- Email: [email protected]
Information technology: Catalyst for change in history teaching in schools
Compufers Educ. Vol. 16, No. I, pp. 57-64, 1991 Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved
Copyright
c
0360-1315191 $3.00 + 0.00 1991 Pergamon Press plc
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY: CATALYST FOR CHANGE IN HISTORY TEACHING IN SCHOOLS FRANCES Trinity
and All Saints’ College,
Brownberrie
BLOW Lane,
Horsforth,
Leeds LS18 SHD, England
(Received 6 August 1990; accepted 24 August 1990) Abstract-Databases are commonly used in schools in the U.K. in teaching history. The computer can enable new sources to be introduced to pupils and encourage them to develop skills in statistical analysis. However, the potential exceeds the practice since many history teachers are untrained in statistical techniques. Discussion of the use of a particular data base package, Pride’s Purge, suggests ways in which history teachers can be introduced to the techniques of quantitative analysis in order to raise their students’ levels of attainment in constructing causal explanations in history. The design and development of the package illustrates an approach to inservice training in both information technology and an academic discipline.
INTRODUCTION
“The past is by definition a datum which nothing in the future will change. But the knowledge of the past is something progressive which is constantly transforming and perfecting itself” [ 11. The use of computers in the study and teaching of history is now widely, though not universally, accepted. While some suspect the use of computers is equated with a view of history as an objective science and others fear its usage in the classroom will lead to mechanized and mechanical learning, many now recognize the contribution information technology can make to the advance of knowledge. At the level of academic research “database technology is the most firmly established of computer based techniques among historical disciplines”[2]. At school level, within the new National Curriculum which started in the U.K. in September 1989, pupils will be required to use information technology within their study of all the foundation subjects which include history. The description of level 7 of pupils’ attainment in information technology capability, which is believed to be within the reach of most pupils in the secondary school, states that pupils should “be able to select and interrogate a computer database to obtain information needed for a task”[3]. Thus whether it is used to extend the knowledge and understanding of what happened in the past of professional historians or of children in history classrooms, the computer database has an established place. However, the quality of usage within the classroom is very variable and often fails to exploit fully the opportunities offered by the data and the information technology. This paper discusses the development of a database package designed to extend the range and level of information technology applications in history teaching in secondary schools, SOFTWARE
FOR TEACHING
HISTORY
History teaching in the U.K. has been comparatively well supported in the development of educational software. Over two hundred programs for use in teaching history have been developed within the last 10 years. The quality of these packages is not always high but such a number does represent the outcome of a considerable investigation into the potential of the technology, for application to history teaching. These applications have been broadly classified into two categories: databases and simulations. Such a classification is misleading as the types are not mutually exclusive and simulations may contain databases and databases may support simulations. However, databases could be described as those programs which contain files of information in
58
FRANCESBLOW
a standardized format, which could be accessed through prescribed routines. This data might have been coded for the computer by the commercial producer or the private user. The most common sorts of material found in British schools encoded in this way are mostly derived from administrative records of local or central government such as census returns, poll books, gaol records and parish registers. THE
IMPACT
OF COMPUTERIZED
DATABASES
ON HISTORY
TEACHING
The development of the facility to interrogate a large body of statistical data in seconds, in the classroom, through the use of a microcomputer, coincided with the widespread adoption of the New History in British Schools. This movement originated in the 1970s owed much to the Schools Council History 13-16 Project started in 1973, and promoted the study of history in schools through a study of source material. Children are encouraged to consider the nature of history as a discipline as well as to study the past, and so learn some elements of the historian’s methodology. This approach brings pupils into contact with a range of source materialsdocuments, artefacts, visual and oral evidence; the evidence found in landscapes as well as in libraries. The availability of database software packages has enabled many history teachers for the first time to make accessible to pupils an entire source of statistical data. Previously it would have been too time-consuming for pupils to process the data by hand and so they would have only encountered samples. The information technology revolution thus has helped extend the history curriculum by widening pupils’ experience of historical sources. In order to handle sources effectively, pupils have to learn skills in evaluation and interpretation and must be versed in some quantitative as well as qualitative techniques of interpretation. Students need to know how to classify and sort data in order to construct patterns. They have to be taught to make deductions and extrapolations from material presented in graphic forms such as histograms, pie charts, distribution tables and scattergrams. They have to learn how to interpret data given as raw numbers, averages and percentages, and how to read contingency tables. Pupils will need to know how to construct generalizations derived from statistical data and how to test their theories against the data both for confirmation and disconfirmation. Such skills would not be unusual in the study of simple statistics, economics or cliometrics but in the average history classroom in the U.K. it would be still fairly uncommon as the trend in the source movement has been towards textual and pictorial, not statistical analysis. Computerized databases could be used to extend further the history curriculum for children, who could be encouraged to review their understanding of what constituted an historical fact. They might be introduced to the idea that some historical facts are quantitative generalizations. A statement such as: ‘Cholera was a major cause of death in a town in 1830’, could be investigated by pupils to establish the degree of statistical support for it. Pupils would need to decide whether the proportion of deaths caused by cholera should merit the use of the term “major” and might become more aware of the frequency with which historians use such quantitative terms. Some information technology packages also support cross-curricula skills such as numeracy. It is widely recognized that pupils often do not transfer skills and concept mastery across subject boundaries, and that a pupil’s understanding demonstrated in a maths lesson is not apparent in a succeeding history lesson where the same ideas are being employed. For example, the term average is frequently used by historians but is just as frequently misinterpreted by pupils. Trials in schools of a program (Burial Register[4]) that displayed on screen the changing average age of death while pupils entered in the details of individual records from a parish register revealed widespread misconceptions such as the belief that the average represented an actual age of death; that the average age of death indicated the most common age of death; that nobody or very few lived beyond the average age of death. This program helped to reinforce teaching elsewhere in the curriculum and to develop students’ understanding of statistics in history. COMMON
LIMITATIONS
OF DATABASE
USAGE
The trials data of Burial Register helped to confirm an impression derived from talking with teachers on inservice courses all over the U.K., that many history teachers were nervous of using
History teaching in schools
