the_uses_of_sources_in_school_history

I attended a boys grammar school on Merseyside from 1966 to 1973. I studied history throughout these years and there were many good things about my school history education. I cannot, however, remember a single occasion when we spent a lesson looking at... More

I attended a boys grammar school on Merseyside from 1966 to 1973. I studied history throughout these years and there were many good things about my school history education. I cannot, however, remember a single occasion when we spent a lesson looking at original source material. The textbook the school used for British social and economic history at O Level contained no sources, other than a small number of black and white pictures. Thirty years later the situation has been transformed. The programmes of study for the National Curriculum require the use of sources. At GCSE and A Level all syllabuses involve work on sources and almost all textbooks are littered with pictures and quotations labelled as sources, with accompanying questions and activities. How did this come about? What have we learnt, as history teachers, about how students can use source material in the classroom? The great breakthrough in the popularisation of source work took place after the establishment of the Less