The empirical focus of this thesis is the history of history teaching between 1880 and 1914. In particular, it constitutes a study of the intentions which underpinned wrical education. Much of the scholarly research on history teaching's past uses on the history lesson as a site for the downwards filtration of imperia, ideologies into the nation's consciousness, the source material for which has mainly been the subject-specific history textbook. The textbook, however, does not properly reflect the genre of text which the majority of children would have read in their lessons in history. This thesis shifts the focus and thus offers a contribution to knowledge by examining sources which, although largely absent in previous studies, play a significant role in helping us better understand the perceived values of historical education. This thesis, therefore, connects the recommended practice of the historical reading lesson and contemporary educational theory. It is the first substantial study to do so.

In the light of widespread concern over the state of history education in England, this study explores how living history at museums and historic sites contributes to engaging young people in representations of the past. It draws on theories of historical consciousness, specifically that of Rüsen, which imply that ideas about the past formed in the everyday exist in tension with learning history in the classroom. Applying Rüsen’s theory to a novel context, visits by six schools to the Museum of London and the Tower of London, enabled an examination of the interaction between students’ ideas about the medieval past and its representation in living history, and the implications of this interaction for their historical consciousness. Active, conscientious and high achieving, the characteristics of the students involved in this study were significant when understanding their responses to their experiences. However, many of the points made in the literature about the development of young people’s historical understanding were reflected in their experiences, and this study, therefore, builds on a growing body of research which suggests that there are significant cultural patterns to how individuals understand the past. From the evidence of this research, living history’s potential lies in enabling students to encounter, ideally through first-person interpretation, perspectives on the medieval past which (as far as possible) come from within that period. As a dynamic experience, it simulates the real-ness of the past, and makes its differences more concrete for students who are used to thinking about it in abstract ways. More research is needed to understand how the interaction between students and living history performances leads to particular types of historical consciousness, however, understanding living history as a performance, rather than its capacity for reproducing the past authentically, is essential to realising how it interacts with students’ ideas of the past.

My thesis explores the teaching of sensitive issues in history at secondary school level in Mid-Ulster in Northern Ireland and Oxford in England between 1991 and 2001. The research is intended to compare the responses of teachers and students, over time and place, to emotionally-charged topics. Questions are asked about the nature of sensitivity and the impact of factors external to the classroom on inter-personal relations during history lessons. Consideration is given to the possible connections between political change and increased sensitivity in the classroom. The teachers' and students' preconceptions, their opinion of the role of history and the stated teaching strategies are compared. There is a literature review of the theory and purpose of history teaching as well as on curriculum development and related disciplines. Although the conceptual framework is primarily anchored in the study of history, it draws on insights from a range of other subject areas. The dominant stance taken is that of a reflective history teacher: questions asked and interpretations of evidence are overtly guided by personal experience. Data is also drawn from a wide range of documents, surveys and semistructured interviews. This combination of teacher self—reflection, archival material and empirical fieldwork, while essentially qualitative, is also underpinned by quantitative analysis of questionnaires distributed to students in both Northern Ireland and Oxford in the years 1991, 1996 and 2001. The findings indicate the following: the importance of formal history lessons; a growing awareness of sensitive issues in the classroom; an apparent discrepancy between some of the teachers' and students' views; and the way regional variations are becoming less marked over time.

This three-module thesis employs quantitative and qualitative methods to investigate evaluative language in Canadian secondary school and university history textbooks. The first module overviews approaches to the study of evaluation and key issues of historical discourse in need of research. The second module proposes a framework (Levels of Evaluation) for investigating history texts that combines methods from Martin and White’s (2005) Appraisal theory, and Hunston’s (2011) Status, Value and Relevance. The third module further theorizes this framework, employing Kress and van Leeuwen’s (2006) methods to account for evaluative features of visual texts. The Appraisal framework is also elaborated to include two subcategories of Judgment: Normality, and the Appreciation network is reworked to account for different types of historical significance. Coffin’s (2000) Voices of History framework is expanded to include an intermediary voice between Recorder and Appraiser, which was found to be a salient feature of history textbooks. Key findings include a higher frequency in secondary school than university textbooks of inscribed Attitude, a high overall occurrence of the resources of Affect, and a low overall occurrence of extra-evaluation, the evaluative level concerned with disciplinary engagement. Implications for the study of evaluation in historical discourse and history education are discussed.

The ink and stylus tablets discovered at the Roman Fort of Vindolanda have provided a unique resource for scholars of ancient history. However, the stylus tablets in particular have proved extremely difficult to read. The aim of this thesis is to explore the extent to which techniques from Artificial Intelligence can be used to develop a system that could aid historians in reading the stylus texts. This system would utilise image processing techniques that have been developed in Engineering Science to analyse the stylus tablets, whilst incorporating knowledge elicited from experts working on the texts, to propagate possible suggestions of the text contained within the tablets. This thesis reports on what appears to be the first system developed to aid experts in the process of reading an ancient document. There has been little previous research carried out to see how papyrologists actually carry out their task. This thesis studies closely how experts working with primary sources, such as the Vindolanda Texts, operate. Using Knowledge Elicitation Techniques, a model is proposed for how they read a text. Information regarding the letter forms and language used at Vindolanda is collated, A corpus of annotated images is built up, to provide a data set regarding the letter forms used in the ink and stylus texts. In order to relate this information to the work done on image processing, a stochastic Minimum Description Length (MDL) architecture is adopted, and adapted, to form the basis of a system that can propagate interpretations of the Vindolanda texts. In doing so a system is constructed that can read in image data and output textual interpretations of the writing that appears on the documents. It is demonstrated that knowledge elicitation techniques can be used to capture and mobilise expert information. The process of reading ancient, and ambiguous texts, is made explicit. It is also shown that MDL can be used as a basis to build large systems that reason about complex information effectively. This research presents the first stages towards developing a cognitive visual system that can propagate realistic interpretations from image data, and so aid the papyrologists in their task.

Adolescents' ideas about provisional historical explanation were analysed in a sample of Portuguese 12 to 20 year-old students, attending the 7th, 9th and 1 1 th grade. In the light of a theoretical framework considering three conceptual clusters - explanatory structure, explanatory consistency, and objectivity and truth - students' ideas were categorised in a model of five levels of progression, functioning as the main working hypothesis, and generated through a qualitative analysis. At Level 1 (the story), students' ideas appear mainly related to description. At Level 2 (the right explanation), there is a focus on the correct explanation, explanations are assessed in everyday terms, and the direct observation paradigm tends to be valued. At Level 3 (the more factors the better), students' concerns appear linked to an ideal of aggregation of factors, evidence is discriminated as sources to the explanation, and the "memory paradigm" tends to be valued. At Level 4, (a consensual explanation?), there is a preoccupation about a perspectiveless neutrality, valuing verification and interlinked factors (explanations may take the narrative form). An objectivist trend defends the search for a consensual explanation whilst a relativist view denies its possibility due to existing different perspectives. At Level 5 (perspective), neutrality and perspective are recognised as genuine features of historical explanation, these appearing in conflict with ideas of perspectiveless neutrality. Explanations may take the narrative mode, and an interlink of factors is valued. Explanatory assessment may appear as evidential confirmation and refutation, and reference may be made to the substantive historical context. A statistical analysis of data concerning levels of progression by sex, age and grade, and responses to some specific sub-tasks, was carried out. Differences on sex were not found statistically significant but differences on age and grade appeared significant at the 5% level.

published_or_final_version / Chinese / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Chinese / Master / Master of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Chinese / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

published_or_final_version / Chinese / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy