Joined-up History

A volume in International Review of History EducationSeries Editors Peter Lee Rosalyn Ashby Stuart FosterDebates about the identity of school history and about the nature and purpose of the learning that doescan and should take place in history classrooms continue in many countries around the world. At issue inmany of these debates beyond the concerns about history and national identity are often unaddressed questionsabout the role and inter-relationship of historical knowledge and historical understanding in historicallearning.Research on historical thinking is on-going and a complex tradition of enquiry has developed acrossnational borders in the last 30 years focusing in particular on developing students understanding of historicalmeta-concepts such as 'evidence' and 'causation'. There has been comparatively little focus however on thehistorical content that students study on how they study it and on how mastery of historical content contributes to students overall picture of a historicalpast.This volume gathers together recent research and theorising from around the world on key issues central to historical learning and instruction.What sense do students make of the history that they are taught? Are students able to organise historical knowledge in order to form large scale representationsof the past and what difficulties can children face in doing so? What are the relationships that obtain between history as an academic disciplineas practised in universities and history as a subject taught in schools? What can research tell us about the effects of instructional strategies thataim to help students 'join up' what they learn in class into meaningful historical knowledge and understanding?