Transcript Slide 1

As we start the new
year, Mr Smith, I just
want you to know that
I’m an abstractsequential learner and I
trust that you’ll conduct
yourself accordingly.
Joe Smith
SSAT Senior Lead Practitioner
St Hilda’s High, Liverpool
Look at your Year 7 CAT data. There is data for verbal, non-verbal and
quantitative reasoning. High ability, low ability and “average” students are
fairly easy to spot, but look closer and there are puzzling outliers – pupils
whose scores for the three tests vary wildly from each other by 30 or more
points.
It is not unusual for a child to be in a higher set for maths, but a lower set
for English (or vice versa) but History is usually taught in mixed ability
classrooms.
Part way through Year 10 of a very mixed-ability class, I looked at the
Year 7 data and the number of these “outlier” students with varying CAT
scores was startling. 20 out of 28 students had a difference of more than
20 between their highest and lowest CAT scores.
“We give different coloured
exercise books to visual,
auditory and kinaesthetic
learners.”
“I was observed by the Assistant Head
and she said, ‘I teach that student and
she really doesn’t learn in the way you
were teaching.’”
Unfortunately, Howard Gardner’s nuanced work on MI has been repackaged in schools as “preferred learning styles.” These two concepts are
very different – an intelligence is the way in which an individual thinks, while
a learning style is the way in this an individual prefers to be shown
information. Consequently, a visually intelligent person is not necessarily a
visual learner. In fact, an approach to teaching which relies on visual media
will hinder a visually-intelligent person’s learning by substituting the visual
learner’s mental construct with a “correct” set of images.
It is, therefore, counterproductive “teach to a particular intelligence” because
a teacher’s ability to teach to, say, a musical intelligence is restricted by the
teacher’s own musical intelligence which may be at a level far below the
child’s.
Looking at the data made me think about how this impacted on how the students
were learning. I began to make links between the variation in some individual’s data
and multiple intelligences.
I had been introduced to MI during teacher-training and not really given it a second
thought, but going back to the primary literature made me realise that I had not fully
understood MI the first time around.
If MI is about pupil outcomes rather than teacher input perhaps there was something
to be gained from allowing students to explore a topic in their own learning style.
I thought more about judgement. At GCSE, students taking their own judgement
counts for, at most, two marks in an essay (now less that SPG) for this reason, it is
not always taught as a discrete skill – it comes naturally to the most able and baffles
the less able.
Could Multiple Intelligence theory help students form historical judgements?
As teachers of GCSE History, there is a danger that we neglect judgement as a skill.
There are two reasons for this:
•There is relatively little reward for it in exams.
•It is a higher-order skill that can confuse the less able.
Instead of prizing judgement, there is a risk that it becomes something formulaic,
something mentioned briefly in an introduction or tacked onto the end of a two-sided
answer. Students know they need to see “both sides,” but then frequently reach nonjudgements:
In conclusion, Hitler’s foreign policy was some of the reason for World War Two, but
not the whole reason.
Multiple Intelligences allows us to put judgement at the heart of our approach to
learning by legitimising student responses to historical debates.
Step One - Encourage students to take a more agentic
approach to writing history by broadening their ideas about
why history is for.
Step Two – Allow students to communicate their
understanding through non-written media.
Step Three – Analyse the student responses. Are they “good
history?”
Students don’t really understand why they have to write their history
essays in the way that they do. They know it should have an introduction,
look at “both sides of the question” and have a conclusion, but they never
seem to ask why. They do it because we tell them to do it.
In actual fact, we are teaching children a bastardised form of a particular
approach to writing history. An approach which is not “good history” in
any transcendent sense, but one which is culturally and historically
determined.
I wanted to show to the students that the notion of good history changes
and used the history of art to do this.
At first, painters tried to recreate reality as closely as possible. Artists got better
and better at this so that cave paintings gave way to Roman Art and then the art
of the Dutch Masters. This art was known as realism because it intended to be
as real as possible.
Von Ranke was one of the
first true historians.
He
believed that the job of the
Historian was “simply to tell it
how it was.” This made Von
Ranke’s books extremely
boring, they contained long
lists of facts. While it was
impressive that Von Ranke
had done so much research it
wasn’t the kind of book that
most people would want to
read.
Roman Still Life – 70 AD
Lobster by Heda - 1651
Modern art built on the work of the impressionist painters. They liked the way
that impressionism made the painter’s view of the subject more important than
the subject itself. Modern artists believed that art should tell the painter’s story.
The painter did not have to justify his art because it was his story and he could
tell it however he wanted. Many people criticised Modern Art for being
unrealistic, but realism wasn’t the point. The point was to communicate a
message.
At the start of the twentieth century a group of artists began to question
realism. They argued that it was impossible for a painting to be a copy of
reality. It could only ever be a copy of what the artist saw as reality. These
painters were called impressionists because they painted the impression that
the thing had on them rather than trying to paint the thing itself.
History books slowly changed
to have more of the author’s
judgement in them. History
books became very personal
accounts that made it clear
what the author felt, much like
Impressionism in art. These
books tended to be very “onesided.”
Post modern artists argued that
art was itself totally pointless.
There was no point in trying to
create a work of art to tell a story
because everyone who looked at
a piece of art looked at it in a
different way. Art became less
about the artist and more about
the person who was looking at it.
Post-Modern Artists abandoned all
the rules of art and tried to create
work that made a different type of
sense to every person who
viewed it. Post Modern Artists
often didn’t even give their work
titles, preferring to call them
“composition number 16” or
something that allowed the viewer
to think of his own title.