59
statistical data in their teaching because they had rarely received any training in the handling of statistics either in their own schooling or in higher education. Consequently many history teachers avoided statistical sources when they were available or set tasks to pupils which were of a low level either statistically or historically speaking. Thus even where computer packages were available that enabled pupils to undertake more than count and list routines in the interrogation of a database, the following were the standard questions set for pupils to answer. “How many people in your village were born outside Yorkshire?” “In which occupation were most people employed?” “What is the average size of household?” “Write an account on immigration into the village”. Such an exercise was useful in teaching pupils that answers to historical questions have to be compiled not simply extracted on the basis of comprehension from a source, but it required the pupils to do no more than describe their findings. A task that would demand more of pupils and use to a greater extent the information technology, would be one that asked pupils to explain the past, interpret their findings, identify patterns, raise questions and offer some answers. CAMBRIDGE
ADVANCED
LEVEL
HISTORY
PROJECT
To meet this need, a computer package was developed in 1988 as part of the set of resources designed and produced by teachers for the new Advanced Level History course in the Cambridge History Project (CHP)*. The Project was set up to extend the principles of the Schools History 13-16 Project to the curriculum for pupils aged 16-19. It has attempted to provide a progressive structure which builds upon the levels of concept and skill mastery of students at 16 and extends their understanding of cause, change, empathetic explanation and evidence over a 2-year course. The course consists of three units: a development study, a study in depth and a comparative study, all divided into modules and resting upon an investigation of source material, primary and secondary, and an analysis of the relevant historiographical debates. The pupils’ learning is measured according to their levels of attainment in each of six domains: using evidence; understanding historical enquiry; offering explanations; understanding of cause and motive; constructing accounts; understanding of change and development. “Clearly such proposals carry with them implications for a changing pedagogy. Successful use of these materials will require the teacher to concentrate less upon dispensing information and more upon enabling students to ask appropriate questions of the evidence provided. Arguably this has always been the case in good teaching of history at A-Level. . . what the Cambridge Project will do is to allow such teaching strategies to predominate”[5]. PRIDE’S
PURGE:
THE
PROGRAM
It was within this context that the computer program, Pride’s Purge (published by Hutchinson), was developed as a resource for teaching the syllabus “People Power and Politics”. The depth study was focused on whether there was a mid-seventeenth-century English Revolution and the program was an integral teaching aid in the module considering explanations of intentions, actions and events with special reference to the period of the English Civil War between King and Parliament 164&1664. A key event at this time was the trial and execution by the Parliamentarians of King Charles I. A turning point in the sequence of affairs came with the crucial vote in Parliament in December 1648 on whether to continue negotiations with the King. Subsequently all those who wished to continue with the attempt to reach a political settlement with the King were forcibly removed from Parliament by Colonel Pride (hence Pride’s Purge) and a group of members of Parliament seized power and set up a court to try the King for treason. Details of the 471 MPs *For information on the Cambridge A-Level History Project contact Bob Ellis, Director CHP, Trinity and All Saints’ College. Brownberrie Lane, Horsforth, Leeds LS18 5HD. CHP started national trials September 1988; the first examinations take place Summer 1990.
FRANCES BLOW
60
involved at that time have survived and were collated by the historian David Underdown[6]. A computer program was designed to enable students to interrogate and analyse this data which includes details of the MPs’ voting behaviour, age, marital and social status, education, constituency, religion and income. The program was structured into three parts. The first, Count and List, enabled the database to be searched for MPs with similar characteristics in up to four fields. It will, for example, provide information on how many MPs who were revolutionaries, were educated at Cambridge, came from North East England and were gentry. The second part, Pie Chart Analysis, displays pie charts for two categories of voting behaviour in relation to one field such as income or age, Sections in the pie chart analysis provide either raw figures or percentages. The third part, called Contingency Tables enabled students to test their hypotheses as to whether particular relationships between voting behaviour and socio-economic factors are statistically significant, indicating a possible causal relationship.
PRIDE’S
PURGE:
CAUSAL
EXPLANATION
AND
QUANTITATIVE
ANALYSIS
It is rare to find a program that enables such a degree of sophistication in statistical analysis being used in history classrooms in the U.K. Yet the program is easy to operate. The user is not required to master any conventions in asking questions other than to learn how to select combinations of factors from a menu (in English) using the space bar. The student is liberated from technicalities to grapple with the historical ideas. It is apparent from observations of teachers at inservice sessions that the initial difficulties encountered related not to the operation of the program, but to the implications of the decisions of the program operator. The cry “I don’t know what is happening?” or “What does this mean?” did not result from a program malfunction but from teacher expectations that the computer would function as a teaching machine. It is a common characteristic of people, either adults or pupils, faced with a computer. to first press buttons, find out how the program reacts, ask “What is it doing?’ and then turn to the program manual. With many simulation programs, contexts and consequences are usually self evident and explicable from text on screen. With database programs, however, context and purpose are dependent on the user and many programs contain such complex routines for asking questions that they inhibit and distract the user from formulating higher order questions. They key issue is “What do I want to know”? not “How do I ask a question?” Preliminary tests with members of the program development team suggested two elements that needed further attention before the program was distributed nationally to the trials’ schools. One related to the purpose and nature of questions to ask of the data that were relevant to the A-Level course. The second concerned the interpretation and explanation of the answers the program provided. In essence little of this related to using information technology; almost entirely the issue was either the procedures for quantitative analysis or the nature of historical explanation. In effect the computer program had become an agency for inservice training for teachers not in information technology nor pedagogy but in their own academic field. These two issues were addressed mainly through the support material, the teachers guide and student leaflets, not through adding inst~ctional and explanatory pages of text to the program. If the software was to function as a resource appropriate to pupils of a wide range of abilities and attainments, then it had to be unfettered from the constraints of a tutorial package. Sections on how to use the program in the classroom and student leaflets were accordingly inserted in the teachers guide. The objectives of the course relevant to this module included the requirement that students should be able to: (a) (b) (c) (d)
analyse the causes of events distinguishing between enabling conditions and precipitants; reconstruct the intentions and interpret the actions of individuals in the past; undertake comparative analysis in order to generate and evaluate historical explanations; identify problems arising from historical sources.
History teaching in schools
Accordingly
61
suggestions and guidelines for questions were offered ranging from the simple:
“What was the religious affiliation of the Revolutionaries?“; to the composite: “From your interpretation Revolutionaries?“;
of the statistics in the database, what characteristics
typify the
to the more complex: “To what extent does an analysis of the data support the view that events of 1648-1649 constitute a revolution which had long term social and economic causes?“; concluding with the evaluative: “What do you consider to be the value of a quantitative analysis as a means of explaining the behaviour of those involved in events of 1648-1649?” Many examples of hypotheses were also included for students to investigate and test. This procedure would require students to decide on the relevant data needed and on the methods of obtaining it. In addition guidance was provided on interpretation of the data. Students needed to be aware that to identify single groups was meaningless and that it was essential to compare one group with another and to establish not only how many MPs were in a group under investigation but also how many were not in a group. Students had to be advised to test a wide range of possibilities and not to assume that once an association was discovered that a clear causal relationship had been established. Since students were being encouraged to identify trends of behaviour through the use of information technology in order to construct causal explanations, it would be tempting for them to assume some patterns of association could explain and not simply describe a state of affairs. Text was therefore incorporated into the program stating clearly in the Contingency Table analysis where an association was due to chance. Students were advised to test data for a range of causal relationships and to discover whether there were patterns of association between the socio-economic factors, as well as between the factors and an event. Lastly students were warned that even where a possible causal association between voting behaviour and background factors had been identified, motives could not be attributed to the MPs involved. In this way through guidelines to students provided within the teacher’s manual, suggestions were made to lead users on to exploit the potential of the computer program and ensure complex causal models were constructed and tested. To illustrate these applications fictitious examples drawing upon contemporary issues and using statistics relating to football hooliganism, were included in the manual for classroom study. Step by step explanations were provided, in particular for the use of contingency tables, the least familiar element in the statistical analysis. This package constituted a challenge for many teachers. It required them to use information technology when many history teachers still lack confidence in their capacity to do so. It obliged them to use information technology for statistical analysis when many doubted their expertise in statistical techniques. It also involved them in extending the nature and range of their students’ capacity for explanation in history, moving into the measurement of understanding hitherto undemanded in many A-Level History courses or lost in the pressures to master and rehearse quantities of information. By including the information technology unit in this course it was possible for students to undertake what would otherwise have been impossible, a quantitative analysis of a level of sophistication consistent with the overall standard of the course.
FRANCESBLOW
62
PRIDE’S
PURGE:
ANALYSIS
OF TRIALS
IN SCHOOLS
Results of the trials have not yet been obtained from all of the sixty schools involved but feedback from the samples received so far have revealed a range of responses. “Less able students found the contingency tables very difficult to grasp. However the statistical analysis certainly enabled them to talk through ideas. . . [which] they related back to the views of historians that they had encountered in earlier units”. Clearly the section of the package that has caused some problems was that on the use of Contingency Tables. Sometimes this was due to the ability of the pupils; sometimes this was due to the knowledge of and methods used by the teacher. One teacher reported that his students “found it difficult to envisage their use and to understand data they fed in”.
the relationships
of the
He added “I did not have time to use the guide properly. Is it possible to produce a shorter, simpler version?“. Another teacher commenting on her students said “They proved much more computer literate than I but surprisingly their understanding was sometimes weak’. Her observation identifies a common fallacy in the assessment of pupils’ learning when using information technology; the confusion of technical dexterity with conceptual mastery of the significance of the operations and results obtained. This mismatch can be overlooked particularly where a teacher not only lacks the relevant info~ation technology skills but feels threatened by the technology and over estimates the expertise of those with the appropriate competences. Trials of the program also exposed another dilemma. In the U.K. the use of computer assisted learning to support heuristic models of learning is widely established. In history, software for investigatory and exploratory learning is far more commonly used than tutorial packages for reinforcement learning. The strength of the approach is that it encourages pupils to take ownership of what they discover and it aids understanding through apprehension of ideas in context and in operation. The weakness of the curriculum model is that it can sometimes encourage teachers to be vague about what they wish pupils to discover or what pupils have learnt on the grounds that the outcomes of experiential learning cannot be predicted with certainty or totally controlled. Several teachers reported after using Pride’s Purge for the first time, that next time they would provide more guidance to students to avoid them “wasting time” or getting inconciusive results from their inquiries. Other teachers realized that it was necessary to provide guidance without being over directive in their instructions where their students were ignorant of the rules not of using the computer but in conducting an historical inquiry with quantitative data, For example some worksheets given to pupils stated “Remember that you have printouts of the numbers not the percentages and therefore it is impossible to make relevant deductions about relationships on the basis of raw numbers alone. Percentages show relationships more clearly”. “When using a Contingency Table example for testing a hypothesis use the blank sheets for this so that it is clear what you are trying to find out in relation to the data, otherwise what you are doing will be a total waste of your time”. This teacher reported that by the fourth lesson focused on this topic: “the importance of writing down what they were testing emerged and also the importance of asking the right questions and making the right choices in terms of the permutations of the variables, otherwise they would be wandering around in a morass of ill-digested material.”
