Support for new primary history teachers, their placement mentors, and university tutors

Abstract

Trainee primary teachers can find they have little in terms of seminars and lectures teaching them how to teach history during their initial teacher education training in the UK. PGCE students can receive less than 3 hours and undergraduate students less than 10 hours, though some ITT institutions are more generous this is a real concern. A teacher supporting a primary trainee with a history lesson may receive no tailored support from the relevant ITT institution and new ITT tutors similarly can receive no input, often finding themselves the only history tutor teaching primary trainees. In collaboration with the UK subject association for history, the Historical Association, we decided this needed to be addressed and have written 3 comprehensive new sections for the Historical Association web site. For our presentation we will explore the situation in ITT which makes this support almost non-existent, how we decided to structure this support and what to include. This is the first stage of a research project as once these sections go live on the web site we will be evaluating the ‘reach’ the web site has, how effective it is for those who access it and if we need to provide further support and if so what form that might take