History Education Subject Interest Group (SIG)

Through the SIG we aim to promote subject specific research and scholarship across the partnership and provide a welcoming space for local history to find community in their professional development.

We are keen to offer our partnership school colleagues opportunities for subject specific continued professional development and work closely with our colleagues in the University of Nottingham Humanities Department and other history education collaborators to develop programmes to support subject knowledge enhancement and pedagogical thinking for history teachers. The SIG also hopes to offer teachers the opportunity to explore and understand the questions academic historians are asking about particular periods of history and to be introduced to and engage with recent historical scholarship and explore pedagogical approaches.

We recognise many teachers are currently particularly concerned with gaining subject knowledge enhancement to support:

• local history studies
• the development of a more diverse and representative history curriculum
• considering how the history curriculum should address climate change
• arguing a case for a three-year Key Stage 3 to provide breadth of historical experience
• developing a rigorous historical KS4 and KS5 curriculum
• issues relating to history-specific pedagogies and assessment

SIG Structure and Format

SIGs take place three times a year (one per school term) on a weekday from 5-7pm, usually in the Dearing Building. Occasionally meetings take place on MS Teams. SIGs can be presentation lectures, workshops, collaborative sandpit style sessions or even history walks and involve history academics, history teacher educators and teachers from our partnership. For example a typical SIG involves:

• Lecture (45mins)
  Specialist subject knowledge enhancement lecture from a University of Nottingham history/humanities academic or a history education collaborator
• Exploration of accessible source materials and resources (15mins)
  Led by University of Nottingham history/humanities academic or a history education collaborator
• Table discussion and questions (20mins)
• Transition point – scholarship in school (10mins)
  Led by University of Nottingham history mentor
• Table discussion/ activity considering implications for practice (30mins)

The lecture element of the evening is filmed to be shared with partnership colleagues.

Feedback from previous SIGs

“Stimulating session at the university this evening talking about how we can make history relevant and challenge exclusive historical narratives that may be in our curriculums. Also great to listen to some academic history - it’s been a while!”

“A really good session, my school has over 30 different ethnic backgrounds in it, so this sort of approach will prove interesting to develop.”