History teaching in schools
63
Such an observation revealed how an advanced level of source analysis had been reached. Pupils at a lower level of attainment in using evidence tend to think that a source will have the “right” answer if only they can identify the “right” source. Such an approach can indirectly be encouraged by low level source analysis when interrogating computerized data bases as described earlier in this paper. The A-Level teacher quoted above in referring to the “right” questions meant meaningful and valid questions, not those that would yield the “correct” answer. Another teacher came to a similar conclusion and in his concluding comments on the trials material said “It would be helpful to have some worked examples of how one might [investigate] religion for example. There was the classic dilemma of how far to let them play and ask questions and how far to structure it”. In retrospect he concluded he should have provided more guidance on relevant lines of inquiry. More than one teacher observed that “the pupils studying statistics, geography and biology were at an advantage in the sense that they were familiar with x2 and were able to understand what was going on. They were surprised though to see it occurring in a history lesson”. In one school, in a follow-up exercise to working on the program, they considered the advantages and disadvantages of a quantitative analysis of the participants of events in 1648 as against an individual view of the events, using three case studies. The latter technique, the analysis of key individuals is by far the more common approach in studying events in the past in history classrooms. Pride’s Purge clearly opened up new areas for addressing causal explanations in history. PRIDE’S
PURGE
AND INSERVICE
TRAINING
However, how successful was the package in providing inservice training for the teachers? Amongst the’most common types of inservice training in the U.K. are two models. The first, the l-day course, depends heavily on the success of the course tutor in generating within 1 day sufficient enthusiasm and understanding of the relevant innovation for the teachers to use and be able to apply it when back within the normal routine pressures. The advantage of the type is that it may be possible to address a large number of people within a single day session, more than may be feasible in the second model-the course (long or short) which involves teachers attending for a fixed period, each week over a term or year. Although fewer people may be affected by this mode, it is a strategy that is likely to be more effective as it allows time for reflection, assimilation, application and evaluation of the relevant innovation. However, during recent years the educational budgets for inservice training have been curtailed and alternative or supplementary strategies are needed if curriculum development is to be sustained. Reviews of different approaches to curriculum development in the U.K. have suggested that success or failure of curriculum development can be significantly influenced by two factors: the extent to which teachers are involved in the development of the materials; and the kind and amount of support available following the initial distribution of new teaching materials. It was not sufficient to supply, prepare and disseminate new resources and syllabuses; continued support was essential to sustain co-ordinated and critical use[7]. Pride’s Purge is part of a wider curriculum development project (CHP) that requires teachers to work with unfamiliar historical content (i.e. topics and periods not commonly taught in School History 16-19); to incorporate into their teaching an emphasis on historical methodology, and to focus on the explanation of the past as well as on the acquisition of knowledge of that past. The classroom materials have all been produced by practising teachers, and the project is supported by networks of self-help groups and regional and national inservice meetings. The purpose of these meetings is to enable teachers to share views on the materials and delivery of the courses not to give teachers instruction on what to do. In this way, all teaching approaches and materials are subject to regular review and revision. Once full details of the trials of Pride’s Purge have been collated, it is very probable the computer program will be modified, even possibly extended to accommodate more complex cross-tabulation. The development team decided to realize only part
64
FRANCES BLOW
of the original design brief on the grounds that it would be sufficiently demanding for many, in the first instance. In recognition of the need to prepare teachers to handle the Pride’s Purge unit and quantitative analysis, the package was constructed in certain ways. The program was structured with a sequence of activities that were perceived as being progressively more demanding but also confidence building. Although the menu enabled the user to select a utility (count and list, pie chart analysis; contingency tables) in any order preferred, the decision to put count and list as the first option was influenced by the belief this was the most familiar routine to most teachers. It was revealing to see from the trials returns that once teachers were competent in handling the program they found that for teaching purposes it was sometimes better to introduce pupils to the database by starting with the pie chart analyses, not count and list exercises. Furthermore while the teachers’ guide does not prescribe any classroom usage of the pack, it does provide suggestions for teaching exercises, follow-up lessons after working on the computer, and ideas for classroom organization. In addition, the student leaflets, which explain the principles and procedures of quantitative analysis, function as information sheets for teachers. CONCLUSION
A national trawl of teachers’ views on the content, teaching methods and resources for the syllabuses of CHP, prior to the development of the project, indicated a very large demand for software to support all the courses. At the same time the current educational policy is to promote the integration of information technology across the curriculum. However, if the full educational potential of the information technology is to be exploited, more support must be given to teachers: not in how to operate the machine but in how to use the program to develop the curriculum of their subject. Software manuals that accompany educational packages have been gradually evolving over the last 10 years but there is still a tendency for the notes to focus predominantly on technical details and to marginalize the educational issues. Manuals alone will not of course provide adequate training but could offer more support than they commonly do and if combined with wider contextual support, then for both teachers and pupils “the computer learning environment will have profound effects on the quality of their learning” [8]. REFERENCES 1. Marc Bloch M., The Historian’s Craff, p. 58. Manchester University Press (1954). 2. Morris R. J., Editorial. History Compur. 1, No. I (1989). 3. Technology, National Curriculum Council Consultation Report, p. 83 (1989). 4. Burial Register, produced by the joint Schools History 13-16 and Computers in the Curriculum Project. Longman, Oxford (1986). 5. Kelly A., Cambridge A Level History Project Information Bulletin No. 3, March (1987). 6. Underdown D., Pride’s Purge, Polifics in the Puritan Revolution. Oxford University Press (1971). 7. Galton M. and Moon B. (Eds), Changing Schools. Changing Curriculum (1983). 8. Nolan P. and Ryba K., The microcomputer as a learning system. N.Z. JI educ. Stud. 19, (1984). Cited in Beswick N., Re-thinking Acfive Learning. Falmer Press, Brighton (1987).
