Ma Dissertation

Richard James Beaumont
MA Education (EDU060L020)
“Exploring pupil perceptions of ethnic

diversity in the History curriculum”
August 2011
This dissertation is submitted in part

fulfilment of the degree of MA Education,
Roehampton University.
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Abstract:
This dissertation is concerned with exploring pupil perceptions of ethnic diversity

within the History curriculum, this was fomented in the teacher belief that diversity is an
integral part of History, and one that should have a central place in its teaching. The
investigation centred around a series of lessons for Year 8 students, which was used as a
way in which to introduce students to elements of World History and thus ethnic diversity
within Historical subject matter. The outcomes of this enquiry highlighted that many
pupils could see the benefits and importance of studying the History of diverse peoples,
though it remained unclear if there was a more sophisticated understanding of the
interconnectedness of History, as pupils seemed to still see History as distinct and
different narratives, without necessarily appreciating how far other nations have
influenced one another in terms of ideas and culture, and that this in turn has helped to
shape the course of British History. The investigation also raises other issues around
diversity, as it shows that students tend to struggle with concepts that surround this term
and that in some ways diversity is seen as an ‘add-on’ to History teaching and not
necessarily an intrinsic part of it.
Module EDU060L020 Student BEA07201929
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Contents List:
Chapter 1: Introduction
Chapter 2: Literature review
Chapter 3: Research Methods methodology
Chapter 4: Research Methods findings
Chapter 5: Findings evaluation
Chapter 6: Conclusion
Appendices:
Appendix A: First questionnaire
Appendix B: Second questionnaire
Appendix C: table of results of questions 2 & 3 of first questionnaire
Appendix D: Table of results of questions 1 – 4 of second questionnaire
Appendix E: Student interview template
Appendix F: Interviewee consent form
Appendix G: Parental consent form
Appendix H: Permission request to Head Teacher
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Acknowledgements:
I would like to thank Ali Messer (Programme Tutor) and Hana Sheikh (Head Of History)
for all of their assistance and advice during this dissertation process.
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Chapter 1
Introduction:
The focus of this dissertation is to explore pupil perceptions of ethnic diversity
within the History curriculum and through a variety of research methods to see how
students from various ethnic backgrounds relate to the History they study. As a teacher of
History I wanted to consciously include a greater ethnic diversity within the lessons I
taught, not to meet some criteria, but because I believe that students should build a
greater understanding of the ‘inter-connectedness’ of History and that people from
different ethnic cultures and backgrounds have made valuable contributions to British
History; and that British History itself is not solely a white Anglo-Saxon affair.
I have always been interested in the ongoing debate concerning what kind of History
children should be taught in schools, and whether this is truly reflective or inclusive of
British society as a whole. Further to this I am interested in how ‘other’ (e,g black
history) narratives of History are included within the curriculum (Traille, 2007) and
whether what I as a teacher want students to understand by diversity is what they
necessarily take away from lessons, as with the best will in the world, staid stereotypes
and prejudices about ethnicity continue to persist, in the sense of the ‘makers’ of History
have tended to be ethnically white and English, and their narratives have dominated
History classrooms for some considerable time.
I was fairly certain that my dissertation would focus on the role of diversity in the
curriculum in some guise or another, as mentioned before I have always had a personal
interest in interpretations of History and which stories are the ones that get told. This
interest was further piqued by comments that I had heard students make during Black
History Month when our department uses this opportunity to raise the profile of Black
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History, and its contribution to British History as a whole. Some students expressed
doubts as to the purpose of Black History Month insofar as there wasn’t a ‘White History
Month’ so couldn’t see the point of such initiatives.
Even though there wasn’t any vitriol in the comments that I had overhead, what did
concern me was that some students were perhaps missing the point of the aims of
initiatives such as Black History Month, in that they were trying to get students to see the
contribution made to History by black peoples and give significant black people more
agency in national historical narratives. For instance, when I taught students about the
significance of Walter Tull as the first black sergeant in the British Army, many of my
students seemed fairly non-plussed by his life story, which puzzled me somewhat. By this
I mean, that I reflected on my own school History experience as I would have been
incredibly interested to know that people of an Afro-Caribbean or other non-white
background had fought for Britain during the world wars; so I was puzzled that I didn’t
get that reaction. Now I realise that this in some ways says more about my perceptions
than the students, as to a certain extent I was looking for a particular reaction, which I
didn’t get. However, I reflected on this and thought that my students might have reacted
in this way, as in a much more overtly multi-cultural society perhaps students couldn’t
see the historical significance of a black man attaining the rank of sergeant in the British
Army, as students are much more accustomed to seeing people from diverse ethnic
backgrounds occupying differing jobs and roles within society today.
Further to this, I wanted to explore how pupils perceived History in terms of
ethnic diversity in a more up to date context after the upheavals of the 1970’s and 1980’s
(e.g National association for multi-cultural education, 1982) where there were strides
forward in terms of raising the profile of a more ethnically inclusive History curriculum,
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but I wanted to try to evaluate the impact on student perceptions of diversity, having had
a more conscious focus on it in the National curriculum since the 1990’s.
There had been a lot of literature for the case for the inclusion of ‘other’ diverse
narratives of History to be included in the History curriculum, (Pankhania, 1994) though
I wanted to investigate if the pupils’ perceptions of diversity matched the objectives of
the various studies and research articles that had been published highlighting the need for
greater inclusion of diversity in school History. Also, I wanted to see if students of all
ethnic backgrounds actually cared about the inclusion of diversity in the curriculum and
what it actually meant to them as individuals; and how this compares to the aims of my
own department.
Therefore my research enquiry would centre around investigating the importance
students attach to diversity and exploring their opinions as to how important they think it
is in History. In terms of diversity I wanted to concentrate on students from a non-white
background to see how they responded to their History lessons and whether I as a teacher
was catering to their needs and expectations as students.
As a department we were already conscious of trying to provide a more diverse diet of
History, and I decided to take the opportunity that our schemes of work allowed to focus
more overtly on aspects of World History for a number of reasons. Firstly, in an effort to
raise the profile of the contribution of other civilisations and peoples to British History,
and secondly to show how inter-connected different countries’ Histories are through the
diversity of History. Also, I had hoped that this would build on the elements of diversity
in British History that students would have studied in Year 7.
