Substantive knowledge and pupil progression in history Michael Fordham What does it mean to be good at history? Over fifty years ago, the historian Eric Hobsbawm reckoned that it had something to do with language: Words are witnesses which often speak louder than documents. Let us consider a few English words which were invented, or gained their ‘modem meaning, substantially in the period of sixty years with which this volume deals. They are such words as ‘industry’, “industrialist ‘factory’, “middle class’, “working class’ capitalism’ and ‘socialism’ They include ‘aristocracy’ as well as ‘railway’, ‘liberal’, and ‘conservative’ as political terms, ‘nationality’, ‘scientist’ and ‘engineer’, ‘proletariat’ and (economic) ‘crisis’. ‘Utilitarian’ and ‘statistics’, ‘sociology’ and several other names of modern sciences, ‘journalism’ and ‘ideology’, are all coinages or adaptations of this period. So is ‘strike’ and ‘pauperism’ ! Words stch as these —the substantive concepts that litter the works of historians — are central to progression inthe discipline: if we, as history teachers, want pupils, to ‘get better’ at history, then we should be looking to help them develop greater fluency in their deployment of these terms. With a few notable Dutch exceptions, however, very few in the field of history education have been willing to devote much time to the theory that getting better at history requires that pupils build up greater substantive knowledge of the past.* Instead, the emphasis has been placed on disciplinary knowledge, which is sometimes cast in the language of *skills’or ‘competences’ but which, in short, comes down to knowledge of how history works as a discipline. The distinction between substantive history and the ideas of the discipline was captured concisely by Ashby and Lee: Substantive history is the content of history, what history is “about” Concepts like peasant, friar and president, particulars like The Battle of Hastings, the French Revolution, and the Civil Rights Movement, and individuals like Abraham Lincoln, Marie Curie and Mahatma Gandhi are part of the substance of history. Concepts like historical evidence, explanation, change and accounts are ideas that provide our understanding of history as a discipline or form of knowledge.” 1The Bayeux Tapestry depicting the Battle of Hastings of 1056 ~a decisive turn on the lives of the people of England These latter concepts — disciplinary second-order concepts such as ‘evidence’ and ‘change’ ~ have come to dominate the discourse surrounding history education in recent years. ‘Getting better’ at history has thus become synonymous with gaining a greater knowledge of how history works as a discipline, the kinds of questions that historians seek to answer, and the means by which they go out in search of those answers. In the UK, this, emphasis has become manifest in a number of forms. For one, assessment models in history — ranging from statutory National Curriculum Attainment ‘Targets through to public examination mark-schemes — have foregrounded disciplinary knowledge, making mastery over the second-order concepts that constitute it, the principal purpose of learning history in schools. Secondly, researchers — with the work of Project CHATA at the forefront — have sought to model pupil progression in these disciplinary concepts empirically, showing the stages by which pupils tend to progress in their understanding of those concepts. Thirdly, the power of disciplinary concepts has been shown in the way that teachers, through their published discourse, have been able to draw upon these to make meaning out of the practice in their classrooms, with some offering sophisticated accounts of how disciplinary concepts operate as curricular objects * Amongst all of this, however, the emphasis on substantive knowledge has tended to be lacking, For a variety of reasons, history teachers and researchers inthe field of history education have been hesitant in talking about substantive knowledge in terms of pupil progression in the subject. There are a number of reasons for this. The first is that emphases on substantive knowledge have in the past tended to focus predominantly on ‘accumulation’ of lists of content; the argument runs that simply extending this list does not represent progression in a subject: a pupil who knows 55 facts is not necessarily better at history than pupil who knows 45 facts, More problematically still, there is no knowledge of particulars or people (to use the language of Ashby and Lee) which is a 18necessary condition of pupil progress in history. A pupil can become perfectly g00d at history and have never encountered the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648, for example, and, as there is no body of substantive knowledge that is essential, then the implication is that all substantive knowledge is accidental in models, of pupil progression in history. All of these complexities get made more complex still by the fact that there is a strong political and moral dimension to the selection of substantive content in a history curriculum: to say that any body of substantive knowledge is more or less important is, so the argument goes, to enforce the ideas and beliefs of governments, texthook-writers and teachers on pupils. Some of the greatest atrocities in the teaching of history in the past have occurred where governments have sought to provide pupils with one particular interpretation of the past, and this has made researchers in the field of history education very wary indeed of any attempt to make substantive knowledge — as well as disciplinary knowledge — a core component of any ‘model of pupils progression in the subject. Inthe next two sections I wish to focus on two problems that emerge from this, status quo. The first relates to the reading of history, and the second relates to the writing of history. Reading history If we had to choose but one hope for our current pupils in the future, we could do worse than hope that they might continue to read history throughout their lives. In doing so, they are likely