and assessment in the classroom. This view is in direct contrast to that was presented by the Federal Education, Science and Training Minister, Julie Bishop in the lead up to her History Summit in August 2006.

Education: the traditional craft

As teaching professionals, we are constantly bombarded with quite radical changes in both state and national government policy. Often these changes are inspired by little more than political opportunism and some perceived need for ‘reform’. Current debate around a range of educational issues in Australia is often driven by political priorities, rather than educational research and scholarly thought. Over-simplified media reporting of complex issues also serves to further comprise and stifle rich educational debate around a range of important educational issues. The reality for many teachers is that state and national agendas and policies often have direct and profound implications on the teaching and learning that occurs in our classrooms. Recently, I believe there has been a growing backlash against some of the innovative approaches to education across Australia. Locally, state and federal requirements are forcing schools to implement some of the more ‘traditional’ features of schooling, including A to E reporting, and explicit content and assessment, under the guise of greater ‘accountability’. The Western Australian curriculum authority has faced severe criticism for the introduction of its innovative curriculum framework. Most recently, the Federal Education, Science and Training Minister’s plan to force all Australian students to study a course of history based fundamentally on ‘dates and facts’ must also be seen as return a traditional, if not archaic, approach to teaching and learning in history.

As well as grappling with political agendas and changing educational policies, educational professionals also face some quite significant paradigm shifts in thinking about the learning process. Profound developments and research into teaching and learning, information processing and cognitive development, as well as the social dimensions of education also impact upon the daily practice of educators.

The reality is that current research in the field of education is challenging many of the traditional elements and practices of schooling. There is a constant flow of research about all aspects of teaching and learning that persistently challenges us to reflect upon, and interrogate, our teaching practice and provide learning environments that support, engage and challenge the wide range of learners that make up our classrooms. I further contend that these quite profound paradigm shifts in thinking about teaching and learning are not particularly well reported and understood in broader society. Unfortunately, those in the broader society, including politicians, often rely on fundamentally outdated notions and assumptions about student learning in forming views and opinions about the sort of learning students need to undertake. These assumptions are often based on naive experiences as individuals of schooling as it occurred 20, 30 or even 40 or 50 years ago.

Perkins (1992:3), a senior professor in education at Harvard Graduate School of Education, suggests that many teachers, schools and schooling authorities are failing to make use of key research and developments in the area of education and learning: ‘In the age of CDs and VCRs, communications satellites and laptop computers, education remains by and large a traditional craft’.

The challenge for teaching professionals is certainly a difficult one. On the one hand, schools can be notoriously conservative places, where state and national government policy, as well as the growing popularity of testing regimes, and reporting ‘student outcomes’ can limit and stifle innovation. While, on the other hand, teachers are constantly challenged to be innovative, and to be creative and improve their practice through making use of the latest educational research and thinking. There is no doubt schooling and education create a difficult environment that requires us, as teachers, to constantly reflect upon, and think about, our school practices, curriculum and pedagogical approach. I believe fundamental changes in the way curriculum and schooling are thought about, and the provision of more choice in student learning is not only educationally justifiable and defensible, but necessary.

From delivering curriculum to building capacity

As part of this challenge to consider new educational approaches, I believe it is necessary for all educators to reflect upon the ultimate purpose of education and schooling. In the past, schooling may have been about amassing a wide range of facts about a topic, or about developing a strict and narrow range of skills and processes relevant to various disciplines, or even about students demonstrating their competence in a range of predetermined outcomes across a range of curriculum strands. Some brutally honest realists may argue that schooling is really about ranking and producing high tertiary entrance scores.

It is also clear that schooling has served clear ideological purposes in inculcating the dominant political values of the time, often in the selection of what is taught, and the expectations of what is expected from students. Some of the more liberal amongst us may suggest that schooling is about the notion of preparing students for adult life, as independent, thinking citizens of the future.

Perkins (1992:75) suggests there are some ‘hard to disagree with’ goals for education that include developing understanding and active use of knowledge in students, of which understanding is particularly pivotal. He argues that understanding goes well beyond just knowing about something, and extends to really thinking carefully about issues, and really understanding them, and being able to apply this understanding to all sorts of situations. At a recent conference, Perkins (2006) stated that teachers and schools needed ‘to walk on the wild side’ and move away from outdated, traditional ideas about learning and schooling.  

