Diversity 

A selection of useful Teaching History Articles on 'Diversity' selected by our authors:

1. Ian Luff: 'I've been in the Reichstag': Rethinking roleplay. Teaching History 100

Ian Luff constructs a rationale for the use of drama, practical demonstration and roleplay in pupils' learning. He follows this with a wealth of practical examples and detailed advice based on his own professional experience and his experience in running training sessions for other teachers. His analysis of the value of such activities is particularly interesting. He is emphatic that these are not merely extras, designed only to relax or to have some fun. They can be used as serious learning activities with rigorous learning objectives and they need to be positioned carefully within a planned learning sequence.

2. Alison Kitson: Challenging stereotypes and avoiding the superficial: a suggested approach to teaching the Holocaust. Teaching History 104

Alison Kitson provides a rationale for a scheme of work for Year 9 (13-14 year-olds). She argues that teachers should analyse the kind of historical learning that is taking place when the Holocaust is studied. Critical of the assumption that learning will take place as a result of exposure, she argues that teachers need to think about learning outcomes and to explore how these connect and support each other.

3. Ian Luff: Beyond 'I speak, you listen boy!' Exploring diversity of attitudes and experiences through speaking and listening. Teaching History 105

What is historical rigour in a speaking and listening activity? How do we make sure that a direct focus on improving the quality of pupils' classroom talk is, at the same time, a focus upon strengthening historical knowledge, skill and understanding? For while it is possible to make a very strong link, there is no necessary one. Pupils could become more skilled at speaking and listening, but drift in the direction of historical sloppiness. Ian Luff sets out both principles and clear, detailed practical guidance for making sure that this does not happen.

4. Nicolas Kinloch: Confounding expectation at Key Stage 3: flower-songs from an indigenous empire. Teaching History 112

In this article Nicolas Kinloch examines aspects of an indigenous empire: that of Aztec Mexico. He attempts to persuade a group of mixed-ability Year 8 students to examine - and question - some of the assumptions they bring to the study of this empire. Their attitudes reflect quite widespread beliefs about so-called primitive societies, raising questions about the origin and accuracy of the ‘knowledge' our students hold when they embark on any enquiry. Kinloch suggests ways in which ‘knowledge' this can be challenged using an often-neglected source: the poetry of the Mexica people themselves. Such a source allows the Mexica to speak about some of their deepest beliefs in their own words. It encourages students to recognise and appreciate the complexity that is the common element of all human societies.

5. Helena Stride: Britain was our home': Helping Years 9, 10, and 11 to understand the black experience of the Second World War. Teaching History 112

In this article, Helena Stride shows how the Imperial War Museum responded to criticism that insufficient attention had been paid to the contribution of black and Asian people to Britain's wars. She focuses on one of two resource-packs produced by the Museum, which highlights the experience of Britain's colonial peoples, both in Britain itself and within the Empire. She demonstrates how the pack might be used with students at Key Stages 3 and GCSE, and emphasises above all the need to integrate its material into a sequence of lessons.

6. Matthew Bradshaw, Katie Hawks: Triumphs Show. Teaching History 113

This edition of the 'Triumphs Show' explains 'How to make the Elizabethan Religious Settlement sufficiently complicated for Year 8'.

7. Mary Woolley: How did changing conceptions of place lead to conflict in the American West? Reflecting on revision methods for GCSE. Teaching History 116

Mary Woolley decided to make four revision sheets for her lower-band Year 11 set. Each was to help them view their American West study through a different lens. She was rather uncertain, however (and so were the pupils) about her fourth sheet on places. Her reflections on the revision sheet and subsequent reading led not only to a totally new revision sheet on place for next year, but to a fresh way of developing pupils' thinking about the entire course.

8. Alison Stephen: Why can't they just live together happily, Miss?' Unravelling the complexities of the Arab-Israeli conflict at GCSE. Teaching History 120

How often do our students long for black and white rather than the shades of grey that history generally presents us with? Understanding the Arab-Israeli conflict is all about understanding diversity and complexity in all their shades of grey. Through a series of wonderful activities, Stephen demonstrates how she develops an understanding of chronology, diverse perspectives, the difficulty of dividing land and the significance of place. She uses analogy, visual images, role play, living graphs and continuums to engage her students and help them to comprehend a world that is foreign to them.

9. Rupert Gaze: Uncovering the hidden histories: black and Asian people in the two world wars. Teaching History 120

The stories we tell in history are often stories about ourselves. This can lead to tremendous distortion. Rupert Gaze was shocked when a young black student told him that there was no point in his studying the Second World War because it had nothing to do with him or his family. While Gaze has worked for the Imperial War Museum (IWM) North, it has built on its inclusive beginnings to develop displays, exhibitions, resources and educational programmes to combat the idea that the British contribution to the two world wars which so shaped the last century was entirely white.