to encounter works of popular history, which in the UK frequently top the non-fiction bestsellers lists. What is it, however, that they need to know in order to be able to find such works of history accessible? Consider the following passage from a work of popular history that was a bestseller in the UK in the early 2000s, written by Simon Schama, one of Britain's most well-known television historians. As you read through this passage, deliberately quoted at length, then ask yourself what it is that a reader needs to know in order to make sense of it. Historians like a quiet life, and usually they get it, For the most part, history moves at a deliberate pace, working its changes subtly and incrementally. Nations and their institutions harden into shape or crumble away like sediment carried by the flow of a sluggish river. But there are moments when history is unsubtle; when change arrives in a violent rush, decisive, bloody, traumatic; as a truck-load of trouble, wiping out everything that 9‘An image showing a king surrounded by his witan or witenagemot, which was the council that advised kings on ‘matters that they were asked to give dan opinion — from the Old English Hexateuch ofthe th century, found in the British Library gives a culture its bearings — custom, language, law and loyalty. 1066 was one of those moments. It is certainly true that, for the majority of the population of Anglo-Saxon England (let alone the rest of Britain), 1066 was mostly a matter of exchanging lords. The slaves at the bottom of Anglo-Saxon society who could be bought and sold could hardly have cared less what language their ‘masters spoke. Peasants ploughed their fields, fed swill to their pigs, prayed to avoid poverty and pestilence and watched the seasons roll around. It is true that every spring, the grass came up green again, But in 1066 there were bones under the buttercups and the entire governing class of Anglo-Saxon England, some 4000 or 5000 lords, had been made to vanish and power, wealth, men and beasts had been given to foreigners. You could survive and still be English. You could even speak the language. But politically you were now a member of an inferior race. You lived in England, but it was no longer your country ‘We can first ofall point towards all sort of second-order or disciplinary knowledge that will resonate in our minds as we read through this passage. Schama’s use of analogy as a means of describing a process of historical change and continuity is an excellent example of this, describing incremental change as “sediment carried by the flow ofa sluggish river”, Consider, too, his use of the phrase “in 1066 there were bones under the buttercups” to indicate a rupture in a line of continuity. ‘Schama also points towards existing historiography in pointing towards line of continuity across the period of the Norman Conquest (“itis certainly true that..."), for thishas been atopic of some dispute amongst historians, For Schama's passage to have meaning to a reader, a reader needs to be versed in the kinds of questions 80that historians seek to answer, which, in this case, means questions about the nature of change and continuity and the kinds of disputes that can emerge over this. A sufficient amount of disciplinary or second-order knowledge is thus necessary for a reader to make sense of this passage: this disciplinary knowledge, however, will not be sufficient. In order for this passage to be meaningful to the reader, there is also a great deal of substantive knowledge that is required. We might first ofall focus on the substantive concepts needed to make sense of the passage. Schama’s passage is littered with substantive concepts such as law, loyalty, peasant, poverty, custom, nation, slave, lord, class and race. Although these words have an everyday meaning, they also carry particular historical meaning in different periods. A historian who has studied medieval slavery or peasantry in a different context to Anglo-Saxon England will still be able to make sense of these concepts. There are, in addition to these broader substantive concepts, a variety of period-specifics which help open this passage up for readers. The more one knows about ‘Anglo-Saxon society’, for example, the more sense this passage will make in terms of the connections that resonate for one in reading it. The more one knows about the period, the better placed one is to read this kind of text fluently. This all chimes well with research conducted in the USA by Hirsch on pupil literacy.* For Hirsch, there is a close relationship between pupil knowledge and pupil reading ability. In his studies, he noted that pupils who did not have particular bodies of knowledge committed to long-term memory (a ‘cultural literacy’ to use his term), struggled to make sense of texts (such as newspapers) that assumed that readers had this kind of knowledge. The implication of this is that, if we want to make pupils better readers of history, then we need to ‘make them more knowledgeable about the past. Recent arguments that the development of the Internet removed this requirement have been shown on ‘numerous occasions to be bunk: I can of course at any time go to look up the ‘meaning of a word (whether online or, more traditionally, in a dictionary) but this takes time and interrupts the A miniature showing King Athelstan of Fading process.” A fluent reader has England ina royal genealogical fist (14°C) committed to memory a large number BLof the words — encompassing everything from particulars to broad concepts —and has laden each of those words with different layers of meaning. If, for example, I see the name ‘Athelstan’ in a text, then I immediately begin to associate what I am reading with the formation of the Kingdom of England in the tenth century. cannot know everything about which Tam reading (indeed this would negate the need to read in the first place), but, if know a sufficiently large quantity of what I am reading, then I am able to be a fluent reader. But herein lies the problem of trying to talk about substantive knowledge in