This focus took the shape of six lessons devoted to the Empires of other countries
such as India and China, as well as Britain. I wanted to use these lessons to try and show
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students how diverse History is in terms of its ethnic make up, and how this has had a
significant impact on the development of Britain’s History. I will delve into more detail
the structure of these lessons in later chapters. However, having raised the profile of
World History with students through these lessons, I thought that I could use them as a
way in which I could evaluate students’ perceptions of diversity, in the sense of
examining their responses to the content and aims of these lessons.
However, not only did I wish to raise the profile of diversity in History through the
inter-connected nature of World History, but also to use this as an opportunity to research
student perceptions of diversity and to then hopefully challenge some of the stereotypes
that surround various episodes of History. For instance, with the teaching of the Atlantic
Slave Trade, I had felt when previously teaching that this topic was actually helping to
reinforce negative stereotypes of Afro-Caribbean people, in the sense that it helped to
‘objectify’ them and remove any Historical agency from their narrative (Visram, 1994).
So I had hoped to go some way in rectifying this by spending time on getting my students
to explore what life was like in Africa through some of its empires before the Atlantic
Slave Trade began, so hopefully helping to give a greater context to part of the African
narrative. I will go into more detail about this in later chapters.
Therefore, the aims of this series of lessons was to provide a vehicle with which
students could explore the contributions that ethnically diverse peoples, by that I mean
non-white British, had made to World History and in turn to British History.
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Chapter 2:
Literature review
In this Chapter I will engage and evaluate the main theories, debates and issues that
surround ethnic diversity in the History Curriculum. As mentioned in the previous
chapter I am concerned as a teacher of History in how the subject is used both politically
and socially to promote a national story (Barton 2004) and which types of people are
included in this national story which has often led to controversy (K.Riley,1994) in the
sense of what kind of people are included or excluded from the national narrative. In a
political sense, broadly speaking diversity has either been seen as needing a greater
profile within History (M.Riley, 2007) or it is pandering to political correctness
(Partington, 1986, cited in Grosvenor, 2000) and therefore has been keenly debated over
the last twenty years, particularly since the advent of the National Curriculum, and its
inclusion of diversity (QCDA,2010) during that period, in order to raise the profile of
‘other’ narratives.
As highlighted by Visram (1994) exclusion from British History has often been the
case for British people of Afro-Caribbean and Indian descent who have found their
‘voice’ to be excluded from the national narrative for some considerable length of time,
and it has only been in the fairly recent past that there has been a greater conscious effort
to try and appreciate the contribution that ethnic peoples have made to British History.
There has been a tendency in the past to teach students of History a very selective diet of
Historical events and people (Visram 1994) and thus give students a jaundiced view of
History.
As a teacher of History I have always been conscious in trying to get my students to
see the diverse nature of History and that it rarely if ever forms a simple narrative; though
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the relevance of diversity has been criticised in the past by the likes of the Hillgate Group
for its ‘misguided relativism’ (Phillips, 1998) which has been seen as a threat to
traditional values.
With this in mind I had set out to develop lessons that were a distinct step away
from notions of a “Great Tradition” (Sylvester, 1994) in terms of highlighting the ethnic
diversity of British History not only through the ethnically diverse peoples who have
contributed internally to the British national narrative, but those ethnically diverse
peoples who have externally added to British economical or social development; in order
to try and encourage students to see how there are many interconnected historical
narratives. Moreover as argued by Slater (cited in Grovesnor, 2000:12) much of the
History syllabus was “largely British or rather Southern English…abroad was of interest
once it was part of the Empire, foreigners either allies or rightly defeated” which
highlights a consistent issue in that Britain was often shown to be superior whether
implicitly or not; and what impact this would have had on children from ethnic
backgrounds has been the source of much conjecture (I Phillips, 1996) in the sense of
how pupils can use History as a conduit for building a sense of self-identity. Further to
this, as other researchers and theorists (Pankhania, 1994) have asserted diversity isn't
something to be squeezed into a history curriculum, but is an integral part of it and I
would argue that a syllabus needs to be built around it, in order to reflect a more
comprehensive and detailed version of Historical development and progress.
Moreover, for quite a considerable length of time, as two of the main thrusts of
criticism of the history curriculum argue, is that history has been closed off to more
diverse narratives and as outlined by Booth (cited in Grosvenor, 2000) has been
associated with the “dominant white culture”. Furthermore, as Grosvenor suggests (2000)
that within the curriculum, ‘difference’ has often been defined as ‘deficiency’;
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presumably as Traille (2007) supposes through topics such as the Atlantic slave trade
which inadvertently or not, have sometimes helped in augmenting these notions of
‘deficiency’ which have helped in sustaining negative stereotypes and attitudes and have
gone some way in alienating students from non-white ethnic backgrounds.
However, the need to change the approach taken by schools in creating greater
diversity in their History curricula has been on the academic and political agendas for
quite some time. For instance, the Department for Education (Lyndon, 2006) had
commissioned various reports looking at how students from non-white ethnic
backgrounds have been included and catered for in mainstream education in terms of
helping to develop their cultural identity; these have reported throughout the post-war
era, including such bodies as the History working group of 1995 (Phillips, 1998).
