Seb felt like he had spent all night making the activity the children were about to attempt. He had made source cards he was going to hide under the tables and stick under chairs. He wanted the students to work in pairs or small groups of three to answer questions which would gradually allow them to acquire access to clues as they got questions right. Each clue would lead them to a source about the French Revolution and, as they gained each source, they would debate the causes, ultimately being able to answer the enquiry question about the causes of the French Revolution so they’d have something in their books to show what they’d done.
Exhausted by trying to work out the plan? Not as exhausted as Seb was after his long night of resource preparation and the break time spent crawling under the tables and chairs in the classroom with a blob of blutack. However, all this was cast into a shadow by the overwhelming weariness he felt when he reached that moment in the lesson when several of the more challenging members of the class ‘discovered’ the clues affixed to their seats. Later as he read their work, he felt defeated. Yes, a few had managed to write something about the French Revolution having multiple causes, but the lesson hadn’t quite paid off as he hoped. Had it been worth all the effort?
Understanding Seb’s choices
One of the hardest things for beginning teachers to grasp is that teaching is about a lot more than designing activities which will engage/ enthuse/ occupy the pupils for the lesson. All too often beginning teachers are attracted to the pedagogy as an end itself, rather than as the vehicle to that end. They struggle to distinguish between high value and low value tasks (Hall, 2021). In this situation, Seb’s lesson plan is thwarted from the get-go by his preoccupation with the HOW rather than the WHAT and the WHY. In another circumstance, using the sources to derive the causes may have served a purpose. However, in this situation, it is unclear why the students need to get this information from source material, let alone dig up this this source material from underneath their desks. A quiz-based starter in which students are competing to be the first to uncover a mystery may act as an effective motivator, but if the competition becomes more of a focus than uncovering the mystery, the purpose of the task is lost.
A different approach…
Let’s compare Seb’s choices with Wasim’s. Wasim also wanted his pupils to consider the causes of the French Revolution in their lesson. He did some reading around the topic to supplement his subject knowledge and felt the historiographical debate had centred around nature of those causes. He therefore thought the students should be considering how to categorise causes as social, economic, political and intellectual, as well as grappling with notions of short- and long-term causation. He decided he would use the really famous cartoon of the three Estates to intrigue students, unpacking how this might motivate anti-monarchy feeling, before introducing the idea of the different causes. He knew he wanted them to work in pairs/ small groups of three to encourage debate and get them understanding different points of view. He then spent time designing some cards (not that dissimilar to Seb’s sources) which students would be able to move around to place into categories after being introduced to the ideas of short- and long-term to make them reconsider and rearrange. He also wanted to push them to consider the ‘weight’ of these causes as this would allow them to build on work they’d done previously on the causes of the English Civil war and consolidate their disciplinary understanding of causation. It should, he thought, also leave some time to do some more developed historical writing where the students could create their own paragraph structures to argue causation.
Later as he read their work, he feels tired – all that reading and card sort making took time – was it worth it? Not all parts of the lesson have landed as he intended. Some have not managed to argue their points convincingly and he reflects that he really needed to plan for this to be a two-lesson sequence to give more time to spend thinking about their writing. However, when he compares this work with the assessment pieces he’s seen from the Civil War topic, he can see the students have achieved more independence in making connections between causes, and more than half the students had successfully made a judgement about the relative importance (weight) of those causes.
Wasim’s lesson differs from Seb’s in presentation and also in substance. Before Wasim got anywhere near the HOW he thought really carefully about the WHAT and the WHY. He was clear about the rationale sitting behind his lesson, what he wanted the students to know and why he wanted them to know it. He knew how this topic fitted with their prior learning – both substantive and disciplinary – and where this knowledge could be broadened and deepened. His choices about the HOW – the pedagogical approach he would take – was determined by this rationale. Small group/ paired work using a card sort was entirely appropriate because of the historical thinking it would promote and the argumentation it would lead students to engage in (Counsell, 2004; Grande, 2022). The written outcome was also part of the learning, not just a summary activity at the end for the sake of having something to show for the lesson.
Getting beginning teachers to focus on the WHAT and WHY before the HOW
It is all to easy for beginning teachers to be wowed by a pedagogical approach, to see an off the shelf lesson, a downloadable resource or fun activity and want to run with it. Where the learning is shoehorned into the teaching approach, rather than the teaching approach being selected to most suitably frame, convey and stimulate the learning, lessons will invariably fall flat. We want beginning teachers to be ambitious and experimental, to understand there are a variety of valid pedagogical choices that can be implemented in classrooms – direct instruction, independent learning, group tasks, paired work, role play, card sorts, comprehension, mapping, oracy etc. etc. etc. – BUT they need to understand that these pedagogical choices are only valid if they fit the learning intentions.
Our beginning teachers need to be helped to understand the relationship between the selection of appropriate pedagogies and intended outcomes (Haydn & Stephen, 2022). If we don’t manage this we (and they) end up with learning time wasted and (critically) teacher burnout born of wasted energy in preparation and a grinding down of professional resilience when things fall flat despite high levels of effort.
We need to help our beginning teachers to start with the WHAT and the WHY before the HOW!
For more guidance on how mentors can work with their beginning teachers to develop their planning and pedagogical choices see:
The following blogs also explore this theme of planning:
The Many Faces of Lesson Planning: Part 1 of 2 – Becoming a History Teacher
The Many Faces of Lesson Planning: Part 2 of 2 – Becoming a History Teacher
References
Counsell, C. (2004). History and Literacy in Year 7, History in Practice. London: Hodder Murray. Retrieved 12 10, 2022, from https://www.hoddereducation.co.uk/media/Documents/History%20Community/History%20and%20Literacy%20in%20Y7/history_literacy_y7.pdf
Grande, J. (2022a). #3 This week, in history…how I use card sorts (and why I’ve fallen back in love with them). Retrieved from Curricular Pasts: Reflections from a History Classroom: https://curricularpasts.wordpress.com/2022/01/22/3-this-week-in-history-how-i-use-card-sorts-and-why-ive-fallen-back-in-love-with-them/
Hall, L. (2021). The Power of Teacher Talk – Part 2. Retrieved from Practical Histories: https://practicalhistories.com/2021/04/the-power-of-teacher-talk-part-2/
Haydn, T., & Stephen, A. (2022). Learning to Teach History in the Secondary School. Abingdon: Routledge
Becoming a History Teacher 
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