Ron Ritchard (2002), also from Harvard Graduate School of Education, argues that schools need to ‘shape’ students’ intellectual character through developing ‘patterns’. He states:

‘I contend that what stays with us from our education are patterns: patterns of behavior, patterns of thinking, and patterns of interaction. These patterns make up our character, specifically our intellectual character. Through our patterns of behavior, thinking and interaction, we show what we are made of as thinkers and learners. Schools can do much to shape and influence these patterns’.

The idea of schools shaping ‘patterns’ rather than ‘bodies of knowledge’ in students is a profound change in thinking about learning. It requires seeing the inherent value of what students learn, not  in the ‘content’ or ‘knowledge’ that students acquire, but rather in the broader ‘patterns’ of thinking about the issues that students develop. For this reason, a ‘thematic’ approach to structuring the history curriculum has more value to students that just an approach based around a time and place. For example, I would argue that there is infinitely more value in students thinking about the idea of ‘conflict’ and perhaps looking at a few different ones, questioning what might cause conflicts, and how they can be avoided, rather than students studying World War One in narrow self-contained context, where the inherent value would lie simply in knowledge about that one conflict. This broader thinking about concepts is what students require to become active, informed and reflective citizens of the future, rather than being able to recite some aged historian’s view on the 14 causes of World War 1. Other themes in the Queensland Modern and Ancient History Syllabi include studies of power, studies of political structures, studies of change, studies of cooperation, and even studies of hope. The argument I am presenting extends the idea of teaching history through the use of themes, by suggesting that students could well choose their own case studies within a theme or concept.

Ritchhart (2002) argues that schooling should not be about developing content or knowledge where the value of the learning lies in the subject matter, but in developing these patterns of thinking. He has described a range of dispositions that should be developed through the process of schooling. He argues these dispositions can be cultivated and developed to promote successful learning. Having been recently involved in the Queensland Studies Authority Senior Phase of Learning Review, I, too, have repeatedly asked myself what is purpose of schooling, and what is that students really need to know. I think for so many reasons students need to be challenged and equipped to face a very different world to the world we grew up in.

By thinking about learning as developing ‘patterns of thinking’ and as not acquiring a ‘body of knowledge’, I have come to conclusion that schooling is about developing ‘capacity’ in students. That is, the capacity to learn, to understand, and to make sense of their own world, and a world we don’t yet know. Dr Erica McWilliam (2005), in a paper entitled The Yuk-Wow Generation, presented at a conference hosted by the Queensland Studies Authority, stated: ‘As a result of vast changes in the students we teach and the inevitability of continuous change in  contemporary society, schools face a key shift from delivering content to building capacity’.  The value of learning in this sort of paradigm, is therefore, in the deep learning and thinking about an issue or concept, and how it may relate to their own lives and future, rather than in the narrow context of an arbitrarily chosen historical period. This sort of learning also develops student independence, initiative and self-direction. It is the development of these capacities, not a rigorous regime of content and facts, that schooling should be about. Viewing the teaching of history from this perspective enables us to see how students can have considerable choice in their learning, as they build these capacities.

A Very Different World

One of the significant challenges for educational professionals is facing the reality that students in our classrooms will confront a very different world to that which we know. Profound changes in technology are dramatically changing the way we communicate, access information and largely occupy our time. Mobile phones, texting and email have all changed the way we communicate with each other.  Access to information via the internet and texting services has revolutionised our access to information. Young people today are armed with the ability to virtually access information about anything, at any time. One would argue that the need for recall or retention of information could fast be becoming obsolete. Perhaps, the challenge for educators is to consider how best we can prepare students for this world. The reality is that many of the educational and curriculum practices used in the teaching of history, which are based on more traditional notions of learning about the world, are not necessarily preparing students to face a very different kind of world. We need to develop students with the skills and capacities to independently investigate, research and analyse, and who can make conclusions about issues they will encounter.  History is much more than forcing students to regurgitate unproblematic information that they could probably find very quickly using a Google Search.