Furthermore, there has been consistent criticism from various Government agencies
(Phillips, 1998) in the lack of pace in the progress of more diversity within the teaching
of History. This in turn has seen the definition of the argument itself change over the
years, from its branding as ‘race-relations’ of the 1950’s and 1960’s to the ‘multi-
culturalism’ of the 1970’s and 1980’s forward to ‘diversity’ of the 1990’s and early 21st
Century. However, even though the terminology of this debate may have changed, the
necessity of teaching diversity within the history curriculum has been a constant factor
raised within these reports, whether that be from the likes of the Rampton report (DES,
1981) to the Dearing History Review Group (DES, 1995) (cited in Grosvenor, 2000) and
many of those before or since. So this would seem to beg a further question that if this
has been an entrenched and ongoing issue for several decades, one might perhaps
presume that some progress had been made. However, for example as Traille (2007),
Pankhania (1994) and K Riley (1994) suggest there is some considerable way to go in
actually having a ethnically diverse teaching of History, as it would seem a key thrust of
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their arguments is that ‘diversity’ should not just be tacked on to a scheme of work, but
that the very nature of History be taught to students as one that is diverse and inter-
connected. Gaze (2005) has suggested that even though the issue of diversity in History
can seem a relatively modern one, there is evidence to show that British society and its
institutions had previously shown sensitivity to a more ethnically representative version
of History; for instance in the creation of the Imperial War Museum in the 1920’s, which
he cites as an example of earlier attempts to raise the profile of non-white peoples’
contributions to British History by memorialising them in a museum. However, these
actions could be criticised in terms of non-white peoples not being recognised as equals,
but as subjects of the British Empire.
Even though there has been an historical effort by various agencies to recognise
the contribution of non-white peoples to British History through museums and latterly
education, there equally has been criticism of how and why diversity has been included in
the teaching of British History. For example, there has been criticism from some quarters
as to the legitimacy of the teaching of diversity in the History curriculum and what
purpose it serves. For example, Black History has been criticised by right-wing
educationalists for being narrowly conceived and ideologically motivated (Partington,
1986) with the added sense of non-identity of multi-culturalism (Seigel, 1986), this in
itself taps into a wider issue of the use of History teaching for the promotion of a national
sense of self, which builds on the notion of History as a ‘shared heritage’ (Hadyn, 2010),
which presumably could lead to diversity being accused of fragmenting Britain’s national
story. This has been clearly illustrated with such reports as the Hillgate group’s (Phillips,
1998) which argued that diversity might threaten the traditional values of western society;
these sentiments have been rebuffed by the likes of Visram (1994) who argue that raising
the profile of diversity within the national curriculum challenges the ‘authorised version’
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of the past. So it would seem that many theorists and politicians fall broadly into two
camps in terms of the purpose of diversity in the History curriculum. Firstly, that
diversity is integral to understanding the development of History (Pankhania, 1994: P.
Stearns, 1998) and secondly that diversity is potentially problematic in promoting a
national narrative (Seigel, 1986). This notion of an ‘Island story’ detracts from what other
academics (Visram, 1994) see as closing off the inter-connected and diverse nature of
History into purely closed narratives. Clearly the issue of diversity has been politicised
and the nature of what kind of History is taught in schools will continue, loosely between
those who see History as diverse in the sense of being multi-structured and those who see
it more as a mono-structured vehicle for cultural transmission (Dunn, 2000).
This often lack of emphasis on ethnic diversity has been flagged up on numerous
occasions by Ofsted through the 1990’s (Grosvenor, 2000) and even though there has
been a greater inclusion of Black History topics in the History curriculum in recent years,
there is still seemingly an underlying issue of a lack of engagement with the curriculum
by students of ethnic backgrounds (Traille, 2007). As outlined earlier, steps have been
taken to try and raise the profile of ethnic diversity within the History curriculum through
various agencies, whether theoretical or political. As outlined by Dunn (2000) much
school history falls into a “Western Historical Model” whereby historical narratives
forged in this model implicitly support the view that Western (White Anglo-Saxon) has
made a greater historical contribution to world History, and therefore is tacitly given
more agency in its impact and significance. This to a certain extent gives credence to
Traille’s (2007) argument that Afro-Caribbean students still feel disassociated with large
parts of the History that is taught to them, in terms of how they can identify and relate to
the events and people that they study. This is also borne out in Sylvester’s (1994) point of
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there being a ‘closed ‘ narrative in terms of what kind of people are included in it.
However, there is a need to be cautious in how ethnic diversity is incorporated into a
curriculum as even unwittingly, this can help to cement stereotypes, for instance in terms
of the ‘compartmentalisation’ (Grovesnor, 2000) of black history, by keeping some of the
experiences of black history on the margins of historical narratives; where they are
seemingly wedged into a curriculum. This can sometimes occur with topics like the
Atlantic Slave Trade, where a few lessons about slavery are suddenly put into a syllabus
without a wider historical context. This can be detrimental in perpetrating negative
stereotypes of Afro-Caribbean people (Traille, 2007) where identities can be imposed on
black history. In terms of my own practice, I wanted to consciously provide students with
a wider historical context, but moving on from this as Dunn mentions (2000) I planned to
engage students with the wider, more diverse historical narratives surrounding this
particular topic, and as Wrenn (2007) suggests to try and to reflect on, challenge and
transform pupil attitudes. This was an aim of the series of lessons that I had designed to
try and get students to see the inter-connected nature of British and World History, in
terms of its ethnic diversity, and that there wasn’t a mono-ethnic narrative.
There have been various frameworks put forward to try and promote the teaching
of a more ethnically inclusive curriculum. For example Dunn (2000) proffers different
models of teaching diversity through World History, though opts for a ‘pattern of change’
approach to teaching World History, as he asserts that this helps to equip students with
the necessary knowledge to see diverse historical narratives in a much wider framework;
which isn't to suggest the dominance of World History over British, but that arguably
students can derive greater meaning of national narratives through a global context.
This is supported by the likes of Stearns (1998) who advocate the teaching of World
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History as way in which to avoid trapping students in a “national parochialism”, which
would suggest that without such efforts to broaden the perspectives of students, teachers
run the risk of inadvertently promoting or reinforcing staid stereotypes or attitudes. This
supports Dunn’s view (2000) of World History studies giving students ‘larger realms’ of
meaning, and would seemingly echo Pankhania’s assertion (1994) of the inclusion of
more world history in the history curriculum to provide a greater balance to the historical
narratives of non-white European peoples and furthermore a counter to Blaut’s definition
of History as a ‘European tunnel of time’ (Dunn, 2000).
