Perceptions v. reality: pupils’ experiences of Learning in history and geography at Key Stage 4

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Perceptions v. reality: pupils’ experiences ofLearning in history and geography at Key Stage 4Mary Biddulph & Ken Adeya School of Education, University of NottinghamPublished online: 04 Jun 2010.

To cite this article: Mary Biddulph & Ken Adey (2003) Perceptions v. reality: pupils’ experiences of Learning in history andgeography at Key Stage 4, The Curriculum Journal, 14:3, 291-303, DOI: 10.1080/0958517032000137621

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The Curriculum Journal Vol. 14 No. 3 Autumn 2003 291–303

The Curriculum Journal

ISSN 0958-5176 print/ISSN 1469-3704 online© 2003 British Curriculum Foundation

http://www.tandf.co.uk/journalsDOI: 10.1080/0958517032000137621

Perceptions v. reality:pupils’ experiences oflearning in history and

geography at Key Stage 4

MARY BIDDULPH and KEN ADEY

School of Education, University of Nottingham

ABSTRACT

History and geography have been identified as subject areas in which there has been‘a notable lack of research’ (Lord and Harland, 2000: 29–30). This article builds onthe findings of a questionnaire survey of over 1400 Year 9 pupils conducted in 1999(Adey and Biddulph, 2001). The aim of this survey was to establish pupils’ experiencesof learning history and geography at Key Stage 3 and to gain some insights into whatthey expected these subjects to be like at Key Stage 4. At the time of conducting thesurvey the message was clear – that pupils had found both subjects to be interestingand enjoyable at Key Stage 3 but many did not expect this interest and enjoyment tocontinue into GCSE.

The data from the questionnaires pointed to trends in pupils’ perceptions of bothsubjects. In terms of GCSE, pupils were expecting subjects that required a lot ofreading and writing, were quite difficult, where lessons would be varied and containsome (although not many) practical elements, and where they would have someopportunity to express their own opinions. It was clear that prior to GCSE pupilshad a very insecure understanding of the relevance of learning in both subjects.

KEY WORDS

history; geography; learning; enjoyment; usefulness.

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THE CURRICULUM JOURNAL Vol. 14 No. 3292

INTRODUCTION AND METHODOLOGY

In order to begin to explore how far pupils’ perceptions were borne out bytheir actual experiences of learning GCSE history and geography, three semi-structured group interviews were conducted for each subject with a sampleof Year 11 pupils in a total of four schools during the Summer term of 2001.It was felt that the advantages of the group interview approach were that itencouraged ‘interchange between pupils, enabling views and opinions to bedeveloped more fully. Also, the interviewer would be able to check individualviews with others in a group and better judge how representative they mightbe’ (Fielding

et al

., 1999: 110).Selection of pupils to participate in the interviews was left in the hands of

their teachers, who tended to select those pupils they thought wouldcontribute readily to discussion. At the beginning of the interviews pupilswere given a text box containing the same descriptors of ‘learning’ that hadbeen used in the Year 9 questionnaire (see Appendix). They were asked tocircle those terms which best described their experiences of learning historyor geography. Their responses then provided the focus for a semi-structureddiscussion of those experiences:

• which aspects of the subject content they had enjoyed and which they hadfound more difficult;

• what particular teaching approaches they had enjoyed and which hadhelped them to learn most effectively;

• how the subjects compared with other GCSE subjects they had studied interms of intellectual challenge, workload and overall interest;

• the extent to which they felt the study of these subjects at GCSE was ofparticular use to them at either a specific or more general level.

Each interview lasted between forty minutes and one hour and was taped andtranscribed.

Managing the interviews raised several problems.

Preparation

The interviews were held prior to pupils leaving school to begin their GCSEexams. Pupils had little warning of the interviews other than being asked toparticipate and a limited briefing about their content and purpose. In retro-spect, it may have been better to have given them more warning so that theycould have looked through their GCSE work to remind themselves of whatthey had studied. To have provided them with the ‘learning’ descriptors andan indication of the questions before the interviews began might have enabledthe pupils to be better prepared and to feel more confident in what they weresaying.


