Developing

1
Developing big pictures of the past 

• Lukas Perikleous
• Department of Education
• University of Cyprus
• lukasp_at_ucy.ac.cy

2
Challenges of orientating in time

• Students do not posses coherent pictures of the
  past to use to make sense of the past, the
  present and the future (Lee, 2004).
• Their knowledge about the past tends to be
  fragmented and in most of the cases limited to
  fragmentary knowledge of events, periods and
  people without an understanding of how these
  factual fragments might be connected to each
  other or to the present (Lee, 2004 Shemilt,
  2000)
• Understanding of what they do know tends to be
  distorted by their misconceptions about the past
  or how we can come to know about it.

3
Challenges of orientating in time

• Students are not able to integrate new factual
  knowledge with the one already posses. The result
  of this is usually the displacement of older
  knowledge in favour of the new one (Lee, 2004).
• While they are engaged in activities to learn to
  work with second order concepts (this usually
  happens in studying small scale topics), they
  encounter history in the large scale in a fixed
  and given form (Shemilt, 2001)
• The fact that they encounter an already pre-
  organised (in topics) past encourage them to
  believe that the goal of history is to agree a
  final account of the past (Shemilt, 2001)
• Although they acknowledge the existence of
  different (end even opposing) accounts, they
  still believe that there is one homogeneous big
  picture of the past (Shemilt, 2001)

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The case of Cyprus

• Classroom experience in Cyprus, at least,
  suggests that the above descriptions apply in the
  case of Cypriot students also and this claim is
  also supported by anecdotal evidence of teachers
  perceptions concerns about students inability
  to connect the knowledge of different historical
  periods and about the tendency to confuse
  chronology and to misplace people and events in
  time appear frequently in history teachers
  everyday discussions (Chapman and Perikleous,
  2001)

5
Historical frameworks

• Students need to develop coherent historical
  frameworks
• This frameworks will be used to organize
  fragmented knowledge to larger groups to form big
  pictures of the past
• These frameworks should not become another kind
  of official narrative
• They should take the form of polythetic and
  multiperspective developmental narratives

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Suggestions for framework development

• Frameworks cannot be built only through teaching
  the details of history but with viewing also long
  term patterns of change
• This requires teaching broad generalisations
  about how human societies have developed
• The development of second order understanding is
  also important
• They must be rapidly and often revised so
  students can assimilate new substantive knowledge
  to the framework and also assimilate the
  framework itself.
• Frameworks must be open to change, improvement,
  modification or even abandoning in favour of a
  better ones.
• (Lee, 2004)

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Suggestions for framework development

• Students should be taught and re-taught summaries
  of the whole human history
• Thematic studies over long span of time should be
  included in syllabuses
• Reviews and analysis of overviews of various
  degrees of resolution (20, 160, 700 years etc.)
• When planning lesson, data that are meant to be
  incorporate into students developing narrative
  framework must be identified and distinguished
  from others (those indented for stimulating
  interest or to develop higher order thinking)
• Key data should be often revised and summarised
• (Shemilt, 2001)

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Suggestions for framework development (Lee, 2004
Shemilts, 2001)

• At the beginning of a course
• The framework must be taught very quickly at the
  beginning of a course
• Starting and finishing points should be
  identified
• Establish key thematic changes over a long period
  (at least 1000 years) between states of affairs.
•  
• During the course
• Students should return to the initial overview
  and identify landmark changes
• At each return the thematic changes will be
  further filled out
• Students asses the importance of changes and
  suggest their own questions to establish
  landmarks of change
• Depth studies
• Can be used to test the framework
• They find a place to fit into the frameworks
  big picture

9
Health warning!

• Not a sedimentary model where new knowledge is
  placed over the previous
• but
• A metamorphic model in which new knowledge is
  made active by fitting into the historical
  framework
• There are no established recipes of developing
  historical frameworks

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The example of New History Curricula in Cyprus
(primary education)

• Based on the synoptic framework approach (Lee,
  2004, 2007 Lee and Howson, 2009 Shemilt, 2011)
• Overviews and depth studies
• Overviews are taught at the beginning of the
  school year (4x80 lessons)
• Re-visited systematically during the school year
• Emphasis on large scale changes and continuities
  during depth studies

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Four key questions

• Overviews and depth studies are organized under
  four key questions
• How and why do we move?
• Movement and Settlement
• How do we spend our day
• Everyday life
• What do we think
• Ideas and Beliefs
• How do we organize
• Political and social organization

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How and why do we move?Movement and Settlement

• Why do people move?
• How and where do people move?
• Where and how people build their houses?

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How do we spend our day? Everyday life

• What do people eat and wear?
• Which technology do people use?
• How do people spend their day?

14
What do we think? Ideas and Beliefs

• What do people think?
• How do people express their ideas?

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How do we organize? Political and social
organization

• How big are groups of people?
• Who are the leaders of the groups?
• What are the relationships between groups?

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An example of an overview in Year 3 history

• How do we move from the Paleolithic Era to the
  21st century

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How do people move and where do they stay?
Today (Present- Now)
Paleolithic Era (The old era of stone)
Copper (bronze) Era
Neolithic Era (The new era of stone)
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Paleolithic EraWhy do people move?
We need to find a place where we will be
protected from cold.
We need to leave this place tomorrow to search
for food.
You are right. There is no food left in this
area.
Hopefully no one is going to force us to leave
this new place.
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Paleolithic EraHow do people move?
20
Paleolithic EraWhere do people live?
Tomorrow we will leave this place.
We will have to move again in a few days.
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Neolithic EraWhy do people move?
This was a great place to build our village.
Another group attacked us and forced us to leave.
Yes, it has everything we need.
Father, why did we have to leave our previous
village?
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Neolithic EraHow do people move?
23
Neolithic EraWhere do people build their
villages?
Building the village on that hill was a great
idea. From there we can spot anyone who wants to
attack us from a distance.
Fortunately the river is pretty close to the
village.
This a great place to grow our plants.
The forest is close so we can hunt.
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Neolithic EraHow do people build their houses?
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Copper EraWhy do people move?
This was great place to build our city.
Yes, its next to the sea and has everything we
need.
Tomorrow we have to sail for Egypt to sell
copper.
I had to move with my family here because our
village was destroyed by some people who attacked
us.
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Copper EraHow to people move?
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Copper EraWhere do people build their towns and
villages?
There is a forest nearby where we can hunt.
We are close to the sea so we can travel with our
ships.
There is a lot of copper in this area.
The land here is good for our plants.
The river is close to the city and its easy to
get our water from there.
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Copper EraHow do they build their houses?
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Comparing the eras How do we move and where to we
live?
Sort the 4 eras starting with the one during which people change their place of living more often. Sort the 4 eras beginning with the one during which its easier for people to move.
Sort the 4 eras beginning with the one during which moving is most dangerous. During which era(s) people live in one place permanently?
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Change and continuity How do we move and where
to we live? Colour the boxes
  ?a?a???????? ep??? ?e??????? ?p??? ?p??? t?? ?a????   S?µe?a
µe ta p?d?a          
st?? ???? µe ???µata (p.?. ?µa?e?, a?t?????ta)                
st?? ????          
st? ?e??                  
st?? a??a                      
On foot
With vehicles (e.g. cars)
On land
In the water
In the air