Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Abbreviations and Acronyms
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I The Challenges of Compulsory History in the Australian School Curriculum
- 1 Compulsory History: the Issues Confronting Teachers
- 2 Student Engagement through Historical Narratives
- 3 Pedagogical Dimensions of Historical Novels and Historical Literacy
- Part II Understanding the Genre of Historical Novels
- Part III Deconstructing the Historical Novel
- Conclusion
- References
1 - Compulsory History: the Issues Confronting Teachers
from Part I - The Challenges of Compulsory History in the Australian School Curriculum
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2013
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Abbreviations and Acronyms
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Part I The Challenges of Compulsory History in the Australian School Curriculum
- 1 Compulsory History: the Issues Confronting Teachers
- 2 Student Engagement through Historical Narratives
- 3 Pedagogical Dimensions of Historical Novels and Historical Literacy
- Part II Understanding the Genre of Historical Novels
- Part III Deconstructing the Historical Novel
- Conclusion
- References
Summary
The Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), through a rolling program, has been mandating the teaching of History in Australian schools. However, this comes at a time when students' interest in studying History in schools is at a low ebb. While I will pursue these topics later in this chapter, here I address the issues associated with having Australian History students engage with historical novels.
The internationally acclaimed Australian children's novelist, Jackie French, titled her presentation to the 2010 History Teachers' Association of Australia (HTAA) Conference in Sydney ‘Turning History into Stories and Stories into History — Subtitle: What We can learn from Queen Victoria's Underpants’. She advertised her paper as:
From the World War I trenches of A Rose for the Anzac Boys to the social revolution begun by Queen Victoria's public approval of underpants, or how our view of 1770s exploration can be changed by the tale of Captain Cook's goat, this session looks at the true stories behind the novels, and the difference between writing history books and creating historical fiction, and the role both can play in education. (French, 2010)
The inclusion of French's paper in the national conference of the HTAA signifies that Australian teachers of History are recognising the value of the historical novel as a pedagogical strategy in the History classroom. For me, this is all about engaging students in History and cultivating their imagination generally, and in particular their historical imagination.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Whose History?Engaging History Students through Historical Fiction, pp. 7 - 16Publisher: The University of Adelaide PressPrint publication year: 2013