In the late twentieth century, accountability and value for money are two of the major themes influencing developments in education. Reflecting these themes, recent government legislation has produced a set of teaching competences, later revised as standards, for use in initial teacher education and assessment of teaching performance. They are used as criteria for teacher training, in some cases forming the theoretical underpinning of courses. This article argues that that model of knowledge essential for teaching presented by the 10197 standards is impoverished. Instead there will be presented a comprehensive model of knowledge bases for teaching, which can inform our understanding of teaching and provide a more sophisticated theoretical underpinning than that imposed by government legislation. The model was developed through a recent doctoral study of subject knowledge and teaching competences. The model is illustrated by an example of teaching in history, which shows how it can act as a theoretical underpinning both for experienced and beginning teachers.
This paper examines the close relationship between literacy and history in terms of the processes of historical enquiry and the literary outcomes of the historian's work. It highlights the rich resource which historical documents represent for the primary classroom in a wide range of genres, and suggests that such documents can be used in their original form with all ability ranges. The means by which this can be done is presented in a case study of an integrated approach to teaching history, literacy and music, in a Year 6 class. The key to the success of the reading and writing activities was the use of varied teaching approaches including storytelling, drama, singing and discusssion as ways into challenging texts. The children used the concept of time and the listing of jobs as organisers for their extended writing. The careful scaffolding through text-marking and the recording grid, as well as the emotions stimulated through the texts and activities, ensured success for all the children. The study emphasises the links between these genuine historical tasks, and activities in the National Literacy Strategy and suggests how music might be successfully integrated.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.