ABSTRACT
The design of any history curriculum depends on judgements about historical significance. Traditionally, children and young people have been presented with the outcomes of other people’s judgements about historical significance: the selection of individuals, periods, events and developments that policy makers, textbook authors and/or teachers have determined it is most important for them to learn. Sometimes the criteria on which those judgments have been based are made explicit to the students. But where history is simply taught as a body of knowledge, students may not even be aware that there has been a process of selection. Teaching about historical significance means making that process explicit: helping students to understand the process by which subsequent ages decide what it is most important to learn about people in the past. As well as enabling young people to understand and critically evaluate judgements made by others, some have argued that it also means equipping them to make their own judgements about historical significance. The literature discussed in this chapter includes research into the ways in which children actually understand the concept of historical significance and examples of history educators’ theorising about the key ideas that they would want young people to develop, particularly analysing how the concept of significance extends beyond simply assessing the consequences of events or determining their relevance to the present.