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PERCEPTIONS V. REALITY 293

Schools’ response

Participating schools were asked to arrange an interview group of six pupils.Five of the six interview groups did contain six pupils but one schoolprovided access to the entire GCSE group. This proved to be too large agroup and individuals who might have felt more comfortable in a small groupdid not speak out. The smaller groups were more successful in terms ofproviding an opportunity for individuals to contribute, but discussions stilltended to be dominated by more confident pupils.

We report our findings under the headings of ‘usefulness’, ‘enjoyment’ and‘difficulty of learning history and geography’. First, however, we considerwhat we know from the literature about some of these areas.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Enjoyment

Although the importance of enjoyment of the subject in decision-makingabout subject options has been widely acknowledged (Reid

et al

., 1974; Ryrie

et al

., 1979; Bardell, 1982; Kelly, 1988; Hendley

et al

., 1996; Lightbody

et al

.,1996; Stables and Wikely, 1997), few researchers have explored the reasonsfor pupil enjoyment. However, in the last decade a small number of studieshave attempted to identify some of the teaching and learning strategies thatpupils perceive to be ‘enjoyable’. Many of the Year 7 pupils in Cooper andMcIntyre’s (1994) study of effective classroom learning in English andhistory listed story telling, discussion, question and answer, group and pairwork, drama and role play, and the use of stimuli among their favouredteaching methods. The Welsh History Research Project (2000: 21) reportedthat ‘interesting approaches’ identified by pupils included ‘debates anddiscussions, stories about famous people, videos, individual or group inves-tigative work and fieldwork’. Harland

et al

.’s (1999) study of the Key Stage3 curriculum in Northern Ireland revealed ‘a very clear preference amongstpupils for practical and active learning approaches, and those requiring socialinteraction with their peers, or open-ended investigation. Pupils levelledstrong criticisms against tasks that employed extended periods of morepassive learning methods such as listening, writing or filling in worksheets’(reported in Lord and Harland, 2000: 61). Adey and Biddulph (2001) alsofound that in history and geography lessons pupils enjoyed similar active andinvestigative approaches and disliked passive learning. These findings arefurther supported by Hooper (2001) who reported that in history ‘practicaland expressive activities’ were most likely to motivate pupils while ‘tradi-tional scholarly’ activities were perceived by pupils to be demotivating.Indeed, the NFER survey (Lord and Harland, 2000) reported that, across the


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curriculum, team and group work, active and practical learning approacheswere viewed positively by pupils.

Perceived usefulness

The importance of perceived subject usefulness, especially in relation tofuture careers, has been widely reported (e.g. Reid

et al

., 1974; Ryrie

et al.

,1979; Pratt

et al.

, 1984; Kelly, 1988; Hendley

et al

., 1996; Stables, 1996;Stables, 1997; Stables and Wikeley, 1997), but the connections that pupilsmake between subject choice and careers have often been found to be unre-alistic. For example, Stables and Wikeley (1997: 401) reported that in theirinterviews with pupils, future usefulness in relation to career was by far themost mentioned reason for subject importance, but the authors comment that‘The naïve linkage of school subjects to careers (“there is no point in doingart unless you are going to be an artist”) not only betrays a sadly narrow viewof education but is also potentially problematic in its assumptions’ (402).Many of the pupils in Adey and Biddulph’s (2001) study also related useful-ness to career aspirations. In relation to studying geography, usefulness wasoften limited to ‘reading maps on a journey’ and careers in the travel industry.History was seen as being a useful preparation for jobs such as paramedic,pharmacist or nurse because of the study of the history of medicine. Only asmall number of pupils could see any intrinsic value in studying thesesubjects. An NFER survey (Lord and Harland, 2000) reported that ‘Analysisof all studies considering subject importance indicates that pupils link impor-tance with relevance, and that this is often future related’ (41).

THE FINDINGS

Usefulness

In all three schools Year 11 pupils indicated that they found GCSE geographyto be a very different subject from that studied at KS3. As one pupil (SchoolB) put it: ‘At Key Stage 3 it’s just common sense really.’ He felt that thesubject lacked depth at KS3 and that if this had not been the case, thetransition from Key Stage 3 to GCSE would have been less marked.