Recently, history has moved into the era of post-modernism. Post-modern
historians argue that writing history is impossible. We cannot know how
World War Two affected the lives of every person involved and so it is
impossible to try to write a “history” of World War Two. Postmodern
historians do not believe that there are “two-sides” to every story, but that
there are an infinite number of sides. To get round this problem, postmodern historians often restrict themselves to writing small-scale history
books. Post-modern historians believe that all historians “make the past up”
because they are writing about something that doesn’t exist, this means that
post-modern historians sometimes make up scenarios in history that
support their view!
The goal of the art history exercise was not to
question the validity of our modern approach to
writing history, but to encourage students to
think of history as something in which they could
be actively involved rather than a remote
academic exercise.
Good judgement can only happen if the author
believes that his judgement has legitimacy.
Students must not be frightened of making a
judgement
This project was the culmination of a GCSE unit on the Cold War. The aim of the project
was to break free of the tyranny of the two-sided essay (in some ways the USSR was to
blame, in some ways the USA was) and to get students exploring their own
interpretations of the development of Cold War hostilities.
Activities like this are daunting for students and teachers
alike. The student is anxious that s/he doesn’t quite know
what is expected, while the teacher is anxious that the
student will not take the activity seriously. These are
sensible concerns.
•The second concern is easily dealt with by way of a threat.
“If you don’t try then you’ll just have to write the essay
instead.”
•The first concern requires some legwork to help students
rethink what they understand history to be.
Intelligence
Type
Submissions
Frequency
Visual
Cartoon
Painting
Comic Strip
Poster
5
1
1
2
Kinaesthetic
Decorated cake
Stop-motion
animation
1
2
LogicalMathematical
Flow diagram
Computer game
concept
2
1
Interpersonal
Diary entry
Short Story
2
1
LinguisticVerbal
Poem
2
Musical
Song
2
It is worth noting two things about
this table.
Firstly, there was no apparent link
between learning styles identified
by diagnostic tools and the method
that
students
chose
to
communicate their work. That is to
say, pupils with high verbal CATs
scores did not necessarily prefer
verbal
communication
when
offered the choice.
Secondly,
the
different
intelligences were spread across
the ability range. There were high
and low attaining visual learners
and high and low attaining
kinaesthetic learners. This would
seem to challenge the notion that
intelligence can be generalised.
Students had to submit a written explanation along with their non-written
submission.
“The white is the space for
the two sides to talk and this
is getting smaller. The blue I
feel is the space which
america gave themselfs and
is overpowering the picture
as they did wish to do when
the cold war was nationally
known however the yellow
which is the nuclear bomb
seperates the natural flow
between the two country with
america being blue and the
USSR being red” [sic]
I feel that with Marshall
Aid, the USA was
using money as a
weapon. That's why
I’ve included the strong
arm of the USA with
bags of money making
a fist at the end and all
the countries whose
support it bought have
their flags flying
nearby. Many people
think that the USSR
was more aggressive,
but they had to behave
like this because they
didn’t have the money
that America did. I’ve drawn the Iron curtain as a defence against the Marshall Aid
money. The USSR’s of Marshall Aid, Comecon, in an old broken cannon sitting in
Eastern Europe which is still grey and damaged by the war.
“I chose this medium for a number of reasons. Firstly, a cake is usually
divided up and shared. This shows the way that the great powers divided
up the world. Secondly, the cake replicates how fragile the world became
during the cold war with the threat of atomic bombs because a cake is very
delicate and needs to be handled carefully. The world could easily have
been destroyed, in much the same manner that a cake is destroyed when
the time comes to eat it. Thirdly, although it doesn’t look likely now that a
country would use atomic bombs, I do believe that in future the world could
be destroyed by atomic bombs. This is shown by the way that, at some
point, the cake will eventually be eaten and destroyed. You can’t have a
cake and not eat it. In the same way, you can’t have atomic bombs and
not use them. It’s tempting fate to have them in the first place.”
This student produced a short story from
the point of view of a pilot in the first
sortie of the Berlin Airlift.
Rather than share the story, I thought I
would share his thoughts in the follow
up semi-structured interview.
N.B. The interviewer’s voice is mine, not
John Bishop’s.
Concept
Cold Warriors is a computer game where you
have to be either Stalin or Truman and you
have to take decisions to get the best deal
that you can for your country. If you succeed,
you can become the most powerful country in
the world. If you fail, you might cause a
nuclear war.
The game moves through levels and you
have to try to get the best deal you can. If
you give too much away then you lose points,
if you make the other side too angry then
there is a war and the game ends. You can’t
move onto the next level unless you have
taken good enough decisions for your country
and got enough points.
Each decision you take affects what the next
level will be like so if you’re too aggressive in
getting your way, your opponent gets more
aggressive in the next level.
Level One – Potsdam Conference, 1945.
Soviet Objective – Secure control of Eastern Europe as a buffer against Germany
USA Objective – Keep the USSR out of involvement in the war against Japan.
Level Two – Eastern Europe
Soviet Objective – Install “friendly” governments in Eastern Europe.
USA Objective – Achieve full democratic elections in Eastern Europe
Level Three – Greece and Turkey
Soviet Objective – Achieve Pro-Communist governments in Greece and Turkey.
USA Objective – Prevent Communist takeover in Greece and Turkey.
Level Four – Marshall Aid
Soviet Objective – Increase support for Communist parties in Western Europe
USA Objective – Decrease support for Communist parties in Western Europe
Level Five – Berlin Blockade
Soviet Objective – Achieve control over the whole of Berlin.
USA Objective – Maintain a free West Berlin