10. Jamie Byrom and Michael Riley: Identity shakers: cultural encounters and the development of pupils' multiple identities. Teaching History 127

History teachers are increasingly used to the idea that helping pupils reflect on and understand identities is one of the central purposes of history education. In this article Jamie Byrom and Michael Riley reflect on what thinking about identity historically might mean; by considering the history of encounters between the West and Islam in their full complexity, they suggest that history can ‘shake up' simplistic and singular notions of identity and help pupils think in plural and complex ways.

11. Kay Traille: You should be proud about your history. They make you feel ashamed:' Teaching history hurts. Teaching History 127

Traille has completed her doctoral research with students of African-Caribbean descent and their mothers on their experiences of and attitudes to school history, specifically the way that black people are sometimes portrayed. It makes for stark reading. Lessons can be drawn about the inclusion of many pupils traditionally represented only on the edges of our history curriculum whether through race, class, sex or religion. This is essential reading before revising any schemes of work for Curriculum 2008.

12. Rosie Sheldrake and Dale Banham: Seeing a different picture: exploring migration through the lens of history. Teaching History 129

Rosie Sheldrake and Dale Banham here share the results of their desire to use the curriculum changes which are upon us to do something which they had intended for some time. Their modern world study was about war and more war, and they had neglected the social and cultural aspects of the twentieth century. Moreover, they had not exploited a fantastic local resource -in their case, an organised community dedicated to preserving the experiences of Caribbean immigrants to Ipswich.

13. Dan Moorhouse: How to make historical simulations adaptable, engaging and manageable. Teaching History 133

Dan Moorhouse suggests that history teachers are sometimes put off role-play or simulations because the amount of preparation - intellectual and practical - appears both time-consuming and expensive. He argues that effective simulations need be neither of these. Building on recent work on roleplay and simulations such as that by Dawson and Luff, Moorhouse suggests some principles for keeping historical simulations both manageable and engaging.

14. Diana Laffin: ‘If everyone's got to vote then, obviously ... everyone's got to think': Using remote voting to involve everyone in classroom thinking at AS and A2. Teaching History 133

Diana Laffin shares her findings on an action research project into the use of remote voting systems in the AS and A2 classroom. She was particularly interested in examining the impact of such devices on inclusion. For Laffin's students, participation in lessons was nothing new. Starting from a baseline of high participation, active learning was the norm in her classroom. Yet it was her doubts about how far participation was actually securing full inclusion that led her to research the use of hand-held devices.

15. Matthew Bradshaw: Drilling down: how one history department is working towards progression in pupils' thinking about diversity across Years 7, 8 and 9. Teaching History 135

Bradshaw shows how his department has attempted to go beyond treating diversity as a content descriptor and is instead trying to foster a form of problem-solving and a type of historical account. Bradshaw's rationale for whole-Key-Stage coherence and progression is based on repeated revisiting of the challenges involved in discerning and characterising ‘similarity and difference' within past situations. He anticipates some of the difficulties students will face and explains his department's early thinking on how students might be supported in addressing (rather than avoiding) such difficulties.

16. Kimberley Anthony: Were industrial towns ‘death-traps'? Year 9 learn to question generalisations and to challenge their preconceptions about the ‘boring' 19th century. Teaching History 135

Kimberley Anthony and her history colleagues were troubled by Year 9's assumption that World War II was the only interesting thing that they were going to do in Year 9. Nineteenth-century industrialisation, even their own South Wales heritage on their doorstep, had always been greeted by pupils with groans. Refusing to give in to pupil pressure to spend the year on Hitler, they decided to show pupils just how interesting the nineteenth century is. They chose to do this by presenting it as an historical problem concerning diversity.

17. Cunning Plan 135. Teaching History 135

Let's play ‘TOO SIMPLE!' (a.k.a. ‘the generalisation game').

Some years ago, in my own history classroom, in a not-very-inspired moment, I developed a straightforward, low-resource, low-preparation activity which turned out to have more power than I had anticipated in getting pupils to reflect on degree or type of similarity and difference among experiences of people in the past...

18. Nutshell 135: The challenge of analysing ‘difference'. Teaching History 135

Hello Nutshell. What's all this stuff in the NC Attainment Target about ‘nature', ‘extent' and ‘interplay' of diversity?

The trick is to look behind the word ‘diversity'. Then it all makes sense...

You might also have a look at E-CPD Unit 6 on Diversity by Michael Riley and Jamie Byrom. Our Key Stage 3 Guide has a section on Cultural, ethnic and religious diversity by Paige Richardson.