As mentioned previously, the teaching of World History has gained in
popularity over recent years and perhaps one of the most important changes it has helped
to implement is in terms of historical agency; that History is being seen as less euro-
centric. As Furedi asserts (Grosvenor, 2000), there is no longer one all-encompassing
Historical narrative, but rather ‘many competing histories’ and it is this drive for greater
recognition of ‘other’ narratives that has highlighted the complex and diverse nature of
History.
This higher profile has not only been in terms of reassessing views on national
historical narratives, but also in school history and pupil perceptions of diversity, which
in turn feeds into student ideas of identity, in the sense that they can draw meaning about
identity from studying Historical events and people (Haydn, 2010). The theme of identity
in terms of how students from non-white ethnic backgrounds respond to topics within the
curriculum is a recurring one. As Traille (2007) points out, that students often have
multiple identities, particularly students from an ethnically mixed background. So
therefore teachers need to consider how students relate to lesson content and try and
avoid a tokenistic nod towards diversity, as Lyndon (2006) explains by suggesting for
example the ‘drip feeding’ of relevant material on Black History into schemes of work,
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so therefore presumably steering students in thinking that Black History is part of British
History and not outside it. This may lead to a questioning of the effectiveness of
initiatives like Black History Month, in terms of aiding attitudes of tokenism towards the
inclusion of Black History in the curriculum. Moreover, as M Riley (2007) suggests,
students bring a multi-faceted sense of self into the classroom, and perhaps there is an
argument now for moving towards the inclusion of ethnically diverse narratives being
part of the fabric of schemes of work, to show students that History by its very nature is
diverse. Whereas special projects or schemes adjunct to the curriculum can in fact risk
being counter-productive to the very intentions by which they were created; as Traille’s
(2007) argument may be interpreted as suggesting that by raising the profile of, in this
instance, Black History, teachers are in fact reinforcing some pupil perceptions of Black
and Asian History as some how ‘other’ from mainstream British History.
It would therefore seem clear that diversity in terms of Black and Asian
history must be given a more prominent exposure within the curriculum and furthermore
using it to link to other world civilisations. However, what now seems problematic is
what form and shape this inclusion of diversity should take. A considerable amount of
change has taken place in the teaching of ‘other’ histories in recent decades, as outlined
by the likes of Phillips (1998), though depending on interpretations of History it would
seem that this inclusion of diversity in practice would take the form of a ‘parallel’
historical narrative, whereby students may perceive Black and Asian British History as
taking place concurrently though interdependently from White British History. So
perhaps moving on from the arguments of Pankhania (1994) and Visram (1994) as there
is more diverse History in the curriculum now, though it would seem that this sometimes
struggles to be incorporated into a ‘British’ narrative of History by teachers. However,
strategies like Lyndon’s (2006) may well help to bring about a change in student
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thinking, in terms of considering diversity as intrinsically part of History and not parallel
to it. Also, by the incorporation of diversity into schemes of work it would perhaps help
to normalise this inclusion, and through drawing attention to diversity, students from
White-British backgrounds could construe this as an attempt to elevate black or Asian
History within the subject; and their resentment or apathy to this may well prevent them
from realising that these different narratives are all part of the same ‘Island story’.
Moreover, as the necessity for greater diversity has been outlined by Grosvenor
(2000) and Traille (2007) in the sense of its integration into more white mainstream
historical narratives, there has been the issue that even though there may have been
acceptance of the importance of diversity within the curriculum, there hasn’t yet been a
full integration of it into a mainstream definition of ‘British’ History, which would then
beg the question of how this might take place. Perhaps the development of history
curricula along this path has been tardy because of the sensitive, attached issue of
identity, both in terms of individual and national concepts. As Grever’s (2008) argument
suggests, many western countries have a neurosis towards the survival of the nation state
which has led to a greater emphasis on how History is taught, which in turn has made
national historical narratives seem like some kind of esoteric elite, whereby only certain
ethnic groups are permitted inclusion and the rest seem to vie for position along its
fringes.
As previously shown, the arguments surrounding the inclusion of diversity in the
History curriculum have continued to grow over recent years, and as argued by the likes
of Dunn (2009) will increasingly become more prevalent in education throughout the 21st
Century. This is in part due to the fact that as technology makes the world a smaller place
in this era of globalisation, it will become increasingly important to give students a more
comprehensive understanding of diversity in terms of World History (Dunn, 2009).
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Therefore, arguments over diversity and World History have broadly fallen
into two camps, those academics and theorists who argue that History should be
concerned with the transference of Western values and those that argue (Barton, 2004)
that a core purpose of History is to promote understanding of other people’s values and
beliefs. This in turn demonstrates how History (K.Riley, 1994) arguably has become one
of the most controversial subjects in the curriculum, as it is often perceived as a conduit
of identity, whether on an individual or national level.
So in terms of my own investigation, some of the responses and ideas about
diversity in History chimed with what had already been discussed, though I wanted to
inquire more deeply into how students perceived diversity, and did they see it as
important as some academics and theorists do.
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Chapter 3
Research methodology:
As outlined in the previous chapter the aim of this dissertation is to explore what
student perceptions are of ethnic diversity within the Key Stage 3 History Curriculum.
Having analysed the main theories surrounding this issue, a number of questions arose;
 Has this series of lessons enabled students to see the interconnectedness of
History?
 Do students think that diversity is important?
 Do students want to study more World History?
The school in which this research was carried out is a mixed-comprehensive for
yrs 7 – 11, with 1050 students on role, and is situated in South-West London. The
school’s intake in terms of ethnic diversity; shows that students from a non-white
background make up approximately 1 in 6 pupils of the student body. The majority of
students are from a white-British ethnicity. The school’s History department already
strives to incorporate diversity into its syllabi in direct response to the new National
Secondary Curriculum of 2008 (QCDA, 2010), the school’s History department as a
response to the NC changes introduced in 2008, had been working to incorporate
diversity more actively within the Key Stage Three curriculum; and this research
presented an opportunity to reflect over that process and get student feedback on its aims
and outcomes. The research was carried out over a three-month period, using both lesson
and extra-curricula time to conduct various parts of the research. A number of research
methods were open to the teacher in gathering data concerning students’ perceptions of
ethnic diversity in the History curriculum; they ranged from questionnaires to focus-
groups, interviews and reflective journals and constituted both qualitative and
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quantitative data. Later on in this chapter the reasons behind which methods were chosen
and the opting for Action Research will be outlined and explained. This process was
therefore used to investigate pupil perceptions of diversity within the History Curriculum,
as a chance to gain some sort of insight into how the objectives of the Key Stage Three
curriculum were linked to its outcomes, as put forward by the students, and to see how
my own ideas of diversity as a teacher differed from that of the students.