Copyright
c
0360-1315191 $3.00 + 0.00 1991 Pergamon Press plc
INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY: CATALYST FOR CHANGE IN HISTORY TEACHING IN SCHOOLS FRANCES Trinity
and All Saints’ College,
Brownberrie
BLOW Lane,
Horsforth,
Leeds LS18 SHD, England
(Received 6 August 1990; accepted 24 August 1990) Abstract-Databases are commonly used in schools in the U.K. in teaching history. The computer can enable new sources to be introduced to pupils and encourage them to develop skills in statistical analysis. However, the potential exceeds the practice since many history teachers are untrained in statistical techniques. Discussion of the use of a particular data base package, Pride’s Purge, suggests ways in which history teachers can be introduced to the techniques of quantitative analysis in order to raise their students’ levels of attainment in constructing causal explanations in history. The design and development of the package illustrates an approach to inservice training in both information technology and an academic discipline.
INTRODUCTION
“The past is by definition a datum which nothing in the future will change. But the knowledge of the past is something progressive which is constantly transforming and perfecting itself” [ 11. The use of computers in the study and teaching of history is now widely, though not universally, accepted. While some suspect the use of computers is equated with a view of history as an objective science and others fear its usage in the classroom will lead to mechanized and mechanical learning, many now recognize the contribution information technology can make to the advance of knowledge. At the level of academic research “database technology is the most firmly established of computer based techniques among historical disciplines”[2]. At school level, within the new National Curriculum which started in the U.K. in September 1989, pupils will be required to use information technology within their study of all the foundation subjects which include history. The description of level 7 of pupils’ attainment in information technology capability, which is believed to be within the reach of most pupils in the secondary school, states that pupils should “be able to select and interrogate a computer database to obtain information needed for a task”[3]. Thus whether it is used to extend the knowledge and understanding of what happened in the past of professional historians or of children in history classrooms, the computer database has an established place. However, the quality of usage within the classroom is very variable and often fails to exploit fully the opportunities offered by the data and the information technology. This paper discusses the development of a database package designed to extend the range and level of information technology applications in history teaching in secondary schools, SOFTWARE
FOR TEACHING
HISTORY
History teaching in the U.K. has been comparatively well supported in the development of educational software. Over two hundred programs for use in teaching history have been developed within the last 10 years. The quality of these packages is not always high but such a number does represent the outcome of a considerable investigation into the potential of the technology, for application to history teaching. These applications have been broadly classified into two categories: databases and simulations. Such a classification is misleading as the types are not mutually exclusive and simulations may contain databases and databases may support simulations. However, databases could be described as those programs which contain files of information in
58
FRANCESBLOW
a standardized format, which could be accessed through prescribed routines. This data might have been coded for the computer by the commercial producer or the private user. The most common sorts of material found in British schools encoded in this way are mostly derived from administrative records of local or central government such as census returns, poll books, gaol records and parish registers. THE
IMPACT
OF COMPUTERIZED
DATABASES
ON HISTORY
TEACHING
The development of the facility to interrogate a large body of statistical data in seconds, in the classroom, through the use of a microcomputer, coincided with the widespread adoption of the New History in British Schools. This movement originated in the 1970s owed much to the Schools Council History 13-16 Project started in 1973, and promoted the study of history in schools through a study of source material. Children are encouraged to consider the nature of history as a discipline as well as to study the past, and so learn some elements of the historian’s methodology. This approach brings pupils into contact with a range of source materialsdocuments, artefacts, visual and oral evidence; the evidence found in landscapes as well as in libraries. The availability of database software packages has enabled many history teachers for the first time to make accessible to pupils an entire source of statistical data. Previously it would have been too time-consuming for pupils to process the data by hand and so they would have only encountered samples. The information technology revolution thus has helped extend the history curriculum by widening pupils’ experience of historical sources. In order to handle sources effectively, pupils have to learn skills in evaluation and interpretation and must be versed in some quantitative as well as qualitative techniques of interpretation. Students need to know how to classify and sort data in order to construct patterns. They have to be taught to make deductions and extrapolations from material presented in graphic forms such as histograms, pie charts, distribution tables and scattergrams. They have to learn how to interpret data given as raw numbers, averages and percentages, and how to read contingency tables. Pupils will need to know how to construct generalizations derived from statistical data and how to test their theories against the data both for confirmation and disconfirmation. Such skills would not be unusual in the study of simple statistics, economics or cliometrics but in the average history classroom in the U.K. it would be still fairly uncommon as the trend in the source movement has been towards textual and pictorial, not statistical analysis. Computerized databases could be used to extend further the history curriculum for children, who could be encouraged to review their understanding of what constituted an historical fact. They might be introduced to the idea that some historical facts are quantitative generalizations. A statement such as: ‘Cholera was a major cause of death in a town in 1830’, could be investigated by pupils to establish the degree of statistical support for it. Pupils would need to decide whether the proportion of deaths caused by cholera should merit the use of the term “major” and might become more aware of the frequency with which historians use such quantitative terms. Some information technology packages also support cross-curricula skills such as numeracy. It is widely recognized that pupils often do not transfer skills and concept mastery across subject boundaries, and that a pupil’s understanding demonstrated in a maths lesson is not apparent in a succeeding history lesson where the same ideas are being employed. For example, the term average is frequently used by historians but is just as frequently misinterpreted by pupils. Trials in schools of a program (Burial Register[4]) that displayed on screen the changing average age of death while pupils entered in the details of individual records from a parish register revealed widespread misconceptions such as the belief that the average represented an actual age of death; that the average age of death indicated the most common age of death; that nobody or very few lived beyond the average age of death. This program helped to reinforce teaching elsewhere in the curriculum and to develop students’ understanding of statistics in history. COMMON
LIMITATIONS
OF DATABASE
USAGE
The trials data of Burial Register helped to confirm an impression derived from talking with teachers on inservice courses all over the U.K., that many history teachers were nervous of using
History teaching in schools
59