McDonnell (2006), in Honey, We lost the kids: rethinking childhood in the multi-media age, argues that, as a result of the world in which they are growing up in, young people are fundamentally different to those of earlier generations. She suggests that young people of today are incredibly informed and aware, and yet, in so many ways, still denied access to adulthood and making meaningful decisions. She states:

‘One of the few remaining ways we allow them any sense of power over their lives is to give them the choice of what to buy and what not to buy. In a real sense, we’re the ones who’ve made young people into, in Thomas Hine’s phrase, “the monstrous progeny of marketing and schooling”.’

McDonnell further argues that students need more opportunity to make choices and be empowered to learn about adulthood. She states:

‘Teenagers constantly complain that adults treat them like children, demanding to know: “When are you going to start treating me like an adult?”. Which raises the very questions we need to grapple with: When should childhood end? What is maturity? Just when does a person become an adult? A lot of problems stem from the fact that, too often, the answer to that question is: Never. A lot of kids never really step into adulthood. We don’t pave the way for them.  We don’t initiate them. In many ways, we actively thwart their efforts to grow up!’

Perhaps, by allowing students choice and flexibility in their learning about history, we are preparing students to make choices, and allowing them more opportunity to make decisions, take risks, experience success and perhaps even make some mistakes. Choice would allow students the opportunity to pursue their passions and interests, and generally begin making real decisions in the safe and structured environment of school.

The Problem with Just Knowledge

Traditionally, schooling authorities and teachers have made the key decisions about what is to be taught and how it is to be assessed in history. These decisions were often guided by the belief that there was some body of knowledge that students needed to learn. Perkins (1993) argues passionately that learning is the result of thinking, not just knowing, in the opening of his book, Smart schools: better thinking and learning for every child. Indeed, he outlines how knowledge can be problematic and ‘fragile’ and states that ‘Research shows that there are many more problems of knowledge other than just plain not having it’. He suggests knowledge can be inert, naive and ritualistic. He (1993:31) further suggests that much schooling has been based upon the ‘Trivial Pursuit Theory’, in which learning is seen as a matter of ‘accumulating a large repertoire of facts and routines’. Perkins believes it is this form of learning that often permeates school and classroom structures. He states:

‘Educators do not argue that education is about accumulating large repertoires of facts and routines. But this is overwhelmingly what happens in classrooms, where, as in other settings, actions speak louder than words’.

He argues that schooling needs to be more concerned with thinking and understanding rather than just knowing. At both state and national levels, there seems to be a particular emphasis and political pressure placed upon on what students know, or ought to know, across many curriculum areas. The Prime Minister’s and the Federal Education, Science and Training Minister’s recent comments regarding history curriculum in Australian schools is an example of this focus on knowledge as facts. I believe there is overwhelming evidence that Perkins is correct in his assertion regarding the dominance of facts and routines in our schools and classrooms, and that this emphasis is simply failing to provide students with the capacities and dispositions they require to face our ever-changing world.

Why Students Need Choice in their History Classrooms

Over the last couple of years, I have become increasingly interested in the idea of students choosing and negotiating their own learning. I guess I initially saw it as a means of empowering students to have some control over their own learning. Since then, I have also seen the results of this sort of approach on students learning. I have witnessed whole classes of year 10 students writing year 12 standard assignments. As a teacher of both Ancient and Modern History, I have always agonised over what topics concepts, and issues to teach. I think I was always acutely aware that my selections were entirely subjective and put together in a way that probably said more about me and my interests than the discipline of history, or other disciplines in the social sciences. I was also aware that there was no way a teacher could ever begin to construct a program without feeling like they were leaving out something important. The solution I came up with was to encourage all of my students to choose areas of history that interested them, and to let them make the big decisions I had previously agonised over. In many ways, I don’t think this approach was all that radical; students had always undertaken some form of research assignment in history classes, and the idea of empowering students is hardly new. However, over the last few years, I have become increasingly aware that my approach to teaching history is indeed quite different to the way history is taught in most schools, particularly in the southern states of Australia. I sincerely believe the notion of students negotiating their own learning can indeed be a means of building capacity and understanding, as it provides the learner with the opportunity to develop his or her own bridge to understanding.