Furthermore, the ethical issues surrounding research such as this was fully
considered and discussed by the researcher. There are obvious ethical issues concerning
research of this nature, as ethnicity is a sensitive issue, arguably even more so when
associated with children. Various bodies were consulted in terms of guidelines in
conducting ethical research (e.g B.E.R.A) and Roehampton Univeristy (see appendix F);
and the guidelines were adhered to as much as possible. These were mainly to do with the
research being safe in terms of the students’ physical safety and in terms of personal
information being kept secure in accordance with B.E.R.A’s guidelines (2010) and
Roehampton University’s (2011). Moreover, due to the nature of the research, this
particular school was chosen as opposed to others, as I was a teacher there, so made the
data collection process more ethically sound as I had clearance to work with these pupils
as a researcher. Further to this the Information Commissioner’s Office was consulted in
terms of the Data Protection Act 1998 and Freedom of Information Act 2000 (ICO, 2011)
where the processes for storing data are stipulated and the responsibilities for individuals
holding data, such as myself are outlined. These guidelines were adhered to as much as
was reasonably possible throughout the research process in terms of gathering and storing
student data.
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Firstly, the aims and content of the research was discussed with the Head of
Department who supported its aims, though had raised the question of the considerations
necessary for research of a sensitive nature; for example, the transparency of the process
of data collection. Secondly, after preliminary discussions with the Head of Department;
the Head Teacher of the subject school was notified (see appendix H) with a synopsis of
the aims of the research and a request for permission to carry out this research, which was
forthcoming. Year 8 was chosen as the year group to work with as there was more scope
within the syllabus to introduce a series of lessons, and arguably there were more
elements of diversity already in the Year 7 and 9 Curriculum.
Thirdly after receiving permission, the researcher proceeded to contact all
parents (see appendix G) involved with the research group (Year 8) to notify them of the
purpose of the research and that they could refuse their children to take part and that their
children could be removed from the process at any time; thus adhering to the principle of
‘informed consent’ (Hart and Bond, 1995). Furthermore, as Denscombe (2002) points out
it is integral that confidentiality and anonymity are maintained, and this was reiterated to
parents and students in the information that was given to them. Furthermore, there was
also, the issue of accessing personal information of students via the SIMS computer
network, that the school used to store various types of information about pupils, one of
which being their ethnicity. However, as cited previously, the relevant staff concerned
had been notified in order to state that any information used would be treated in the
strictest confidence and with complete anonymity for all persons concerned.
The series of lessons used as part of this research study consisted of seven
lessons taught over a three-week period; and were taught in total by three History
teachers of which I was one, during February and early March 2011. The lessons
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were taught within the school in designated classrooms as part of fifty-minute lessons,
with all year 8 classes completing the questionnaire beforehand. However only the
researcher kept a journal, as it was deemed unfair to add to the workload of already very
busy teachers.
The seven lessons broke down as follows, lesson one was entitled
‘African Empires’ and focused on the major civilisations of Saharan and Sub-Saharan
Africa during the Early Modern period, and enabled students to examine the diverse trade
routes that existed at this time. The second lesson was entitled ‘the birth of the British
Empire’. The aim of this lesson was to engage pupils with the idea of Britain within a
global context and to mark the period of English and subsequently British expansion; and
moreover for students to explore possible reasons for why Empires are created in the first
place. The third lesson was looking at a contemporary comparison to Elizabethan
England, which used the growth of the Mughal Empire as its content, with students
developing their chronological understanding of the development of this region. The
fourth lesson was still focused on the Mughal Empire with students using a role-play
activity to develop their understanding of the differing trading interests that were around
at this time. The fifth lesson focused on Ming Dynasty China, and enabled students to
examine the sophistication of Chinese society at this time and its significance in terms of
scientific inventions. The sixth lesson looked at Tokugawa Japan, as a way of getting
students to see how and why some countries chose to close themselves off to trade with
the outside world, and for students to explore the benefits and drawbacks of trade. The
seventh lesson was an evaluation of the British Empire, in which students analysed the
legacy of it in terms of positives and negatives for its former colonies; and then drew
their own conclusions as to how its legacy should be remembered.
These lessons were fixed in the timetable so this study was operating
22
under fairly rigid time constraints, and as mentioned in more detail later, the first
questionnaire was designed to assess students’ preconceived ideas about diversity
through the topic of Empires of other nations. Following on from this, the seven lessons
were used as a basis on which to observe student responses towards the historical content,
with noted taken in a teacher journal. Then, a second questionnaire was used to try and
ascertain what the students themselves thought they had learnt and whether any of their
ideas had subsequently changed after studying this series of lessons. Lastly, interviews
were conducted with some of the pupils in order to establish more detailed responses to
some of the questionnaire answers. This was an opportunity to examine in greater detail
any of the themes emerging from the questionnaire data.
The researcher opted for the use of Action research, as it was the researcher who
was intent in testing various hypotheses in order to improve their own practice; and as put
forward by Bell (2005) is that it enables teachers to tackle a specific problem and arrive
at a way to enhance performance. Furthermore, as pointed out by Booth (1996) the
researcher is at the centre of enquiries, as by doing research in this way they are the ones
who will generate more far-reaching change. It is this sense that Action Research puts the
researcher in a more subjective role, where they can more easily implement and affect
change. Arguably, this is even more pertinent for teachers, who had for a long time been
the object of study (McNiff, 2006) and had to a certain extent been passive vassals in
terms of creating new ideas and theories in education. So, in this way, Action Research
can transfer more agency to the teacher, as they have more input and control over how
and what is researched. So in terms of my stated position I had highlighted areas of my
own practice as outlined at the start of this chapter, and thus could use Action Research to
inform and improve upon my own practice. As Carr (1986) points out, that Action
23
Research can give teachers power over the curriculum; so by giving teachers more
influence over how and what gets researched, change and new ideas will be more quickly
incorporated, as teachers can highlight areas for enquiry due to the day to day nature of
their work; thus as suggested by Heron (2001) helping to promote a more productive
order within education.