statistical data in their teaching because they had rarely received any training in the handling of statistics either in their own schooling or in higher education. Consequently many history teachers avoided statistical sources when they were available or set tasks to pupils which were of a low level either statistically or historically speaking. Thus even where computer packages were available that enabled pupils to undertake more than count and list routines in the interrogation of a database, the following were the standard questions set for pupils to answer. “How many people in your village were born outside Yorkshire?” “In which occupation were most people employed?” “What is the average size of household?” “Write an account on immigration into the village”. Such an exercise was useful in teaching pupils that answers to historical questions have to be compiled not simply extracted on the basis of comprehension from a source, but it required the pupils to do no more than describe their findings. A task that would demand more of pupils and use to a greater extent the information technology, would be one that asked pupils to explain the past, interpret their findings, identify patterns, raise questions and offer some answers. CAMBRIDGE
ADVANCED
LEVEL
HISTORY
PROJECT
To meet this need, a computer package was developed in 1988 as part of the set of resources designed and produced by teachers for the new Advanced Level History course in the Cambridge History Project (CHP)*. The Project was set up to extend the principles of the Schools History 13-16 Project to the curriculum for pupils aged 16-19. It has attempted to provide a progressive structure which builds upon the levels of concept and skill mastery of students at 16 and extends their understanding of cause, change, empathetic explanation and evidence over a 2-year course. The course consists of three units: a development study, a study in depth and a comparative study, all divided into modules and resting upon an investigation of source material, primary and secondary, and an analysis of the relevant historiographical debates. The pupils’ learning is measured according to their levels of attainment in each of six domains: using evidence; understanding historical enquiry; offering explanations; understanding of cause and motive; constructing accounts; understanding of change and development. “Clearly such proposals carry with them implications for a changing pedagogy. Successful use of these materials will require the teacher to concentrate less upon dispensing information and more upon enabling students to ask appropriate questions of the evidence provided. Arguably this has always been the case in good teaching of history at A-Level. . . what the Cambridge Project will do is to allow such teaching strategies to predominate”[5]. PRIDE’S
PURGE:
THE
PROGRAM
It was within this context that the computer program, Pride’s Purge (published by Hutchinson), was developed as a resource for teaching the syllabus “People Power and Politics”. The depth study was focused on whether there was a mid-seventeenth-century English Revolution and the program was an integral teaching aid in the module considering explanations of intentions, actions and events with special reference to the period of the English Civil War between King and Parliament 164&1664. A key event at this time was the trial and execution by the Parliamentarians of King Charles I. A turning point in the sequence of affairs came with the crucial vote in Parliament in December 1648 on whether to continue negotiations with the King. Subsequently all those who wished to continue with the attempt to reach a political settlement with the King were forcibly removed from Parliament by Colonel Pride (hence Pride’s Purge) and a group of members of Parliament seized power and set up a court to try the King for treason. Details of the 471 MPs *For information on the Cambridge A-Level History Project contact Bob Ellis, Director CHP, Trinity and All Saints’ College. Brownberrie Lane, Horsforth, Leeds LS18 5HD. CHP started national trials September 1988; the first examinations take place Summer 1990.
FRANCES BLOW
60
involved at that time have survived and were collated by the historian David Underdown[6]. A computer program was designed to enable students to interrogate and analyse this data which includes details of the MPs’ voting behaviour, age, marital and social status, education, constituency, religion and income. The program was structured into three parts. The first, Count and List, enabled the database to be searched for MPs with similar characteristics in up to four fields. It will, for example, provide information on how many MPs who were revolutionaries, were educated at Cambridge, came from North East England and were gentry. The second part, Pie Chart Analysis, displays pie charts for two categories of voting behaviour in relation to one field such as income or age, Sections in the pie chart analysis provide either raw figures or percentages. The third part, called Contingency Tables enabled students to test their hypotheses as to whether particular relationships between voting behaviour and socio-economic factors are statistically significant, indicating a possible causal relationship.
PRIDE’S
PURGE:
CAUSAL
EXPLANATION
AND
QUANTITATIVE
ANALYSIS
It is rare to find a program that enables such a degree of sophistication in statistical analysis being used in history classrooms in the U.K. Yet the program is easy to operate. The user is not required to master any conventions in asking questions other than to learn how to select combinations of factors from a menu (in English) using the space bar. The student is liberated from technicalities to grapple with the historical ideas. It is apparent from observations of teachers at inservice sessions that the initial difficulties encountered related not to the operation of the program, but to the implications of the decisions of the program operator. The cry “I don’t know what is happening?” or “What does this mean?” did not result from a program malfunction but from teacher expectations that the computer would function as a teaching machine. It is a common characteristic of people, either adults or pupils, faced with a computer. to first press buttons, find out how the program reacts, ask “What is it doing?’ and then turn to the program manual. With many simulation programs, contexts and consequences are usually self evident and explicable from text on screen. With database programs, however, context and purpose are dependent on the user and many programs contain such complex routines for asking questions that they inhibit and distract the user from formulating higher order questions. They key issue is “What do I want to know”? not “How do I ask a question?” Preliminary tests with members of the program development team suggested two elements that needed further attention before the program was distributed nationally to the trials’ schools. One related to the purpose and nature of questions to ask of the data that were relevant to the A-Level course. The second concerned the interpretation and explanation of the answers the program provided. In essence little of this related to using information technology; almost entirely the issue was either the procedures for quantitative analysis or the nature of historical explanation. In effect the computer program had become an agency for inservice training for teachers not in information technology nor pedagogy but in their own academic field. These two issues were addressed mainly through the support material, the teachers guide and student leaflets, not through adding inst~ctional and explanatory pages of text to the program. If the software was to function as a resource appropriate to pupils of a wide range of abilities and attainments, then it had to be unfettered from the constraints of a tutorial package. Sections on how to use the program in the classroom and student leaflets were accordingly inserted in the teachers guide. The objectives of the course relevant to this module included the requirement that students should be able to: (a) (b) (c) (d)
analyse the causes of events distinguishing between enabling conditions and precipitants; reconstruct the intentions and interpret the actions of individuals in the past; undertake comparative analysis in order to generate and evaluate historical explanations; identify problems arising from historical sources.