history. While, on the one hand, it would seem that substantive knowledge is very important for those who want to read history with any degree of fluency, it is also self-evidently the case that there is no one body of knowledge that in and of itself is essential. In short, what determines whether or not a person will be able to read a passage of history fluently is not a set of specific facts, but rather a critical mass of those facts. Substantive knowledge matters, but finding ways to talk about what precise substantive knowledge is required is an incredibly complex task. As a history education community, we need to find more sophisticated ways of talking about the growth of substantive knowledge which do not fall foul of the problems identified thus far Writing history Whereas pupils in schools are very rarely judged explicitly on their ability to read history, they are very commonly judged on their ability to write history. A great deal of ink has already been spilt on the challenges that pupils face in producing written work about the past ~ particularly the ‘gold standard” of the essay — and the work done on this by history teachers has tended to fall into one of three camps. There are, first of all, those who have argued for an explicit emphasis on structure of writing, particularly concerning the structuring of paragraphs and how paragraphs cohere together into an essay. A second strand of the commentary focuses on argument in writing, particularly in terms of situating a pupils’ own writing within the wider historiographical field, Finally, several teachers have looked at the role played by language in pupil writing, focusing on how disciplinary conceptual language or the language (and grammar) of academic scholarship might be taught to pupils. It is rare, however, for teachers to look explicitly at how pupil substantive knowledge affects their ability to write. Two history teachers in the UK have however decided to make this a focus. Donaghy, first of all, focused quite 82narrowly on getting his pupils to master specific factual content about the USA in the 1920s, making use of retrieval practice and low-stakes quizzing to ensure that pupils had this knowledge embedded in long-term memory.* He found, perhaps unsurprisingly, that pupils who had this knowledge embedded in their long-term memories were far better able to produce quality historical He charac ofl 8 Sei ed cara pte key ‘hetvee mut Thethee The dotedtine segments represent The sold boxes erect CGlowed sents concent ccs ements when student’ knowledge moment when sents ‘epreertthe represent the move om sagen ht tngs chore une wey es (Store cotans of GHeenesmlesof wee consstnt or sate throughout deta oust, od clour ‘elnaeage hat Knowledge that he une saletorecagnang tet or add west to a pont hat cerweaed cro ‘things changed ve tire. ‘hy were making Fig. 1 Reproduced from K. Hammond, ‘The knowledge that flavours a claim’, ‘Teaching History, 149, p.20 83writing. A more ambitious approach, however, is that taken by Hammond In her study, Hammond set out to examine the differences between the qualities, of the written work produced by her students. In her analysis, she concluded that the biggest difference that existed in terms of the quality of writing that pupils produced was the extent to which they operated with different layers of substantive knowledge. Hammond, however, went further than simply identifying substantive knowledge as an issue and instead began to theorise as to what the different kinds of substantive knowledge were that those pupils san be seen in Fig. 1.Inshort, Hammond argued that pupils operated at three levels of speciticity in terms of substantive knowledge: the topic, the period, and generally in history. These three levels of generality operate, for Hammond, within three broad domains of substantive knowledge: political and economic systems, people’s ideas and thinking and social and cultural systems. able to write better possessed. The results of this analy: ‘A good example from Hammond's research is the written response produced by her pupil ‘Alice’. In writing about popular support for the Nazi Party, Alice wrote: However, it could be argued that the Depression was the most important, factor in helping Hitler to become Chancellor as the Nazis relied on it to be noticed at all. In times when the public as a whole were more than happy with their situation and the situation of Germany, votes for extreme parties (the Nazis were one of those) decreased rapidly. So the Nazis could be argued to be relying on the Depression and the apparent lack of leadership caused by it to be noticed by the public and to retain their attention from that point. This allowed them to gain more seats in the Reichstag and ended in Hindenburg having no choice but to appoint Hitler as Chancellor. Consider in this passage how Alice makes use of the substantive concept ‘public’ Alice clearly has knowledge of ‘public’ operating at different levels. There is, first, her knowledge of the public who lived in Germany in the early 1930s, the problems they faced and their views about how Germany ought to change. But this topic-specific knowledge is embedded in a wider period-specific about the nature of the ‘public’ in twentieth-century societies, with a clear understanding that the ‘public’ — who have a right to vote ~ are likely to base that decision on factors relating to the economy or the wider situation in a country. All of this then operates within a wider notion of the ‘public’ that Alice might have encountered at many points in her school career, ranging from the Plebians of Rome through to the contemporary society. For Hammond, itis Alice’s ability 84to call on that substantive knowledge — embedded in long-term memory — that enables her to write with some degree of sophistication. Again, it is never possible to pin down which precise instantiations of substantive knowledge are necessary at any one point. For Alice, it might not ‘matter that she first encountered the term ‘public’ in a historical context when studying Ancient Rome. Instead, there