The term ‘useful’, within the context of GCSE geography, still seemed tosuggest to some pupils the study of something which was of practical use orwhich related to their intended career. Pupils felt that aspects of the subjectsuch as ‘Industrial Location’ could be useful in that such content couldsupport an individual’s understanding of things relating to business later inlife: ‘all the locational stuff and where to get a better product – could be usefulto people who want to do business’. For another pupil (School D), who had


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a clear sense of his own career path in Year 9, geography seemed to be asensible option: ‘In the future I want to do something to do with astronomyor astrophysics and I want to be able to recognize land features as in thephysical side of geography.’

Some were able to consider ‘usefulness’ in terms of the wider contributionof the subject. These pupils appreciated that the study of themes such as‘People and Place’ could generate a broader perspective on cultural andspatial issues and that geography presented them with opportunities toappreciate different individual, cultural and social viewpoints:

GCSE is a lot different to what it was at Key Stage 3. When you’re doingdevelopment and things like that it gives you a different perspective onthe world and you see it in a different light. (School D)

For others their articulation of why the subject was/could be useful tothem was limited to no more than a superficial indication of interest:

I just thought generally it would help and I was interested in the physicalaspects. (School B)

I just thought it would be interesting – I liked earthquakes and volcanoes.(School D)

When explaining why

history would be useful, most Year 9 pupils tried torelate its study usefulness to possible careers, which were often ill defined.Only a small number were able to identify any aspect of the subject’s intrinsicvalue at this stage, but the Year 11 interviews revealed some improvement inunderstanding in two of the schools. There was still a tendency to relate theusefulness of history study to careers (which were still sometimes ill definede.g. ‘medicine’), but some pupils were now able to identify aspects of thesubject which

did

actually relate to career intentions. One pupil (School A),who hoped to become a journalist, explained how the study of history helpedhim to understand the background to current world events: ‘You have toexplore the background to things, the reasons why something happened, andyou can relate that sometimes to real life.’ Pupils who hoped to study law(Schools A and B) commented: ‘When you are doing sources you have toanalyse it rather than just take it for what you see . . . seeing things for morethan what they appear on the surface’ and ‘I want to be a lawyer so – arguingcases and putting forward a well-presented argument and looking at thingsand maybe not taking it at face value.’ One pupil (School A) explained howthe study of history was helping him to have a critical understanding of theevents leading up to the 2001 general election: ‘Like all the election stuff that’sgoing on – it’s all propaganda. . . . If you listen to what the political partiesare saying, a couple of years ago I would have believed it all but having donehistory you start to sort out what’s fact and what isn’t.’ Only in School C


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were there no pupils able to articulate any distinctive value in historical study(e.g ‘Other than writing there isn’t really many skills in it’), but even herelater discussion led to unanimous agreement that the study of the history ofNorthern Ireland had helped them to understand better current eventsthere.

Enjoyment

Pupils were asked what they had enjoyed about GCSE geography. Duringthe Key Stage 3 survey pupils indicated that they enjoyed geography whenthey undertook fieldwork and they also enjoyed map and atlas work. Bothare approaches associated with the stereotypical image of the subject. AtGCSE also many had enjoyed the practical aspects of the subject – especiallyfieldwork and using ICT. In one school pupils could recall three field visits,including one three-day residential course in Scarborough. The other twoschools had undertaken fieldwork in the Peak District, an environment verydifferent from their local urban area. In all cases they could recall the natureof the work completed in the field, the rationale for undertaking the field-work and what they ‘got out’ of the opportunity. In all three schools theemphasis was on ‘getting out there’:

Just seeing it instead of looking at pictures. (School C)

I liked getting out – it made it more interesting and helped under-standing. (School B)

However, it was through the ‘follow-up’ work that some felt theirgeographical understanding became sharper:

After we go on field trips, the work afterwards I find most enjoyablebecause you’ve got a better understanding and you get the work donebetter. (School B)

They enjoyed being out of the classroom, undertaking their own research andthe opportunity to see geography for ‘real’.

