Political, educational and historiographical theoretical perspectives in the history curriculum

Abstract

The chapter reviews curriculum debates globally, which involve negotiation between political, historiographical and pedagogical principles and perspectives. One difficulty is the reconciling of ‘big picture’ history with ‘alternative’ views (gender-based, indigenous history from below). Another is the problem of diffusing overtly exceptionalist or nationalist history, one solution being to set national history in a wider regional and global framework. To some extent, views of ‘civic society’ have become the new exceptionalism, but thinking about hybrid and multiple identities corresponds with efforts to fuse the alternative and big picture (or ‘great’) traditions. Prejudices against content (Bruner, though his thought has developed) need to be challenged by examining what the nature of academic history is and how this can be appropriated by schools. Content as context and the deployment of ‘overview and depth study’ or ‘overview and focus’ methods can compensate for unease over a sense of the possible hegemony of content. Theories associated with conversation, dialogue and discourse (Oakeshott, Bakhtin, Vygotsky) show that historiography and pedagogy share some of the same territory. Devices which allow students to get inside an event (Collingwood) especially using discussion based on sources followed by presentations or role-plays offer active routes for students of all ages to mirror the processes undertaken by historians. An autonomous model of the teacher of history working in partnership with a world of historians and history teacher educators is preferable to the model of a teacher faithfully ‘delivering’ a national curriculum for political reasons. The use of the Internet for this purpose provides rich opportunities for dialogue between teachers and historians.