has here to be some notion of sufficiency. ‘A fluent writer — just like a fluent reader — has a critical mass of substantive knowledge that makes it possible for them to write history. As ever, though, wwe are faced with the fact that, in history education, we are poorly equipped totheorise about the nature of that substantive knowledge due to the continued emphasis that has been placed on disciplinary knowledge. Towards a new research agenda All of this would point towards the need for a new research agenda in history education. Disciplinary knowledge has rendered history teachers and researchers in history education with a set of meaningful ideas that have given us far greater understandings of what it means to “get better’ at history. For the reasons outlined above, however, our community has not given the same due attention to substantive knowledge, and this is an oversight that needs to be rectified if we are to make further strides forward in making sense of what it means for a pupil to progress in history. (One recent attempt to provide such a theorisation has been put forwand by a number of practitioners and researchers in Cambridge in the United Kingdom. Following a review of the History National Curriculum, the UK government scrapped its progression model (based on best-fit statements regarding pupil competence in history) and put nothing in its place. This vacuum necessitated a need for history teachers to produce an alternative. Drawing on a vibrant community of researchers and practitioners, a group of history teachers set themselves the task of creating from scratch a new progression model for history. It quickly became apparent to this group that any progression model needed to account for both disciplinary and substantive knowledge. Feeling comfortable that a great deal had already been written on progression in disciplinary knowledge, the group focused its efforts on trying to define the kinds of substantive knowledge that might be seen in pupils as they progressed in history. This initial model was later on worked upon by mentors of trainee history teachers at the University of Cambridge, and the following model (Fig. 2) was what that community produced, 85Fig, 2 Model produced by the University of Cambridge PGCE History Mentors 86The language of ‘necessity’, ‘sufficiency’ and ‘critical mass’ is intrinsic to this model. As argued, there never can be in history a body of substantive knowledge that — in and of itself — is essential for a pupil to have before they can make progress in history. It would be wrong, however, to assume that all substantive knowledge is merely accidental to pupil progression in the subject. The model adopted by the Cambridge mentor team is far from a finished product, but it does begin a complex process of finding a language with which teachers and researchers in the field of history education can begin to talk to one another about substantive knowledge. The old issues regarding substantive knowledge are not going to disappear: the association between particular selections of substantive knowledge and attempts to indoctrinate children will continue to exist, and it is for this reason that we, as a community, should not lose sight of the importance of teaching disciplinary knowledge to pupils. We need our pupils to learn that the past can be interpreted in different ways, that this has happened, and the reasons why this has happened. But, in contrast to common progression models used in the UK in recent years, an emphasis on this disciplinary knowledge can never be sufficient, ‘Getting better’ at history cannot simply be a matter of gaining greater competence in handling disciplinary concepts: it must also involve a steady growth in pupil substantive knowledge of the past. Finding a Way to theorise this growth is a matter of urgent need in our research community. References 1. Hobshawm, E. (1962) The Age of Revolutions., London: Weidenteld & Nicolson, 13 2. Hacnen, J.,Schrijnemakers, H. & Stufkens, J. (2008) Transforming Year 7's understanding of the concept of imperialism: a case study on the Roman Empire Teaching History, 112, 28-3; van Drie, J.& van Boxtel, C. (2003) Developing conceptual understanding though talk and mapping, Teaching History, 110,27-31 3. Ashby, R. Lee, P. (2000) Progression in Historical Understanding among Students ‘Ages 7-14. In P Sicars, P. Seixas & S. Wineburg (Eds), Knowing, Teaching and Learning History: National and International Perspectives. New York: New York University Pres, 199-222. 4. Forthis tradition of teacher esearch see Counsell, C.(2011) Disciplinary knowledge {or all, the secondary history curriculum and history teachers" zchievement, Curriculum Journal, 22 (2),201-25; and Fordham, M. (2016) Realising and extending Stenhouse's vision of teacher research: the ease of British history teachers. British Educational Research Journal, 42 (1), 135-50 5. Schama, 8. (2000) A History of Britain: at the edge of the world? 3000BC-AD1603, vol. I. London: BBC Worldwide, 6. 876. Hirsch, E.D. (1988) Cultural Literacy: what every American needs to know. New York 7 reaknesses ofthe ‘look it up on Google” argument, see Christodoulou, D. (2014) Seven Myths About Education, London: Routledge. 