ICT as an approach to learning was a strong feature in one school, wherepupils could recall using ICT to assess different countries’ levels of develop-ment and then having to evaluate critically different development indicators.They had all enjoyed this work and were clear about their learning from it.In the other two schools the pupils could not recall using ICT to supporttheir learning in geography, but they had used ICT to support theirindependent research, often undertaken at home. One group stated that theywould have liked to use ICT more in their geography lessons. As one pupilput it:


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You can take notes and it doesn’t go in one ear and out the other. Youcan read it in your own time and understand it better. You can also revisitinformation – work at your own pace. (School B)

Other activities that pupils enjoyed included working in groups anddiscussion work, including problem-solving.

It’s good because you have a better understanding and can apply yourknowledge. (School C)

It helps you to understand it. We all discuss and you get everybody’spoint of view and this helps you to understand. (School B)

Additionally, more creative work such as writing newspaper reports, doingposter presentations and coursework following fieldwork were felt to beenjoyable, as was work involving visual resources such as TV programmesand photographs.

Pupils also enjoyed learning new aspects of subject content. The idea of‘new areas of knowledge’ (as opposed to studying in more depth somethingstudied previously) such as ‘Glaciation’, ‘Indicators of Development’ and‘Natural Hazards’ in their broadest sense (as opposed to just earthquakes andvolcanoes) appealed.

Some aspects of subject content proved not to be enjoyable. In one schoolthere was a unanimous dislike of ‘Weather and Climate’ as a theme. Pupilshad found it very difficult to ‘visualize’ many key ideas and had found thescientific elements complex and extremely challenging. There had been a lotof graph and mathematical work and pupils had found that their learning inmathematics did not transfer across to this particular theme. Many concludedthat they simply did not understand it.

In the Key Stage 3 survey pupils were clear that answering questions froma text book and note-making were activities which they did not enjoy ingeography and from which they learned little. The same feeling emerged inthe GCSE interviews, where pupils also stated that they did not enjoy lessonswhere they were passive recipients of knowledge. In one school not onlywere certain types of writing criticized but also too much writing, merely toensure the recording of geographical content. Alongside this the learning ofwhat pupils described as ‘technical terminology’ (often through copying ofterms and definitions) detracted from pupils’ enjoyment. This particularlyrelated to aspects of ‘Glaciation’, ‘Hydrology’ and ‘Weather and Climate’.However, it was also recognized that technical terms have to be learned andunderstood in order to be successful at this level.

The Year 9 survey had revealed that in history at Key Stage 3 pupilsespecially enjoyed investigative enquiry, creative writing, group or pairedenquiry and discussion. As with ‘study usefulness’, the Year 11 interviewsrevealed a difference between the schools: in each of Schools A and B, five of


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the six interviewees had enjoyed GCSE history whereas in School C only oneinterviewee had enjoyed the subject. In School A pupils identified two char-acteristic features of their work that had made it enjoyable: discussion anddebate, and teacher explanation. Pupils here were at pains to point out thatit was not merely being able to give their own opinions and judgements thatappealed to them, but it was also the manner in which those discussions wereconducted. They could contribute with confidence, they were ‘treated on amature level’, and the teacher was always positive. Teacher explanation wasalso a vital ingredient of the enjoyment here. The teacher ‘always brings it tolife’. ‘He asks, “Now what would you do?”, then he tells us what reallyhappened.’ Although these pupils had also enjoyed watching videos, they stillwanted the teacher to

‘

tie it all up’ and ‘bring it all to life’. In School B thereally enjoyable aspects of GCSE history work were identified as group workand investigative enquiry (‘hot seating . . . sort of research the characters andcome back and tell the class their story’).

The Key Stage 3 survey had revealed that the least liked work in historyhad been ‘Answering questions from a set book or worksheet’ and ‘Writingessays’, followed by ‘Independent note-making’ and ‘Copying from a boardor textbook’. The Year 11 interviews indicated that this had not changed atGCSE. In School A ‘making notes’ and essay writing were still unpopular atKey Stage 4, but the mood of the group was summed up by one pupil’scomment that ‘I still don’t enjoy the essay writing and the notes but I enjoyhistory’. Another commented that ‘Essays is a word that strikes fear intopeople’ but ‘they’re not so much essays as large answers to questions’. InSchool B note making (especially dictated notes) and working from work-sheets (both of which they felt they did a lot of the time) were identified asthe most unpopular aspects of GCSE history.

