Impact on Pupils' Skills in the areas of Historical Evidence and Interpretation

It was clear from the outset that this project put pupils out of their ‘comfort zone' in terms of historical enquiry. In class, where they conduct enquiries or use evidence, they are typically doing so within a fairly defined context of either a specific period or a clearly defined theme or unit. The Museum Project required them to make sense of evidence which often came with no contextual information at all, and was likely to come from a period of history or a part of the world of which they had no prior knowledge. In this context, it was clear that even pupils who are usually very confident interpreting historical evidence in class found their work challenging, but usually enjoyably so. Pupils used a very wide range of research skills to find out about an artefact, ranging from using special interest websites (e.g. Roman coins, gas masks etc.) to interviewing other pupils, parents or staff about an object or a period of history. Pupils were, by and large, very successful in situating an object in its historical context via their research, and became confident talking about areas which fell far outside their areas of study. A key learning for us as teachers was that we need to allow pupils, as part of their normal every day history studies, to work more frequently with evidence without being provided with defined and levelled contextual information and very structured guidance questions otherwise they will never really be doing history and their skills in using evidence will in fact remain limited.

In terms of interpretation, some pupils found this concept relatively challenging, while others very quickly grasped the nature of a museum as an interpretation of history.  Our staring point in ‘teaching' in interpretation was to look at the range of questions one might ask about an artefact, and how the questions we ask of an object essentially steer our interpretation of it, and would influence the choices we made about displaying it and connecting it with other objects. Many of the pupils curators found it quite challenging to abandon a fairly rigid linear thinking about the artefacts (they should be displayed in chronological order; all the weapons should go together). We did not always in these cases, being honest, develop a successful strategy to help them move outside the boundaries of fairly one-dimensional thinking about each artefact and this is certainly an area on which we will be focusing as a Department in the year ahead. If we did the project again, more time would be spent planning more structured activities to develop pupil's appreciation of interpretation. The pupil curators visits to other Museums, particularly the Horniman Museum, did open up a very helpful dialogue about the interpretive choices that Museums make, and this is certainly one area of pupils' training we would build on next time.

The Discovery Trails we planned for visitors to the Museum were more successful in developing pupil visitors' understanding of the multiple ways in which an artefact could be interpreted. Pupils were invited to select themes (levelled by age and ability), for example, conflict, women, society, power, technology, and were asked to identify artefacts they felt belonged in this theme and give a brief explanation of why. They were then asked to consider how they would display the artefacts if they were putting together an exhibition on that theme. Pupils were usually then paired off, working on different themes and then giving each other a tour of the museum based on their theme. This seemed to help pupils realise that there were multiple ways of interpreting objects from the past, and that a historical narrative is created through the choices the author makes about inclusions and exclusions. This is a teaching strategy we feel we can build on in our schemes of work.

Overall the work of both the museum curators and the pupil, parent and staff visitors raised as many questions as it answered. These issues will be explore further in the article for Teaching History, and are also key departmental research priorities in the year ahead.

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