8. Donaghy, L. (2014) Using regular, low-stakes tests to sccure pupils’ contextual Knowledge in Year 10. eaching Hay, 97,1 9. Mammon, K-G014) The knowlege "evo a claim: toward bung nd assessing historical knowledge on three scales. Teaching History, 157, 18-24 Michael Fordham is a history teacher and assistant headteacher. He writes and speaks about history education id and the philosophy of education, Having grown up in the south-west of England, he went to read history at Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, where he developed an interest in early ‘medieval British history. After graduating Fordham trained as ahistory teacher at Cambridge and is at present reading for a Ph.D. under the supervision of Christine Counsell and Philip Gardner. He taught history at Hinchingbrooke School and was Head of History at Cottenham Village College and in both schools he mentored. trainee history teachers for the Cambridge PGCE. Michael Fordham worked at the University of Cambridge on international projects in Kazakhstan, as well as teaching, undergraduate and postgraduate students inthe fields of history education, the history of education and the philosophy of education before taking up his current post as assistant headteacher at the West London Free School, Fordham worked with a number of organisations on consultations and discussions regarding the history curriculum and history pedagogy including the UK Department for Education, the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency, Pearson, the Institute for Historical Research, the Westminster Education Forum, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, the British Council and the Royal Historical Society; he was the Outstanding-Educator-in-Residence for the Singapore Ministry of Education in 2014, Since 2010 Michael is an editor of the journal Teaching History. He published in the fields of medieval history, history education and the philosophy of education. At present he is editing a series of A-Level textbooks with David Smith for Cambridge University Press, as well as writing a book on the Norman Conguest for GCSE pupils, Fordham is a member of the Historical Association, the Royal Historical Society and the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain. 88From theory to observable teacher behaviour: development of an observation instrument and analysis of history teaching in Icelandic upper secondary schools ‘Sdsanna Margrét Gestsdéttie. $$ Introduction and theoretical framework Forsome years, historical thinking and reasoning (HTR) has been an important educational goal for upper secondary education in many countries. The aim is to enable students to understand multiple historical perspectives, define historical significance, analyse sources and discuss change and continuity, to name some of the central features. However, only few studies have focused on professional development programs for (experienced) history teachers who wish to build up these skills. Research has shown that teachers find it difficult to imagine concrete daily teaching practices that are aligned with teaching history as an investigative process — in other words, “what it looks like in the classroom”. Hence, we decided to construct a description of classroom practices related to historical thinking and reasoning, based on the literature, which would then be developed into an observation instrument (van Drie & Part of the Canta Marina of 1539 showing Islandia (Iceland) 89van Boxtel, 2008; van Boxtel & van Drie, 2013). An important part of the development of the instrument was using it to analyse lessons of 27 history teachers in Icelandic upper secondary schools. Systematic classroom observation has been used for years, mainly as a tool to evaluate teaching and the most widely used instruments are for classroom observation in general. Our aims are very different: the observation instrument Teach-HTR is neither meant for the evaluation of teachers nor of student learning, but as a tool for further professionalization of experienced history teachers who wish to foster historical thinking and reasoning, as well as to assist those who are doing their initial teacher training. Research questions and method This paper reports on the development ofthe instrument Teach-HTR and the first results it yields about history teaching at upper secondary level in Ieeland. The research question forthe instrument is: How can the teaching of historical thinking and reasoning be operationalized and observed in upper secondary education?” The following methodology was used to develop the instrument. + First, we conducted a literature review to identify concrete teaching behaviour and activities students are engaged in when ‘teaching historical thinking and reasoning’. The cases we found in the literature were used to define items and to organize these items into six meaningful subcategories. + Second, we used three videotaped lessons of history teachers in upper secondary education to improve the first version of the instrument and to provide examples of each item in a separate document. + Third, the instrument (including the provided examples) was validated by asking eleven experts to assess the clarity and importance of the instruments’ subcategories, items and examples (see Hyrkiis, Appelqvist- Schmidlechner & Oksa, 2003). These are all experienced history teachers, teacher trainers and/or experts in history didactics, some of them leading in the field of research on historical thinking and reasoning, from eight different countries: Belgium, Canada, Finland, Germany, Iceland, The Netherlands, United Kingdom and United States. + Fourth, the internal consistency and intercoder reliability of the instrument cd by using a larger sample of 27 history teachers (in twelve Icelandic upper secondary schools), 5 women and 22 men, who were 90each observed for two lessons. This is approximately half of all history teachers on that schoo! level in the country and the gender balance is in accordance with the balance of the group as a whole, Two lessons given by each teacher were videotaped. The length of lessons varies from one school to another and this yielded a little more than 47 hours of data. The video data enabled coding by a second coder (Waldis & Wyss, 2012), looking for the 34 elements of teaching that are listed in the observation instrument, thereby allowing the assessment of the internal consistency and intercoder reliability of Teach-HTR. Fiftcen out of these $4 videotaped lessons were coded by three independent raters who underwent training before commencing the task, and the remaining 39 lessons were then coded by one coder. + Fifth, a further revised version of the instrument was used to analyse 10 history lessons in The Netherlands. So far the instrument has given substantial information about history teaching al upper secondary level in Iceland which was then followed up by