Pupils in School C were able to identify a number of topics they hadenjoyed (the local history work was enjoyed by all the interviewees), butthey remained largely unenthusiastic about their GCSE history lessons.Despite the use of videos and a lot of class discussion they were distinctly‘lukewarm’:

The teacher will ask us like questions and we’ll give our answers andthings like that. If somebody agrees, they support it and if somebodydisagrees then they support it (sic) – then you get both sides of thequestion.

Their overriding view was that the teaching they had received had remainedmuch the same over the GCSE course. Five of the six pupils indicated that‘All lessons are similar’, compared with only one pupil in School B and nonein School A. The pupils in School C identified as their standard fare thoseaspects of study that pupils generally were identifying as the least popularaspects of studying history:


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It’s just mainly copying notes off the board and then learning them.

Being asked one-to-one questions and things.

We’ve looked through source books and tried to answer the questionsin there and made notes from the source books on things that we thoughtwere relevant to our work.

Difficulty of learning history and geography

In all three schools pupils had found geography significantly different atGCSE compared to Key Stage 3, and they felt that as a GCSE course itdemanded more of them than many other subjects. In two schools pupilsagreed that it was the most difficult and demanding GCSE they had studied.In the other school it was third in level of difficulty behind mathematics andscience. Pupils felt that they were given a lot of homework and someexpressed concern over the amount of coursework they had to complete incomparison to other subjects. For some these difficulties presented a chal-lenge. For others it was ‘a bit off-putting . . . you struggle with it so you reallycan’t be bothered about it’ (School B).

Pupils felt that the subject was much more ‘issues-based’ at Key Stage 4than previously and that they considered issues and possible solutions indepth. The opportunity to express their own opinions was significant inSchool D. Pupils said that they found this difficult to begin with as they werelooking for ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers to questions, but they accepted that animportant element in their learning was to have an opinion that they wereable to express and justify.

When we were given questions we had to give our own opinion. We hadto write why we think things. To begin with you think ‘Oh, I don’t wantto give the wrong answer’, but in a way it helps to build up yourconfidence in writing your own opinion. (School D)

It helps to develop your confidence because when we first started no onewould speak out . . . geography has helped. (School D)

It gives you new knowledge about what other people think so you thinkmore about the subject. (School B)

Expressing their own opinion enabled these pupils to accept that sometimesthere are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answers, but rather opinions, perspectives andarguments.

Pupils in all schools felt that GCSE history had been a ‘difficult’ subject(although School A pupils decided that ‘challenging’ was a better descriptor).All were in agreement about what made the subject so challenging: the depthof understanding required and the writing skills needed:


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In other subjects, like maths and science, you’re told these things – thishappens because of this – but you never get to understand it. (School A)

You can’t just leave the facts – you have to understand it. (School A)

You have to go deeper and give more explanation. (School C)

You have to understand it and then be able to write about it. (School B)

Also you have to actually write the answers in a kind of mini-essay inhistory while in subjects like maths and science and geography it’s justone-word answers. (School B)

Pupils in Schools B and C also felt that the sheer workload in history addedto the challenge it presented:

I think what put a lot of people off [in Year 9] is – They all say ‘Oh God,history – it’s so much work’. Look at the amount of coursework thatwe’ve done and the topics we’ve had to cover and the work that youhave to do. It’s a really full subject and there’s so much going on in itthat there are a lot easier options to take, with less of a workload. (SchoolB)

In these schools it was felt that the amount of coursework contributed greatlyto this heavy workload:

Especially like the coursework we have to do – loads of writing. (SchoolC)

We spent hours doing coursework and it was our first piece and we werein the beginning of Year 10 and we were sort of thrown in to do a fullpiece of GCSE history coursework and I didn’t know what I was doingand you just – you tend to do too much work because you don’t knowwhat’s really expected of you or what you’re supposed to be doing. I didtoo much. (School B)

In contrast, the pupils from School A felt that in Year 9 many pupils had beendeterred from studying GCSE history because of the amount of courseworkthey anticipated, whereas in reality ‘we got two essays for coursework. Theygot a huge stack of geography stuff.’