History teaching in schools
Accordingly
61
suggestions and guidelines for questions were offered ranging from the simple:
“What was the religious affiliation of the Revolutionaries?“; to the composite: “From your interpretation Revolutionaries?“;
of the statistics in the database, what characteristics
typify the
to the more complex: “To what extent does an analysis of the data support the view that events of 1648-1649 constitute a revolution which had long term social and economic causes?“; concluding with the evaluative: “What do you consider to be the value of a quantitative analysis as a means of explaining the behaviour of those involved in events of 1648-1649?” Many examples of hypotheses were also included for students to investigate and test. This procedure would require students to decide on the relevant data needed and on the methods of obtaining it. In addition guidance was provided on interpretation of the data. Students needed to be aware that to identify single groups was meaningless and that it was essential to compare one group with another and to establish not only how many MPs were in a group under investigation but also how many were not in a group. Students had to be advised to test a wide range of possibilities and not to assume that once an association was discovered that a clear causal relationship had been established. Since students were being encouraged to identify trends of behaviour through the use of information technology in order to construct causal explanations, it would be tempting for them to assume some patterns of association could explain and not simply describe a state of affairs. Text was therefore incorporated into the program stating clearly in the Contingency Table analysis where an association was due to chance. Students were advised to test data for a range of causal relationships and to discover whether there were patterns of association between the socio-economic factors, as well as between the factors and an event. Lastly students were warned that even where a possible causal association between voting behaviour and background factors had been identified, motives could not be attributed to the MPs involved. In this way through guidelines to students provided within the teacher’s manual, suggestions were made to lead users on to exploit the potential of the computer program and ensure complex causal models were constructed and tested. To illustrate these applications fictitious examples drawing upon contemporary issues and using statistics relating to football hooliganism, were included in the manual for classroom study. Step by step explanations were provided, in particular for the use of contingency tables, the least familiar element in the statistical analysis. This package constituted a challenge for many teachers. It required them to use information technology when many history teachers still lack confidence in their capacity to do so. It obliged them to use information technology for statistical analysis when many doubted their expertise in statistical techniques. It also involved them in extending the nature and range of their students’ capacity for explanation in history, moving into the measurement of understanding hitherto undemanded in many A-Level History courses or lost in the pressures to master and rehearse quantities of information. By including the information technology unit in this course it was possible for students to undertake what would otherwise have been impossible, a quantitative analysis of a level of sophistication consistent with the overall standard of the course.
FRANCESBLOW
62
PRIDE’S
PURGE:
ANALYSIS
OF TRIALS
IN SCHOOLS
Results of the trials have not yet been obtained from all of the sixty schools involved but feedback from the samples received so far have revealed a range of responses. “Less able students found the contingency tables very difficult to grasp. However the statistical analysis certainly enabled them to talk through ideas. . . [which] they related back to the views of historians that they had encountered in earlier units”. Clearly the section of the package that has caused some problems was that on the use of Contingency Tables. Sometimes this was due to the ability of the pupils; sometimes this was due to the knowledge of and methods used by the teacher. One teacher reported that his students “found it difficult to envisage their use and to understand data they fed in”.
the relationships
of the
He added “I did not have time to use the guide properly. Is it possible to produce a shorter, simpler version?“. Another teacher commenting on her students said “They proved much more computer literate than I but surprisingly their understanding was sometimes weak’. Her observation identifies a common fallacy in the assessment of pupils’ learning when using information technology; the confusion of technical dexterity with conceptual mastery of the significance of the operations and results obtained. This mismatch can be overlooked particularly where a teacher not only lacks the relevant info~ation technology skills but feels threatened by the technology and over estimates the expertise of those with the appropriate competences. Trials of the program also exposed another dilemma. In the U.K. the use of computer assisted learning to support heuristic models of learning is widely established. In history, software for investigatory and exploratory learning is far more commonly used than tutorial packages for reinforcement learning. The strength of the approach is that it encourages pupils to take ownership of what they discover and it aids understanding through apprehension of ideas in context and in operation. The weakness of the curriculum model is that it can sometimes encourage teachers to be vague about what they wish pupils to discover or what pupils have learnt on the grounds that the outcomes of experiential learning cannot be predicted with certainty or totally controlled. Several teachers reported after using Pride’s Purge for the first time, that next time they would provide more guidance to students to avoid them “wasting time” or getting inconciusive results from their inquiries. Other teachers realized that it was necessary to provide guidance without being over directive in their instructions where their students were ignorant of the rules not of using the computer but in conducting an historical inquiry with quantitative data, For example some worksheets given to pupils stated “Remember that you have printouts of the numbers not the percentages and therefore it is impossible to make relevant deductions about relationships on the basis of raw numbers alone. Percentages show relationships more clearly”. “When using a Contingency Table example for testing a hypothesis use the blank sheets for this so that it is clear what you are trying to find out in relation to the data, otherwise what you are doing will be a total waste of your time”. This teacher reported that by the fourth lesson focused on this topic: “the importance of writing down what they were testing emerged and also the importance of asking the right questions and making the right choices in terms of the permutations of the variables, otherwise they would be wandering around in a morass of ill-digested material.”
