ABSTRACT
The National Curriculum History Order (DES 1991c), provides Key Stage 1 teachers with a framework within which individual curriculum plans and schemes of work may be devised and implemented. It allows for flexibility, choice of content and methods of teaching and learning whilst aiming to maintain the integrity and intellectual rigour of the subject. This has to be welcomed. Perhaps more than any other curriculum area the teaching of history has been the subject of repeated criticism by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate in the context of their views on integrated work and on the proliferation of rather ‘vague’ projects which are designed to take in every subject on the timetable, often with contrived and tenuous links. It is claimed that few such topics are developed which have history as a discernible and worthwhile core (see, for example, Aspects of Primary Education: The Teaching and Learning of History and Geography, DES 1989a). Valid as this criticism might be, few teachers of Key Stage 1 children would doubt that whilst sound historic knowledge, understanding and skills should be developed in an intellectually rigorous way, this does not have to be removed totally from an integrated curriculum structure or topic based approach. Indeed, History, Non-Statutory Guidance, (NCC, 1991a) recommends that at Key Stage 1, history may be taught as part of an integrated theme which covers several National Curriculum subjects, as long as the key elements listed in the history programme of study are explicitly identified in the curriculum plan and in any topic.