To many teachers, there is something scary, if not terrifying, in empowering students with control over their own learning. Grille (2003: 5) ponders the possibilities:

‘Imagine for a moment that your children were given considerable freedom to choose what to learn and how to learn, to some degree, even when to learn. What do you suppose would happen? Would they run amok, would their academic performance wither as they romp into frivolous pursuits? Would they ever bother to learn anything worthwhile?’

How many teachers would allow students to negotiate their own learning and aspects of their own assessment in the classroom? I don’t imagine the idea of allowing students the freedom to negotiate their learning and to investigate topics of interest to them would be particularly common in the majority of Australian schools. I am sure some teachers are happy to allow students to negotiate some aspects of their learning, but I wouldn’t think there would be too many students in Australia negotiating their own areas of investigation, their own learning and their own methods of assessment. It seems that students are generally not trusted to make decisions about their own learning, when paradoxically, I suppose this is what we expect students to do as they mature and become lifelong learners.

The educational benefits of empowering students to make their own decisions about their own learning has been clearly articulated across a wide range of educational and curriculum literature.

Ritchart (2002) argues that providing for choice and independence in student learning is an important component of developing a culture of thinking. He states:

‘Meaningful student choice and the accompanying encouragement of autonomy are important components of rich thinking opportunities. These factors not only support student engagement and interest but also encourage greater independence and self-direction in thinking … When assignments are truly open-ended and afford student choice, the required decision making is more likely to involve students deeply  with the content in a way that encourages thinking’.

Many of the philosophies emerging out of research into the middle years of schooling have also emphasised cultivating student interest and choice in teaching and learning. Barret (1998), in her seminal report into the needs of adolescent students in Australia, argued that students needed real opportunities to negotiate learning that is useful to them in the present, and for the future. Further, Barret (1998) included ‘learner-centredness’ as an essential component of middle schooling. She defines a curriculum that is ‘learner- centered’ as being:

‘A coherent curriculum that is focused on identified needs, interests and concerns of students and emphasises self-directed and co-constructed learning’.

The idea of students negotiating their own learning has also been emphasised in the field of behaviour management. Many theorists (Glasser, Rogers, Adler, Dreikurs) have argued that students need to develop a sense of real control over learning at school, and this empowerment ultimately motivates students to towards meaningful learning. Brown (cited in Porter, 2000: 231) states:

‘Perhaps it is time to change our priorities from direct control aimed at stuffing the maximum possible amount of knowledge, skills and values into children to motivating them to manage their own learning’.

If we want students to be motivated and excited about their learning, then a negotiated approach to learning would encourage this in students. Grille (2003: 6) further states:

‘A fundamental principle is that children are more motivated to learn, and they learn better, to the extent that the have choice over how and what they learn’.

The notion of choice and negotiation has also been central to the growth of ‘Democratic Schools’ around the world. Grille (2003:5) describes democratic schools as those in which, ‘each student is given as much control as is feasible over his or her learning’. Indeed, there is a broad range of theoretical and philosophical support for a negotiated approach in teaching and learning.

Changes in History Curriculum

The idea of students negotiating their own learning appears particularly challenging for many teachers, especially in the field of history. There is no doubt that history syllabuses have been particularly controversial in Australia. Clarke states:

‘Australian history syllabuses and teaching documents – unlike most other subjects – repeatedly cause controversy … History – and the way it is taught – are hot topics for politicians, parents and educators, but students continue to regard the subject as boring’.

In the past, many have seen history syllabuses as way of inculcating civic and social values. The great deeds of European culture were transmitted unproblematically to students who did little more than memorise this large list of names, events and dates. Courses were structured around chronology, with an attempt to include every significant event. History, as a discipline in Australia, certainly developed from this tradition, being based very largely around students knowing masses of events, names and dates. Dr Brian Hoepper (2004: 14) describes this earlier teaching as a period:

‘The Old History has Eurocentric and celebratory. Heroes abounded. Great deeds and national exploits intersected neatly. The text book and the teacher were omniscient and authoritative.  The students were compliant and accepting. And a moral purpose pervaded the classroom …’.