However, Action Research has been criticised on a number of fronts
(Wellington, 2000), mostly in terms of researcher bias, due to the fact that the researcher
has much greater agency within Action Research as they are the ones controlling the
parameters by which they are collating data. Therefore, personal bias must be taken into
consideration when collating and scrutinising data in order to promote more rigorous
assertions and conclusions from the data collected. Furthermore, as pointed out by Bell
(2005) there is the issue of cross checking information as the researcher is usually acting
alone, so there are grounds to query how reliable conclusions are, that are drawn by one
individual. Consequently, this issue can be further compounded by the possible issue of
selective reporting, (Bell, 2005); whereby researchers omit certain parts of their
conclusions, or glaze over more contradictory parts of their data, in order to steer their
enquiry in a particular way. However, this could be argued to be a drawback of any form
of enquiry, whether group or individual, as there is always the pitfall of steering the data
towards fitting into preconceived conclusions.
Moreover, as Wellington (2007) suggests the key argument for supporting
the use of Action Research, as opposed to say Linear Research, is that for example
teachers are often trying to intervene and enhance a particular part of their practice.
Therefore, Action Research will allow teachers an element of re-planning within the
cycle of research, which in turn promotes the idea of developing and improving practice.
Further to this as McNiff (2006) outlines the cycle of Action Research that allows
24
practitioners the chance to reflect upon their own work and drive forward their own
change. So in terms of my own enquiry, it could be argued that Action Research allowed
me the opportunity to investigate and critique my own practice, which would help to
pinpoint more precisely the change that might be necessary in terms of how diversity is
included and taught within the Key Stage Three curriculum. Secondly, as a teacher
Action Research is much more accessible and workable, in the sense of collating data,
and as Hopkins (2008) argues it gives teachers more agency in promoting and honing
new ideas within their profession, and arguably provides more relevant changes as
teachers are better placed within the classroom to select specific areas for investigation.
The research carried out used various elements of Action Research, which I
will now evaluate in terms of use and reasons for their implementation. Firstly,
Questionnaires (see appendices A & B) were chosen to try and gauge pupils already
preconceived ideas about diversity in the History curriculum, and as outlined by Lee
(1998), is a prominent part of how students build up their pictures of the past. Moreover,
a questionnaire was a practical and manageable way of getting the opinions of a large
group of students, which has benefits as well as drawbacks. Primarily, as pointed out by
Wellington (2007) questionnaires can be an adept way in creating an overview of the key
issues or facts about a particular research topic. So in terms of this research topic of
diversity, using a questionnaire ensured that an entire year group (Year 8) could be
canvassed for opinions within a fairly short space of time. Furthermore, in order to make
the questionnaire as accessible as possible a Likerts scale was used along side some of
the questions to help students who may have literacy issues, or who maybe very reluctant
to write anything on their questionnaires, so this was an attempt to make the
questionnaires as accessible as possible to all the students in the year group.
Moreover, as Bell (2005) suggests using a Likerts scale is useful in the
25
sense of allowing students to state their feeling or attitudes towards a given statement,
and this was used within the questionnaires to aid the students in making a judgement
regarding, for example, the importance of studying the empires of other countries.
Further to this was the issue of how to structure the questions in such a way as to provide
enough detail for the student to coherently answer the question but at the same time not
inadvertently introducing bias or leading the students towards a particular path of
thinking.
So in terms of style of question, the questionnaires had to have ‘open’
enough questions in order to, as Hadyn and Harris (2010) suggests, maximise students’
ability to ‘declare a position’ though not to be closed in such a way as to stifle the
necessary detail needed to get meaningful data. Moreover, as Harris and Hadyn (2008)
assert, open questions give students the opportunity to ‘provide explanation’ to their
positions; and it was the intention to marry this with the Likerts scale to provide enough
of a scaffold, so that as much of the ability range of students could access and expand
their answers within the questionnaire. Also, in terms of reliability as Cohen (2007)
argues, anonymity in questionnaires encourages greater honesty amongst participants.
However, I faced a dilemma in this investigation, as due to the sensitive nature of the
topic of ethnicity, I chose to give students the option of including their names, as I needed
to be able to build up data of students from all ethnicities within the pool of respondents,
so wanted students to include their names to make the process more practicable. Student
names could also be cross-referenced with the SIMS package to confirm ethnicity.
However, I was mindful of Denscombe’s (2002) warning about the need for researchers
to be clear about their social values and objectivity; so students could choose not to do
this. I felt that including a ‘tick box’ for students to state their ethnicity at the top of the
questionnaire would perhaps bias them to the motives of the exercise and perhaps skew
26
the way in which they interpreted the subsequent questions before them; and therefore
change the nature of the data, as students would be more concerned with ethnicity and not
about their ideas of History or the series of History lessons that they had just completed.
Furthermore, having already carried out one questionnaire at the beginning of
the series of lessons on Empires, a second questionnaire (see appendix B) was used at the
end of this sequence to glean data about if and how pupil perceptions of diversity had, or
had not changed. The style of questions were open in order to try and not lead
respondents in a particular way; however a Likerts scale was used to try and provide
some structure to help students to make some assertion of their ideas. Again, most of the
Year 8 cohort (205 students) was questioned, however, having reflected over the process
of the first questionnaire the second one was reduced from seven to four questions, in
order to make it more manageable for the students. As having observed the students with
the first questionnaire which was carried out in early February 2011, quite a few students
found it difficult to complete all of it, so the questions were focused on student responses
towards diversity and world history, in asking students to reflect over what they think
they’ve learnt in this series of lessons and whether they think the study of world history is
important and inter-connected; in the same sense as Dunn’s (2000) ‘Patterns of Change’
model and worth further study. This was included in the second questionnaire, which was
carried out in mid-March 2011.
