The History Extension course takes students back to their first History classes in the secondary school – the question they are investigating is, after all, the same – What is history? The Extension course aims to move students beyond source analysis and into historiography. Students realise that history is a process that is conducted by a wide range of people, and the process and recording has changed over time. A person who represents a construction of history includes anyone from ‘traditional’ historians such as Edward Gibbon to film makers who produce representations of history such as Shekar Kapur. The extents to which historians add their own interpretations, beliefs, and context are all a major focus of the Extension course. Further, students need to decide what they believe the purpose of history to be based on the key questions outlined in the syllabus.[1]
In teaching this course, I would start first with the analysis of historians in the source booklet, so that students could get a good understanding of the plethora of approaches and views. I would work through the views of Herodotus, Bede, Gibbon, von Ranke and Carr with the students in class, and then have students each choose one additional source from the booklet to analyse and then share with the class via both their blog and as a presentation. This way students would be working together to share the workload, while still getting exposure to a wide variety of historians and historical viewpoints.
Using the source booklet to examine the different approaches various historians have towards the writing of history pushes students to reconsider their previous assumptions regarding the discipline. For example, considering the work of Natalie Zemon Davis who “is willing to ‘speculate’ when she does not have proof available”[2]; Richard Evans who argues against what he calls “ultra-relativism”[3] or Livy, whose use of rhetoric to facilitate moral and political truths could be seen as being detrimental to his presentation of actual historical truth.[4]
After this, I would then divide the time between the Case Study and their History Project. This would be so students could put into practice the skills learnt during the initial study of the historians – the skills would be modelled in the case study and implemented in their own research.
I have opted to present learning tasks via a blog, http://hstx2011.blogspot.com due to the nature of the course. There are vast amounts of sources and readings available, and by providing them online I am not only cutting down on time spent printing and compiling the information, but also ensuring the students have access to everything at every lesson. Additionally, this is scaffolding a way for them to organise their learning and research. I would present the content and background knowledge during the classes, and use the activities on the blog to guide their research and to form the basis of classroom discussions and debates. Because the project part of the course is done individually, my aim is to have students interacting and providing each other with differing perspectives during the ‘What is History’ part of the course.