IMPLICATIONS

By the end of Key Stage 4 there were some pupils who could articulate thedistinctive contribution history and geography made to their learning.However, there remained a large number for whom an understanding of thepurpose of studying geography or history had not progressed significantly


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since Year 9. Thus there is clearly still a need for teachers to place greateremphasis on developing pupils’ understanding of the distinctive contributionof each subject to their learning: pupils need to be able to answer the question‘Why are we doing this?’ In history, greater attention to the teaching ofhistorical significance at both key stages, but especially at Key Stage 3, woulddo much to enable pupils to answer this question (Hunt, 2000; Phillips, 2002).In geography greater attention to ‘topicality’ might help to ensure the rele-vance of the geography curriculum, thus providing a greater understandingof its ‘purpose’.

For both subjects there were clearly identified teaching strategies enjoyedby pupils at GCSE. In history, pupils enjoyed the subject at GCSE in thoseschools that employed the same teaching strategies as those identified as‘enjoyable’ at Key Stage 3, i.e. investigative work, group work and discussionand debate. These strategies were also identified as enjoyable in geography.In addition, the use of fieldwork and ICT was more widely employed ingeography at Key Stage 4 than Key Stage 3, and these two strategies inparticular were identified by pupils as being enjoyable and interesting waysto learn.

For both subjects pupils remained clear about the learning strategies theydid not enjoy: namely, ‘answering questions from worksheets and textbooks’and ‘making or taking notes’. These findings indicate that in history activelearning strategies serve to make the subject interesting and enjoyable at bothkey stages. There also appears to be a connection between such teachingstrategies and the development of pupils’ appreciation of the distinctivenature and purpose of the study of history. In geography it would seem that,as fieldwork and ICT are characteristic and enjoyable features of Key Stage4 then there is a need to extend the use of these strategies at Key Stage 3.

These findings, together with the results of the Key Stage 3 survey, suggestthat if there were a greater emphasis placed upon appropriate and enjoyablestrategies at Key Stage 3, and if pupils could see that these strategies wouldalso characterize the teaching of history or geography at Key Stage 4, bothsubjects would be more attractive options for further study. The learningprocess and the quality of teaching are far more influential than subjectcontent in making these subjects enjoyable and engaging for pupils at bothkey stages.

For both history and geography a number of pupils identified thesesubjects as the most difficult, or among the most difficult, being studied atGCSE. Workload (coursework and homework) was one of the stated reasonsin relation to both subjects. In history the need to display

understanding

andthus to support argument (especially in writing) was the characteristic featureof difficulty identified. In geography, the opportunity to express and justifyopinions, using geographical terminology and concepts, was a key feature ofdifficulty. However, although pupils identified these as difficulties they also


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recognized that they were essential features of the study of these subjects and,indeed, were features which helped to make the subjects enjoyable andinteresting. Many pupils saw these difficulties as positive challenges.

This research suggests that, if we are to stem the outflow of pupils fromGCSE geography and history, then there is a serious need for a shift inteachers’ understanding of pupils’ learning experiences in these subjects atKey Stage 3. A further series of semi-structured interviews is planned, to beconducted with lower school pupils, to contribute to the debate on pupils’experiences and perceptions of their Key Stage 3 curriculum.

APPENDIX

Descriptors of learning

• Enjoyable• A lot of reading and writing• Useful• A lot of tests• Interesting• Lessons are always different• Difficult• A lot of group work and discussion• A lot of computer work• Not useful• Easy

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A Matter of Choice. A Study ofGuidance and Subject Options.

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Choices and Chances. A Study of Pupils’Subject Choices and Future Career Intentions.

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29(2): 197–208.Stables, A. and Wikeley, F. (1997) ‘Changes in preference for and perceptions of

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The Teaching of Welsh History in Key Stages3 and 4

. University of Wales Institute School of Education.


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Documents

Perceptions v. reality: pupils’ experiences of Learning in history and geography at Key Stage 4