D 3 · Teacher education
The use of the historic environment in teacher education varies from institution to institution, but there is no expectation that buildings will be used at all. Few tutors have expertise in using the built environment as a starting point for curriculum studies, and tightly-packed teacher education programmes based around the ‘standards’ required by the Teacher Training Agency (TTA) leave little time for fieldwork or flexibility.
A few teacher education institutions do make imaginative use of the historic environment, with buildings and archaeological sites used as an important tool for subject-based or cross-curricular work. At Canterbury Christ Church (a University College with a large Initial Teacher Education (ITE) faculty), the ruins of St Augustine’s Abbey, the residential streets around the college, the town centre, the cathedral and the ancient St Martin’s church are regularly used as valuable resources for teaching a wide range of subjects, especially history, geography, RE and PSHE/citizenship. In their first few weeks of ITE 300 first year undergraduates carry out cross-curricular work in the streets of the city and all 180 post-graduate primary and secondary students work for a day in St Augustine’s Abbey. Groups of students plan and deliver highly original, divergent and inter-disciplinary presentations on themes arising from their in-depth study of the actual ruins. This popular cross-curricular experience is central to much of the curriculum course which follows, and tutors frequently refer back to these practical examples of creative thinking or crosscurricular links during subsequent work in single subject disciplines. One of the main problems for teachers confronted by a visit to an historic environment is what they perceive as their lack of knowledge. One of the most effective approaches is that taken by English Heritage’s education service. They support teachers and trainees by encouraging them to see any building as a piece of evidence to be interpreted, questioned and evaluated, rather than as a repository of facts. Annual workshops for newly qualified teachers, booklets designed for teachers, advice on planning visits and writing activity sheets, videos, education centres and substantial background information encourage teachers to organise custom-made experiences for their classes. The fact that English Heritage sites remain free of charge for booked educational visits, is an important reminder that this inheritance of some 400 major historic sites is truly ‘ours’, whatever our background.
An understanding of the built environment plays a small but valued part in the training of primary teachers. Previous emphases on the core subjects in the National Curriculum have restricted the time available to programme designers to concentrate on this important aspect of learning. However, lecturers in Primary History and Geography remain strongly committed to its use and there are many examples of excellent practice, including focus on the crosscurricular potential of the built environment.
With the publication of Excellence and Enjoyment (2003), the emphasis in the training of primary teachers will shift back towards the multi-disciplinary and creative aspects of teaching and learning. This will create further opportunities in the revalidation of programmes for more extensive use of the built environment. There is therefore a strong case for wider dissemination of good practice, and for continued support for the excellent work pioneered by English Heritage in training teachers to read, interpret and make effective use of the built environment. Any moves to downgrade this work would constitute a serious threat to the quality of support available to teachers.
It is not only trainee teachers who value this input. Of similar concern, has been the downgrading of and, in some cases, redundancy handed out to LEA History advisors. This network of outstanding practitioners has in the past provided important support to teachers, through expert knowledge of the locality and extensive collections of archive source material to support teachers’ work. The Government should seriously consider how this network could be re-established, and its funding guaranteed.
Graduates with degrees in subjects like archaeology are often refused entry to PGCE courses. Since many museum education jobs prefer candidates to have teaching experience or qualifications this also restricts the graduates’ abilities to move into heritage education. The Standards for the award of qualified teacher status issued by the Teacher Training Agency say that secondary teachers should have a knowledge and understanding of their subject to degree level, which many institutions interpret (wrongly) as meaning they should have a degree in a National curriculum subject. Akey issue is finding ways for keen, enthusiastic and able heritage professionals to become heritage educators. Entry into the heritage education profession and Continuing Professional Development are issues that have never really been addressed, and need to be.
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