interviewing, 8 out of the 27 teachers observed to investigate their beliefs about history teaching and their orientation. Research results ‘The main categories of the instrument are in line with common lesson components, such as a specification of lesson goals, the presentation of new material through instruction or explanations and the activating of students through individual seatwork, group work or whole-class discussions, Some lessons will be more teacher-centred, while others might be more student- centred. In both types of lessons teachers can aim at the development of historical thinking and reasoning skills The literature review produced the main elements of HITR as perceived by experts in the field of history teaching and resulted in an instrument consisting of seven subcategories and a total of 34 items. The subcategories ar 1. Communicating goals related to the development of historical thinking and reasoning ability. Historical thinking and reasoning requires understanding of second-order concepts (such as, cause, change or evidence) and knowledge of how, for example, to explain or critically assess historical sources (for e.g Lee, 2005; Nokes, Dole & Hacker, 2007; Stoel, van Drie & van Boxtel, 2015). 91It also requires the understanding that history is always interpretation (for €.g. Chapman, 2011; Maggioni, Riconscente & Alexander, 2006). Historical thinking and reasoning do not only contribute to deep understanding of historical phenomena, in order to construct a historical reasoning; students must thoroughly understand historical facts, concepts and chronology (van Boxtel & van Drie, 2013). When teachers teach historical thinking and reasoning, they can aim at developing this knowledge and understanding and inform students about their particular goals. The items that are part of this main category reflect these goals. An example from our database is a lesson about the democratic revolution in America in which the teacher explained to the students that they would focus on how to situate a historical phenomenon in time and attribute significance (knowledge of historical thinking and reasoning strategies). 2. Demonstration of historical thinking and reasoning. Based upon the historical thinking concepts of Seixas and Morton (2013) and the components of historical reasoning of van Drie and van Boxtel (2008; 2013) we identified several ways by which teachers can demonstrate thinking and reasoning when they explain new content or give instructions. Teachers can ask historical questions, contextualize, take a historical perspective, explain historical phenomena, discern aspects of change and continuity, compare historical phenomena or periods or assign historical significance. ‘The items in this category include these activities. Historical thinking and reasoning. related to the use of historical sources is a separate category. n= ‘An example is when the teacher ones asked students to define the ae role of the UN in Kuwait, or A depiction of the Icelandic hero, ; Leif Ericson, just landed on the shores of Vinland why parts of south Iraq had not (yew Foundland) which he discovered early in the merged with Iran. ith century ~ an itlustration in a book of 1908 923. The use of sources to support historical thinking and reasoning. Using historical sources is an important component of doing history.’The items within this category describe activities that are related to the use of sources, such as sourcing, contextualization, close reading and comparison of information from different sources (see, Wineburg, 1991; Monte-Sano, 2011; Reisman, 2012). The teacher can evaluate the usefulness of a source in relation to a specific question and refer to the role of sources as evidence in an interpretation or argument (for e.g. Lévesque, 2008; Seixas & Morton, 2013; Wiley & Voss, 1999). An example is when students were handed several written sources on the Industrial Revolution and their attention was constantly drawn to the provenance of the sources and their authors. 4. Presenting multiple perspectives. In history there ate always multiple perspectives, The items in this category include different types of multiperspectivity, for example on the level of historical agents (such as, how they perceived a particular event), different dimensions of society (e.g. economic or political), scale (e.g. local or global) and historical interpretations, (fore.g. Chapman, 2011; Seixas & Morton, 2013; Lee & Shemilt, 2004; van Hover, Hicks & Cotton, 2012). An example is the lesson on the Elizabethan Era in English history where the teacher explained at length the different views of Protestants and Catholics. 5. Explicit instruction on historical thinking strategies. Explicit instruction is one of the strategies that is advocated when aiming at the development of generic and domain-specific strategies (see, Stoel, van Drie & van Boxtel, 2015; Bain, 2000). The teacher can, for example, give explicit instruction on how to explain historical phenomena, evaluate historical sources or assign historical significance. These items can be scored when a teacher does not demonstrate types and components of historical thinking and reasoning, but explains how to think or reason historically. An example is when the teacher asked a student not to discuss the division of Germany after World War Two as a fait accompli but to go further back and explain how it came about, referring to the interests of dominant nations at the time. 6. Engaging students in historical thinking and reasoning by activities. The doing-history approach emphasizes that students should be actively engaged in historical thinking and reasoning (lor e.g. Barton & Levstik, 2003). This asks for learning tasks and activities in which students can apply historical knowledge and strategies (for e.g. van Drie & van Boxtel, 2011; Havekes, 93de Vries & Aardema, 2010). An example is when students who had watched different films on the Vietnam War did a written assignment where they answered questions about possible political agendas of the movies and how the Vietnamese and the Americans were presented. 