After the series of lessons and questionnaires were completed, a
selection of students, were then interviewed (see appendices E & F) in order to try and
gain more detailed responses. As Wilkinson (2000) points out, qualitative data “enables
the voices of this being researched to be heard”, and even though a concerted effort was
made to make the questionnaires as accessible as possible, they struggle to give
participants a platform to provide opinions or explanations (Wilkinson, 2000). So as
27
Hinds (2000) contests, interviews are of use in helping to give an issue greater clarity.
Further to this the interviews also supported the ‘pupil voice’ ethos of the school and was
a medium that many students were familiar with.
Moreover, focus groups were considered but not used for a number of
reasons being the sensitive nature of ethnicity may have prevented a meaningful and open
discussion; or as Bell (2005) argues that strong personalities can take over a group and
dominate the discussion. However, I felt that students would be reluctant to speak about a
sensitive issue such as ethnicity, and even though Wilkinson (2000) asserts how they are
useful tools in eliciting pupil responses, the potential negatives outweighed the positives.
It was thought that one to one interviews (see appendix E) would provide the better
forum in which to probe the ideas and responses of students. Further to this, the students
were selected at random for the interviews from the class registers, though ones from my
own teaching groups formed the selection pool, as I felt that the interviews would be
more productive with students who I had built up a rapport with through teaching. I was
mindful of Cohen’s (2007) admonition about students feeling coerced into volunteering
information, as they may not wish to offend the researcher, particularly if they are known
by the researcher, but this was countered by Gray’s (2009) assertion that there needs to be
trust between researcher and participant in order to get more detailed information. Thus, I
felt that there would be more to gain from this with teaching groups I knew, as students
may be more willing to discuss more sensitive topics such as ethnicity as I had more of a
rapport with them. However, I was conscious of the potential bias that could enter into a
process like this, and was consciously mindful of not asking leading questions or making
suggestions to students in order not to influence their responses.
Having decided on using interviews as opposed to focus groups; a semi-
structure was used for the interviews, as espoused by Cohen (2007), which helped to
28
provide a framework for questions (see appendix E), in terms of topics to be discussed.
These focused on what the students thought that they had learnt and whether they felt that
world history was important within the History curriculum. Their answers from the
questionnaires were used to provide a scaffold for the interview and allowed the
researcher to focus on particular points that were germane to the topic.
Furthermore, these interviews helped to provide a forum to explore the
issues generated in the series of lessons, and as pointed out by Traille (2007) they are
useful in gaining a deeper understanding and perspective of the issues that are flagged up
by the first cycle of research, for instance, questionnaires.
Moreover, in order to keep track of ideas and issues as they emerged from
the research, a journal was kept as the series of lessons were taught, in a way of recording
pupil and teacher ideas and responses and seeing if and how they changed during the
course of lessons. Also, in was another way of highlighting how the researcher’s own
ideas towards this topic developed during the series of lessons; and as argued by Bell
(2005) it is a very good method in enabling researchers to reflect back over how their
own views or ideas developed during a research process and as advised by Bell (2005) it
was started at the beginning of the research process and continued throughout it; so
therefore acting as another piece of evidence gathering. Furthermore, as McNiff (2006)
points out, these journals can be differentiated into episodes of learning and episodes of
action in order to help to track the researcher’s changing ideas.
Another research method that was used was to use a ‘key informant’; as
highlighted by Wilkinson (2000) these are people who possess special knowledge or
status. As part of this research study, a number of ‘key informants’ were used; primarily
the Head of Department for History, and other colleagues who were in a unique position
to offer advice and guidance, due to the fact that they were also teaching the same
29
lessons; so therefore could offer a different perspective on the lessons in terms of their
desired objectives and outcomes, and also in terms of students responses to the lesson
content. Furthermore, this could be then used to cross-reference ideas and would give the
researcher a larger body of evidence, both in terms of pupil and teacher ideas about the
issues surrounding diversity in the History curriculum. Moreover, other staff in the
school; were also sought for responses to the issues raised around this series of lessons
and for their reaction towards what diversity in the History curriculum meant to them,
and how the teaching of it has changed over recent years.
In terms of addressing the issue of exploring perceptions of ethnic diversity
in History, as mentioned before, there were numerous methods of research available. I
will outline the reasons why I came to choose Action Research as the most appropriate
method for my research. As an epistemological framework, Action Research has benefits
and limitations for those carrying out research. One of the common criticisms of Action
Research is that the researcher is not ‘objective’ enough (Usher, 1996) and thus cannot be
value free, so there is arguably a higher chance of the introduction of teacher bias
(Wellington, 2000) which then places any subsequent findings in doubt. This is
particularly true from a ‘Positivist’ standing, as there is the notion that rules can be
applied uniformly to subject matter (Rubin, 2005) which is argued from a ‘Positivist’
viewpoint provides greater reliability for findings, but as highlighted by Usher (1996)
even scientific research is bound by the culture in which it is operating, which challenges
the ‘positivist’ position that a researcher’s concerns and values must not interfere with
‘object truth’ (Usher, 1996). However, Action Research is also criticised for not
providing enough ‘hard’ numerical data, and there is arguably the assumption as outlined
by Rubin (2005) that only positivist quantitative research provides rigorous enough data,
which is also outlined earlier on by the likes of Wellington (2000).
30
However, regarding my own research study, due to the fact that I am
operating within the confines of a school, it would be very difficult to take a completely
‘objective’ viewpoint whilst conducting this research, so I opted for a more ‘interpretive’
research stance, as pointed out by Wellington (2000) reality is a human construct and as a
teacher I will be making a difference to the students that I observe, but as long as I am
conscious of this, I will be able to incorporate potential bias into my findings. Moreover,
in some ways as suggested by Anderson (1998) there is a ‘post-positivist’ element to
Action Research as it relies on the researcher as the major means of gathering data. This
supports the view that ‘Interpretive Research’ concerns itself with creating meaning
within the context of social practices, which has a direct relevance to teachers in schools;
and as asserted by Lodico (2010) meaning is constructed by investigating people in their
natural environment, so as a classroom teacher this is very pertinent as I am working with
young people in a school environment. Further to this as pointed out by Mckernan (1996)
Action research aims to solve the day to day issues of teachers, and seeing that I am
trying to understand the perceptions of my students in order to improve my own practice,
this would make Action Research germane for this situation. Action research (Grady,
1998) enables teacher introspection and as such can be a powerful form of professional
development, and therefore was one of the main reasons why it was chosen for this
particular investigation.