History teaching in schools
63
Such an observation revealed how an advanced level of source analysis had been reached. Pupils at a lower level of attainment in using evidence tend to think that a source will have the “right” answer if only they can identify the “right” source. Such an approach can indirectly be encouraged by low level source analysis when interrogating computerized data bases as described earlier in this paper. The A-Level teacher quoted above in referring to the “right” questions meant meaningful and valid questions, not those that would yield the “correct” answer. Another teacher came to a similar conclusion and in his concluding comments on the trials material said “It would be helpful to have some worked examples of how one might [investigate] religion for example. There was the classic dilemma of how far to let them play and ask questions and how far to structure it”. In retrospect he concluded he should have provided more guidance on relevant lines of inquiry. More than one teacher observed that “the pupils studying statistics, geography and biology were at an advantage in the sense that they were familiar with x2 and were able to understand what was going on. They were surprised though to see it occurring in a history lesson”. In one school, in a follow-up exercise to working on the program, they considered the advantages and disadvantages of a quantitative analysis of the participants of events in 1648 as against an individual view of the events, using three case studies. The latter technique, the analysis of key individuals is by far the more common approach in studying events in the past in history classrooms. Pride’s Purge clearly opened up new areas for addressing causal explanations in history. PRIDE’S
PURGE
AND INSERVICE
TRAINING
However, how successful was the package in providing inservice training for the teachers? Amongst the’most common types of inservice training in the U.K. are two models. The first, the l-day course, depends heavily on the success of the course tutor in generating within 1 day sufficient enthusiasm and understanding of the relevant innovation for the teachers to use and be able to apply it when back within the normal routine pressures. The advantage of the type is that it may be possible to address a large number of people within a single day session, more than may be feasible in the second model-the course (long or short) which involves teachers attending for a fixed period, each week over a term or year. Although fewer people may be affected by this mode, it is a strategy that is likely to be more effective as it allows time for reflection, assimilation, application and evaluation of the relevant innovation. However, during recent years the educational budgets for inservice training have been curtailed and alternative or supplementary strategies are needed if curriculum development is to be sustained. Reviews of different approaches to curriculum development in the U.K. have suggested that success or failure of curriculum development can be significantly influenced by two factors: the extent to which teachers are involved in the development of the materials; and the kind and amount of support available following the initial distribution of new teaching materials. It was not sufficient to supply, prepare and disseminate new resources and syllabuses; continued support was essential to sustain co-ordinated and critical use[7]. Pride’s Purge is part of a wider curriculum development project (CHP) that requires teachers to work with unfamiliar historical content (i.e. topics and periods not commonly taught in School History 16-19); to incorporate into their teaching an emphasis on historical methodology, and to focus on the explanation of the past as well as on the acquisition of knowledge of that past. The classroom materials have all been produced by practising teachers, and the project is supported by networks of self-help groups and regional and national inservice meetings. The purpose of these meetings is to enable teachers to share views on the materials and delivery of the courses not to give teachers instruction on what to do. In this way, all teaching approaches and materials are subject to regular review and revision. Once full details of the trials of Pride’s Purge have been collated, it is very probable the computer program will be modified, even possibly extended to accommodate more complex cross-tabulation. The development team decided to realize only part
64
FRANCES BLOW
of the original design brief on the grounds that it would be sufficiently demanding for many, in the first instance. In recognition of the need to prepare teachers to handle the Pride’s Purge unit and quantitative analysis, the package was constructed in certain ways. The program was structured with a sequence of activities that were perceived as being progressively more demanding but also confidence building. Although the menu enabled the user to select a utility (count and list, pie chart analysis; contingency tables) in any order preferred, the decision to put count and list as the first option was influenced by the belief this was the most familiar routine to most teachers. It was revealing to see from the trials returns that once teachers were competent in handling the program they found that for teaching purposes it was sometimes better to introduce pupils to the database by starting with the pie chart analyses, not count and list exercises. Furthermore while the teachers’ guide does not prescribe any classroom usage of the pack, it does provide suggestions for teaching exercises, follow-up lessons after working on the computer, and ideas for classroom organization. In addition, the student leaflets, which explain the principles and procedures of quantitative analysis, function as information sheets for teachers. CONCLUSION
A national trawl of teachers’ views on the content, teaching methods and resources for the syllabuses of CHP, prior to the development of the project, indicated a very large demand for software to support all the courses. At the same time the current educational policy is to promote the integration of information technology across the curriculum. However, if the full educational potential of the information technology is to be exploited, more support must be given to teachers: not in how to operate the machine but in how to use the program to develop the curriculum of their subject. Software manuals that accompany educational packages have been gradually evolving over the last 10 years but there is still a tendency for the notes to focus predominantly on technical details and to marginalize the educational issues. Manuals alone will not of course provide adequate training but could offer more support than they commonly do and if combined with wider contextual support, then for both teachers and pupils “the computer learning environment will have profound effects on the quality of their learning” [8]. REFERENCES 1. Marc Bloch M., The Historian’s Craff, p. 58. Manchester University Press (1954). 2. Morris R. J., Editorial. History Compur. 1, No. I (1989). 3. Technology, National Curriculum Council Consultation Report, p. 83 (1989). 4. Burial Register, produced by the joint Schools History 13-16 and Computers in the Curriculum Project. Longman, Oxford (1986). 5. Kelly A., Cambridge A Level History Project Information Bulletin No. 3, March (1987). 6. Underdown D., Pride’s Purge, Polifics in the Puritan Revolution. Oxford University Press (1971). 7. Galton M. and Moon B. (Eds), Changing Schools. Changing Curriculum (1983). 8. Nolan P. and Ryba K., The microcomputer as a learning system. N.Z. JI educ. Stud. 19, (1984). Cited in Beswick N., Re-thinking Acfive Learning. Falmer Press, Brighton (1987).