What is school history for? British student-teachers’ perspectives

Abstract

Relatively little is known about student-teachers’ ideas about the nature and purpose of history education. This paper reviews research on this issue and presents an analysis of how the aims of school history have been conceptualised within successive versions of the English National Curriculum since 1991. Data arising from online discussion among 40 student-teachers of history in England are subjected to qualitative analysis, revealing the wide range of views that they held about the aims and purposes of school history. Contrasts and continuities are identified between the student-teachers’ thinking and the thinking of English policy makers and opinion formers, leading to the conclusion that curriculum developers need to pay much closer attention than they have in the past to the thinking of the current and future history teachers who are ultimately responsible for the implementation of the curriculum.