ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the purposes of school history and suggests ways mentors can support beginning and early career teachers to plan meaningful and rigorous lessons focused on pupils’ historical learning. It examines the need for beginning teachers to understand the rationale of lesson sequences to appreciate how pupils’ historical understanding develops in the longer term. It asserts that planning is a complex endeavour that sits at the heart of effective teaching. By discussing and designing enquiry questions with their mentee, and modelling the thinking of the lesson-planning process, mentors can help beginning teachers to see how pupils’ historical knowledge and understanding is built. This demonstrates that learning to plan requires subject-specific understanding of substantive and disciplinary knowledge. The chapter also considers how mentors can support mentees to adopt assessment methods that are fit for purpose in history. The chapter also explores the support beginning teachers need to effectively engage in a cycle of reflection and evaluation focused on pupils’ learning.