Gilbert (2005) further describes a ‘traditional’ approach to the social science curriculum, where:

‘The essential core of the curriculum is the declarative or propositional information it contains, its social content; the curriculum is centrally prescribed; social values are seen to be universal and absolute and derived from perennial ideals; and knowledge is seen to compromise a series of fixed social truths’.

More recently, educators and contemporary historians have found the fundamental flaws in such an ideological approach to history. Students are now encouraged to investigate issues through their own processes of inquiry, analyse and evaluate sources and ultimately develop their own arguments, understandings and perceptions of the past. I suggest also that the problems of trying to include every historical event in a course based on chronology have also been realised. The reality is that it is impossible to include all historical events in a single course, and if you try, how do you decide what to include and what not to. Professor Richard Evans from the University of Cambridge states, ‘History only ever involves a selection of what is knowable about the past’. Advances in thinking about modern society have also lead to changing understandings about historical knowledge and truth. The history we teach can no longer be seen as a series of absolute, universal and fixed social truths. The emergence of  historiography and post-modernist thinking has forced us to question the ‘truths’ often embedded within versions of history, and opened us to the reality many perspectives, views and opinions exist on many historical events and issues. The danger of a centralised national history course organised around ‘narratives’ and ‘dates and facts’ is that the course itself will become an ideologically driven version of history. Professor Evans states:

‘History written purely to fulfill a present day purpose, such as encouraging national pride, is all too likely to degenerate into propaganda … Historians have to try to understand the past  from as wide a variety of viewpoints as possible’.

Gilbert suggests there has since emerged a ‘progressivist’  social science curriculum where:

‘The substantive essence is not predetermined but arises from an open inquiry process; the key content is based on student interest and contemporary issues; and the warrant for knowledge is seen to reside in this open process of inquiry’.

It is this progressivist approach to curriculum in the social sciences that, I believe, can accommodate student choice in the teaching of history. Indeed, Hoepper and Land (1996: 80) state:

‘Long gone are the times when ‘Social Studies’ involved teaching masses of unproblematic information about society to passive students. Now, teachers think carefully about their pedagogical strategies, and especially about learning processes that those strategies promote’.

My fear, however, is that many aspects of school curriculum may be being driven back to a ‘traditional’ approach. Teaching a ‘history’ that is based upon the assumptions of the past and the ideals of a long gone era, will not only present problems for teachers and schooling authorities, but will further fail to equip students to face the reality of the contemporary world, a world that is not based on fixed and absolute social truths.

Tertiary Ranking, Old Fashioned Examinations and History

The reality is that schooling authorities and tertiary ranking procedures have had a significant impact on the type of history students experience. The requirements of the government bodies that regulate, assess and rank students, particularly in the senior years of schooling, make it very difficult to incorporate student, or even teacher, choice and flexibility into their programs. Indeed, many Australian States still require students to complete largely content based external exams. The pressure that large external exams place on students must be hard to justify. Professor Geoff Masters (2004 A) states:

‘Learning research makes it clear the pressures of attempting to teach and learn large amounts of factual information are not conducive to the deep learning of subject matter’.

Queensland has certainly been different to many other Australian States, with the use of school-based assessment, for some time. The use of school-based assessment has allowed for some flexibility but, at times, rigid district and state panel requirements can still limit the potential of such flexibility. With the release of the Queensland Studies Authority syllabuses for Ancient and Modern History in 2004, I believe teachers have a real opportunity to allow students to negotiate aspects of their courses of study, including the modes of their assessment. This opportunity for flexibility, however, still seems limited in most of the other Australian States. New South Wales seems to have regressed to a tightly controlled curriculum that requires all students to undertake a compulsory history exam at the end of year 10, in addition to its content-rigorous Higher School Certificate examinations in year 12.

Clarke (2004:7) says of the New South Wales year 10 history course:

‘While numbers in the compulsory NSW syllabus are obviously high, the syllabus has come under criticism for being too full of facts; for rushing students through a curriculum and then expecting them to regurgitate key names and dates in the exam at the end’.

