Pupils' enjoyment of history: what lessons can teachers learn from their pupils?
Harris, Richard and Haydn, Terry (2006) Pupils' enjoyment of history: what lessons can teachers learn from their pupils? Curriculum Journal, 17, (4), 315-333. (doi:10.1080/09585170601072544).
The paper explores pupil attitudes towards history as a school subject in England, with a view to developing a better understanding of the factors which influence disaffection or engagement with the subject. The study attempts to identify what pupils like and dislike about how they are taught and what they are taught in history lessons. The study was carried out in 12 secondary schools with pupils aged 11-14. Questionnaires were returned from 1740 pupils and 160 of these were involved in focus group interviews. The findings show that how pupils are taught appears to matter more than what they are taught and identifies teaching approaches that pupils considered to be particularly effective, and teaching approaches that appear to contribute to pupil disaffection and disengagement from the subject. The study also provides insights into the extent to which pupils find history enjoyable compared to other school subjects. Although the study is primarily of interest to history teachers, it may also be of interest to teachers of other subjects who have a concern for the degree of pupil engagement with their subject.
|Keywords:||pedagogy, history teaching, disaffection, engagement, active learning, interactive learning|
|Subjects:||L Education > LB Theory and practice of education > LB2361 Curriculum
L Education > LB Theory and practice of education > LB1603 Secondary Education. High schools
D History General and Old World > D History (General)
|Divisions:||University Structure - Pre August 2011 > School of Education > Professional Practice & Pedagogy
|Date Deposited:||13 Dec 2006|
|Last Modified:||27 Mar 2014 18:27|
|RDF:||RDF+N-Triples, RDF+N3, RDF+XML, Browse.|
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