Curriculum coherence and teachers’ decision-making in Scottish high school history syllabi

Abstract

Debates over which historical content should be compulsory for study in the school curriculum are a common feature of education systems across the globe. These debates invariably weigh the perceived benefits to social cohesion of a ‘common core’ of knowledge against the perceived risks to democracy of government-sanctioned ‘official knowledge’. Scotland has, perhaps, taken an extreme position on this debate by specifying no mandatory historical content in its social studies curriculum. This paper uses 21 interviews with Scottish history teachers to explore how schools use this curricular autonomy: which historical periods they choose to teach and why.

 The paper suggests that, without access to theoretical debates about the nature of historical knowledge, schools fall back on instrumental justifications for content selection within the curriculum. The result in many cases is an extremely narrow and fragmented syllabus in which pupil preference, teacher interests and the logistics of timetabling guide content selection.

 The paper concludes that the formulation of coherent school-level history curricula is dependent on the fostering agency among a theoretically-informed teaching profession.

Keywords:

• History education
• historical knowledge
• curriculum studies
• teacher agency

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 Since curriculum decisions are taken at a school level, no nationwide figures exist for the numbers of students who continue their studies in history after it ceases to be compulsory, but an earlier survey (n = 101) of teachers yielded a school-by-school average of 45%. We have more reliable figures for the numbers of students who are presented for examinations. In 2018, the number of students taking the National 5 qualification in history (14,473) was around a third of that taking the same examination in English (44,477) (SQA, 2018). Since the number taking the subject and not sitting an examination is likely to be greater than this (and given the 45% indicated by the survey), we can infer that the estimate given here of 50% is a fair approximation.

2 In their work on traditions in history teaching, Levesque and Clark (2018) largely adopt this bifurcation between Anglophone and Germanophone traditions but propose a third position emphasising democratic citizenship which has been influential in the US. This tradition is influenced by more sociocultural conceptions of education and has received its fullest treatment in Barton and Levstik’s ‘Teaching history for the common good’ (2004).

3 This table draws on Scottish Government Schools Census Data, but some data has been re-presented to preserve the confidentiality of participants. For example, clarifying which participant schools were in ‘remote areas’ would have made it too easy to identify participants.

Additional information

Funding

This

work was supported by the Carnegie Trust for the Universities of Scotland under Grant Number RIG007481

.

Notes on contributors

Joseph Smith

Joseph Smith is a Lecturer in History Education at the University of Stirling, UK. His research concerns the framing of history curricula and the identity of history teachers. He has published on both history and education for both general and academic audiences, most recently in the British Journal of Education Studies and Scottish Education Review.