7. Engaging students in historical thinking and reasoning by whole class discussion. In the instrument we make a distinction between individual and group assignments that engage students in historical thinking and reasoning, and whole class discussions that aims at prior knowledge activation, a deeper understanding of a particular topic or at debriefing of individual or group assignments that required historical thinking and reasoning (van Drie & van Boxtel, 2011). An example is when several students who were working on ‘modern China discussed the success of the one-child policy and how it would affect their own society if implemented. Appainting of 1850 depicting the first settler of eeland, Ingélfr Arnarson, arriving in Reykjavik ~ the work of Johan Peter Raadsig (1806-1882) 94Rating of 54 history lessons in Icelandic upper secondary schools yields many results that are worth considering. The research question is: ‘What are the current practices of Icelandic history teachers at upper secondary level?” The instrument certainly reveals the difference between lessons where HTR is promoted and lessons where it is more or less absent. It does not come as «a surprise that the category that is by far the most present is the second one ~ Demonstration of historical thinking and reasoning. I is hard to imagine a history lesson without at least some of these items, most often no. 6: ‘Explains historical phenomena, causes and consequences’ {in 38 out of the 54 lessons), followed by no. 4: ‘Provides historical context! contextualizes events or actions of people in the past” (in 33 out of the 54 lessons). The sixth category, that has to do with students’ engagement in historical thinking and reasoning, is also very present, particularly no. 29: “The teacher engages students in individual or group assignments that ask for a number of HTR activities’ (present in 34 of the 54 lessons), and no. 31 “Assignments that ask for argumentation: supporting claims about the past with arguments’ (present in 20 of the 54 lessons). On the other hand, the category that is hardly visible at all is the fifth one — Historical thinking strategies. The items in this category were seen once (and one of them actually not at all) and they are scattered between many lessons and ‘many teachers soit is not the case of a teacher giving these explicit instructions systematically, One of the explanations for this may be the fact that neither the National Curriculum Guide nor the initial education of history teachers in Iceland stresses any of the components of HTR, beyond critical assessment of sources which certainly is the basis for any work on history whatsoever. It will be interesting to see whether the use of Teach-HTR reveals differences between countries in this respect. To summarise: all but two of the 34 items of the instrument were observed and the average number of lessons where they were observed is 9.The lesson, that scored the highest when it comes to number of items observed included 13 items, but two lessons went down to one. What does a lesson look like where 13 items are scored? In this case, the students were watching an American film that takes place in Vietnam during the last war and simultancously working on an assignment — 4 boxes ticked that have to do with student’s work since the assignment asked for 9sseveral historical thinking and reasoning activities, among them evaluating historical sources, supporting claims about the past with arguments and the students were provoked to think/reason historically in order to investigate further a particular topic. The teacher stopped the movie several times to discuss issues like close reading of the source, comparing information from different sources, evaluating the usefulness/reliability of this particular source in relation to questions about the Vietnam War, making clear that the perspective presented was only one of many and instructing ef econ viene Sents on how to identity ‘The first Prime Minister of Iceland, Hannes Hafstein c (1861-1922) ~who was the first lelander who was Multiple perspectives and ‘appointed tothe Danish Cabinet in the position iMterpretations, in this case of Minister of Ieeland in 1903 when eland was Which methods were used to svanted a constitution and home rule promote certain viewpoints. On the average, six items were observed per lesson. However, how many of the 34 items are observed tells only half the story. Let me compare two very different lessons where two boxes were ticked in each case. One teacher gave a lecture where Icelandic society in previous times was discussed for 50 minutes. The teacher explained many phenomena and contextualized events and actions of people in the past. Some drawings or photos were used as illustrations and students hardly participated at all — two boxes ticked (4 and 6). Another teacher had the students working for the whole lesson on an assignment about various Asian countries. Two boxes ticked: 29 (on engaging students in individual or group assignments that ask for ...), and 3 (asks historical questions, problematizes). In this case, the items of the instrument were basically 96taking place during the whole lesson, while in the first case they were only touched upon briefly. This is why we end each observation with a verbal account of, for example, how much time was spent on the indicators. Precise measurement is not the goal here as Teach-HTR is meant as an instrument for professional development and a basis for discussion about one’s own teaching. Itwas used as such when 8 of the 27 teachers observed were interviewed. ‘The research question is: ‘Which orientations towards history teaching play a role in teachers’ inclinations towards certain methods?” The interviews are currently being analysed but it became immediately obvious that Teach-HTR had revealed the difference between teacher beliefs and orientations. Conclusion and discussion Good observation instruments are invaluable to educational studies. To develop a domain-specific instrument is certainly a challenge and ours