It is interesting to note that it is this model of history curriculum that the Federal Education Minister Julie Bishop appears to like, and appears to want replicated Australia-wide. It seems that political whims can dictate the sort of history and social science curriculum that students experience. It seems that is often principally content-based, rigid in its scope and sequence, and largely assessed using somewhat dated and arbitrary methods. Perhaps it is time for politicians to base their decisions about schooling on the latest educational research available, rather than their own naive, and often uninformed thoughts.

Personalised Learning or ‘McDonalds’ Learning

I think another reason why there seems to be such a limited use of choice in curriculum is because most teachers themselves believe, either consciously or unconsciously, that all students should gain the same understanding of a topic or concept. The concept or topic is often chosen because it is of interest to the teacher, or because it is mandated in a curriculum document somewhere. Through expecting the same outcome from every student, we soon find ourselves teaching (or just transmitting) masses of common content. How many teachers and educators still photocopy a class set of the same readings and worksheets, and expect students to read, understand and remember the details? This style of teaching often leads to the mere transmission of unproblematic information. I suppose you could call this the ‘McDonalds’ approach to education – wherever you buy your cheeseburger, it should taste the same! I wonder if the students in our classrooms are far more complex than the hungry masses. Professor Geoff Masters (2004 A), in a recent article focused on the idea of personalised learning, states:

‘Educational research makes clear how inappropriate it is to treat all students of the same age or year level as though they are more or less equally ready to be taught the same material’.

It is further argued that providing choice allows students to co-construct their own learning path, as they develop, expand and demonstrate their understanding of various key ideas within a discipline. This approach provides necessary opportunities for personalised learning within a student’s school experience. Masters (2004 A) states:

‘Personalised learning requires a view of learning as a continuous, school-long process through which learning experiences are tailored to the current attainments and interests of individuals, students are given greater control over what, how and where they learn. And are encouraged to plan and monitor their own learning’.

It is this personalised learning that provides all students with the opportunity to experience schooling success within a classroom, regardless of their perceived or real ability.

History Within the Teaching For Understanding Framework

The fundamental concepts underlying the Teaching for Understanding framework developed by Project Zero, at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, provide not only further justification for this approach, but further provide a structure for allowing students choice in their learning.

A.B. Paterson College, a P-12 independent college on the Gold Coast, Queensland, has embraced this teaching and learning framework across all faculties from preparatory to year 12. Recently, the college hosted an international conference focused on the framework. It has been my experience that, by providing students with real choices, students are more engaged and can better develop their capacity to learn independently and build their own understanding of the broad issues in social science and the history curriculum. I guess the purpose of the curriculum developed in our social science and history courses is to develop understanding and build capacity, rather than knowing a set of ‘facts’ based on a superficial conception of knowledge. Conceptually, Teaching for Understanding’s focus on developing understanding, rather than mere knowledge, forces student to develop their own understanding of key ideas. Blythe (1998) describes how understanding can be explained :

‘Consider the difference between knowing and understanding. We all have a reasonable conception of what knowing is: when a student knows something, he or she can bring it forth on demand. Understanding is a subtler matter … Understanding is the matter of being able to do a number of thought provoking things with a topic, such as explaining, finding evidence, and examples, generalising, applying, analogising, and representing the topic in new ways’.

As students develop their own understanding of key ideas, the components of the Teaching for Understanding framework provide necessary structure. The Overarching Goals (or Throughlines) of the faculty permeate all subjects in the social sciences and provide a series of familiar ‘hooks’ to guide student learning in general terms about the discipline. The Generative Topic for each unit provides a most important starting point for students to consider their learning.

To provide opportunities for students to investigate issues independently, the Generative Topics selected must be truly generative, in that they present questions and possibilities for students to investigate. The Understanding Goals for each Generative Topic can be a vital means of regulating the investigations pursued by students and ensuring the students learning is rigorous and purposeful. Finally, the use of rich Performances of Understanding, rather than traditional knowledge tests or other simplistic assessment items, gives students the opportunity to truly demonstrate the richness of their understanding. The Teaching for Understanding framework provides a most useful way ensuring rigour, purpose and richness, as students are challenged to make choices within their learning.