is still being streamlined. However, we already understand that Teach-HTR is a usable tool for the professionalization of history teachers. Obviously, another kind of research would provide insight into the extent to which students engage in historical thinking in the classroom. Eventually, using Teach-HTR for the observation of history teaching may bring in a considerable amount of data, not otherwise obtainable, that can be used for various purposes on a national or international level. From the coding of 54 lessons in Iceland we can, for example, draw some conclusions on the influence of national curricula since subcategory 5 (‘Explicit instruction on historical thinking strategies”) was hardly detected at all - very much in accordance with the lack of such requirements in the curricula, On the other hand, few if any history lessons are devoid of subcategory 2 (Demonstration of historical thinking and reasoning"). It remains to be seen how this compares with history lessons in other countries Finally, it is worth emphasizing that the main idea is to define the characteristics of history teaching that focus on historical thinking and reasoning and, further on, to find out if the characteristics which students and teachers consider effective can be applied by other teachers and other students with the same results. 97References Bain, Robert B. (2000) Into the Breach: Using Research and Theory to Shape History Instruction, In P. Stearns, P, Seixas & S, Wincburg (Eds.), Knowing, Teaching & Learning History: National and International Perspectives (331-53). New York: New York University Press. Barton, K. & Levstik, LS. (2003) Why Don’t More History Teachers Engage Students in Interpretation? Social Education, 67 (6),358-61 ‘Chapman, A, (2011) Historical incerpretations In I, Davies (Ed), Debates in history teaching (96-108). 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Bransford (Eds), How students learn: History, mathematics and science in the classroom (GI1-78). Washington, D.C. National Academies Press. Levesque, S. (2008) Thinking Historically, Educating Students for the Twenty-First Century Toronto, Buffalo and London: University of Toronto Press. ‘Maggioni,L. Riconscente, MM. & Alexander, PA. (2006) Perceptions of knowledge and beliefs among undergraduste students in Italy and inthe United States. Learning and Instruction, 16, 467-491 Mezzich, JE., Kraemer, H.C. & Worthington, DRL. (1981). Assessment of agreement mong several raters formulating multiple éisgnoses. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 16, 29.39. “Monte-Sano, C. (2011) Beyond reading comprehension and summary: Learning to read and write in history by focusing on evidence, perspective, and interpretation. Curriculum Inquiry, 41 (2), 212-49. Nokes, JD., Dole, .A. & Hacker, DJ. (2007) Teaching high school students fo use heuristics while reading historical texts. Journal of Educational Psychology, 99 (3), 492- 504 Reisman, A. (2012). Reading like a historian: A document-hased history curriculum intervention in urban high schools. Cognition and Instruction, 30 (1), 86-112. Seixas, P.& Morton, T. (2013). The Big Six Historical Thinking Concepts. Toronto: Nelson Eaucation, Stoel, G.L., van Dri, JP. & van Boxtel, CAM. (2014) Teaching towards historical expertise. Developing a pedagogy for fostering eausal reasoning in history. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 47 \), 49-76. ‘van Boxtel,C. & van Drie, J. 2013) Historial reasoning in the classroom: What does it look like and how ca We enhance i€? Teaching History, 150, 44-52. 98vvan Drie, J. & van Boxtel, C. (2008). Historical Reasoning: Towards a Framework for Analysing Students’ Reasoning About the Past, Educational Psychology Review, 20, 87-110. vvan Drie, J. & van Boxtel, C. (2011) In Essence I'm Only Reflecting: Teaching strategies for fostering historical reasoning through whole-class discussion, International Journal of Learning, Thinking and Research, 10 (1), 85-66. ‘van Hover, 8, Hicks, D. & Cotton, S. 2012) “Can You Make ‘Historiography’ Sound More Friendly?": Towards the Construction of a Reliable and Validated History Teaching Observation Instrument. The History Teacher, 45 (4), 603-12. ‘VanSledtight, B.A, Maggioni, L. & Reddy, K. (April 2012) Promises and Perils in Attempting 10 Change History Teachers’ Practices: Results from an I8-Month Teaching ‘American History Grant Intervention, Paper presented atthe 2012 annual meeting of the ‘American Educational Research Association, Retrieved from the AERA Online Paper Repository ‘Waldis, M. & Wyss. C. (April 2012) Classroom Videos as a Tool for Reflection and Professional Development in History Education, Paper presented atthe 2012 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, Retrieved from the AERA Online Paper Repository. Wiley, J.,& Voss, JF. (1999) Constructing arguments (rom multiple sources: Tasks that promote understanding and aot just memory for text, Journal of Educational Psychology, 2 (91), 301-11 ‘Wineburg, S, (1991) Historical problem-solving, A study ofthe cognitive processes used in the evaluation of documentary and pictorial evidence. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85 (1), 7881. Séisanna Margrét Gestsd6ttir has been a teacher in upper secondary schools for more than 20 years and a teacher trainer at the University of Ieeland for these last ten years. She is at present reading for a Ph.D. in History Education at the University of Amsterdam where her supervisors are Carla van Boxtel and Jannet van Drie, She has been participating in EUROCLIO (Buropean Association of History Educators) activities since 1998, and as board memberipresident from 2003 to 2009, She now forms part of the Historiana IHEA (Innovative History Education for All) core team. Her current interest in how to teach historical thinking and reasoning is a direct result of many years of teaching, learning and training in Iceland and abroad, with the support of the Historical Society of Iceland, The Council of Europe, The Network of Education Policy Centers, and many others. 99100