Over the last three years, the Social Science Faculty has implemented this approach across all curriculum areas. Across years 7, 8 and 9, students are provided with opportunities to exercise choice in their social science course. The degree and nature of the choice varies across the range of the units. Students are guided by the Generative Topics and Understanding Goals of each unit. The year 7, 8 and 9 social science curriculum is structured to cover some of the big ideas in history, geography and civics. Students often have choices with the topics they choose to investigate, the nature and type of their performance, and even their time-lines for the completion of work.

In years 10, 11 and 12, students select the specific discipline subjects they wish to study. Student may study Ancient History, Modern History or Geography. It has been a particular challenge to implement this approach into the curriculum in years 11 and 12, and still adhere to senior syllabus requirements. The development of the 2004 Queensland Studies Authority Syllabuses for Ancient and Modern History have provided an opportunity for us to further embrace this philosophy of learning in year 11 and 12, by being structured using conceptual themes, rather  than rigid units based upon particular events and periods. These themes provide a fantastic starting point for a Generative Topic. Within many of these themes, students have the ability to explore their own inquiry topics, with the course structured to allow for more choice as the course progresses, and as students’ confidence in their independence grows.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that the approach to teaching and learning adopted by the social science faculty at A.B. Paterson College is very different to those of many other schools. It presents a real challenge to both teachers and students. However, teaching of history through a curriculum that is flexible, and negotiated is an exciting venture. I guess you never really know where you, or the students, are going to end up but you can be sure that the students have exercised control over their learning and taken responsibility for developing their own understanding. If we want students to be motivated and excited about fields in the social sciences, like History, then a negotiated and flexible approach to learning would encourage this in students. Carmel Young (2004:17) makes the following statement about building historical understanding:

‘Productive History teaching and learning lies at the interface between ‘vernacular’ histories or the lived experiences of the child and the curriculum documents that we interpret on a daily basis … Keeping the learner as the focus for our activities actually challenges us to think about key issues in history teaching and learning … Starting with the learner is the first and perhaps most important step in creating a supportive context for building historical understanding’.

From my experience, students like the choices that the social sciences can offer them. There is no doubt the provision of a robust and stimulating curriculum, that is flexible and largely steered by students, presents a real challenge for teachers and school structures I sincerely believe that by providing students with real opportunities to make choices about their learning, we are equipping and preparing them to make choices in world that is largely quite unknown to them, and to us. 

References

Barrett, R (1998). ‘Shaping Middle Schooling: Principles and Directions’. In Shaping middle schooling in Australia: a report of the National Middle Schooling Project. Canberra: Australian Curriculum Studies Association.
Blythe, T (1998). The teaching for understanding guide. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Clarke, A (2004). ‘Who was Edmund Barton, and Who Cares?' In EQ Australia Winter 2004. pp.7-8.
Evans, R (2005). ‘What is History? In Swain (ed) (2005) Big questions in history. London: Johnathon Cape.
Gilbert, R (2005). ‘Social Science Education and Curriculum Form: Issues in Selecting and Articulating Curriculum’. Paper presented at the National Conference for Australian Association for Research in Education.
Grille, R. (2003). ‘Democracy Begins at School – A New World Trend in Education’ In Connect. April 2003. pp.5-8.
Hoepper, B (2004). ‘Who Says You Can’t Change History?’ In EQ Australia. Winter 2004. pp.9-10.
Hoepper, B and Land, R (1996). ‘Planning Investigations’ in Gilbert, R (ed) (1996) Studying society and environment: a handbook for teachers (1st edition). Melbourne: Macmillan.
Mc Donnell, K (2001). Honey, we lost the kids: re-thinking childhood in the multimedia age. North Melbourne: Pluto.
Mc William, E (2005). ‘The Yuk-Wow Generation’. Paper presented at the Queensland Studies Authority Senior Phase of Learning Conference.
Masters, G (2004A). ‘Personalized Learning: the Challenge’. In Education review. 7 (6) p.17.
Masters, G (2004B). ‘Promoting Deep Learning’. In Education review. 17 (7) p.23.
Perkins, D (1993). Smart schools: better thinking and learning for every child. New York. The Free Press.
Porter, L (2000). Student behaviour theory and practice for teachers. Sydney: Allen and Unwin.
Ritchart, R (2002). Intellectual character: What it is and how to get it.  San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.