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Chapter 5
Findings:
In this Chapter I will be presenting and analysing the findings from the data that
I have collected. Pursuant to the previous chapters, this data is related to the question of
how pupils perceive diversity in the History curriculum; with the aim of seeing if and
how students perceive the inter-connected nature of History in terms of ethnic diversity
and whether they attach any importance to its inclusion in the curriculum. The different
methods of data collection were used to aid in building as clear a picture as possible of
how students perceive the importance and relevance of diversity within school History.
The total number of potential respondents from Year 8 was 205, and in this cohort 35
were classified as being of an ethnic minority other than White-British. However, the
actual number of respondents to the two questionnaires were, 145 for the first
questionnaire and 140 for the second questionnaire, thus urging the need for caution in
seeing these results as fully representative of the Year group (Bryman, 2008). In the total
sample, 28 were from an ethnic minority background other than White-British, and fell
into the categories of Afro-Caribbean, Indian, other Asian and other European according
to the school’s classification codes. These findings link into the key research questions
which were mentioned at the beginning of the previous chapter, in terms of using the
theme of Empires as a vehicle to enable students to explore elements of World History
and its impact on British History; and to see if students think that the study of diversity in
terms of ethnically diverse peoples is important within the History Curriculum.
Furthermore, it was felt that Empires were common enough entities that students would
be able to work with this, as many had studied various Empires previously in
32
Primary school.
The first method that was used was a questionnaire (see appendix A), which
was given to students in order to ascertain their general perceptions of diversity and
world History before the start of the experimental series of lessons. This questionnaire
had six questions and I am going to present the findings of each question asked in the
questionnaire; the percentages given will have been calculated from the total number of
students answering that particular question, as espoused by Taylor-Powell (2003).
Firstly, students were asked to show (see appendix A) which different Empires or
countries’ History had they studied before; all 145 respondents completed this question:
 45% of students stated that they had studied the Roman Empire,
 17% stating that they had studied the Ancient Eygptian Empire,
 16% studying the British Empire and
 10% studying the Ancient Greek Empire.
 The remaining 12% of respondents’ answers were a mix between such Empires as
Viking, Ottoman, African and Indian.
However, in 15% of the responses students has written that the Tudors were an
Empire, which seemed to highlight the issue of how much students understood the term
‘Empire’, and patently notions of it differed amongst respondents which supports
Reynold’s (2006) argument of student’s struggle to understand the complexities of
historical empires. Though this may show how students struggled to comprehend the
questions in the questionnaire, thus also highlighting the need for clear and accessible
questions (Harris & Hadyn, 2008). Further to this, the fact that 45% of respondents had
33
studied the Roman Empire, was something that I had been expecting as this topic is
popular at Primary school, and may well suggest that other more diverse empires have
already been studied by students, though it cannot be stated with complete confidence if
students had studied these topics at primary or secondary school, or through independent
study.
In the second question (see appendix C) students were asked to state by using a
Likerts scale, how important they thought it is to study the History of empires of different
countries; again all 145 respondents answered this question. As shown in appendix C:
 61% of students felt that the study of different countries’ empires was
quite important
 19% considering it to be very important
 a combined 20% in total feeling that it was not important to study
A continual theme amongst students’ responses when they were asked to qualify
their choice was that, as one student pointed out “to see how Britain fitted into World
History”. Though the majority of students believed that studying the History of empires
of different countries was something they ought to study; for example another student
stated it was important to study other nation’s history you need to “know how other
countries behave” or as another student posited “you will have no idea about other
cultures and people will consider you ignorant”. Moreover, there was a recurring theme
of history as identity, as some students explained their reasons due to “my roots” which
echoed Traille’s (2006) ideas of the History curriculum being a vehicle for showing
diversity to students from ethnic-minority backgrounds. However, in the questionnaire
responses students from all ethnic backgrounds considered History to be important as a
34
conduit for identity, as some pupils explained it was important to “know our History”;
and as evidenced by student responses, the majority (80%) attached some importance to
the study of the history of different countries.
The third question (see appendix A) asked students how important they thought it
was to study the history of the British Empire; again all 145 respondents answered this
question.
 39% of respondents felt that it was very important to study the History of the
British Empire
 47% of respondents felt that it was quite important.
 The remaining 14% felt that it was neither important or not important, or not very
important to study the History of the British Empire.
Over 80% of students qualified their choices on the questionnaire with the assertion
because Britain “is our country” and that these pupils “live in Britain” so therefore it’s
important for them to study the History of the British Empire which would seemingly
support the view that students believe that History can function as a narrative of identity
as per Barton (2004) for example.
It was more problematic with questions four, five and six as there was a higher
rate of incompletion with these questions; and thus hard to tabulate, with a total of 46 of
the 145 questionnaires being incomplete on all or some of the questions from four to six.
Questions one to three had been completed by all students; perhaps due to the fact that
questions two and three had a Likerts scale, which may have given students more
structure and thus more confidence in answering those questions. Moreover, question
four was completed by 135 students; question five by 117 students and question six by
35
137 students. It would seem that question five proved to be the most problematic of
questions for the students to answer; which with hindsight was probably too difficult for
students to access and should have been simplified, with ideas for this suggested later on.
In question four (see appendix A) students were asked why Britain wanted an
Empire:
 35% of respondents stated that it was because Britain wanted to become richer,
 28% of respondents stating that it was because Britain wanted to become
powerful
 7% stating that it was because Britain wanted land.
 3% of respondents believed that Britain wanted an Empire because of
Nationalism, which was surprising to a certain extent as it is a fairly high-order
concept for Year 8 pupils to comprehend.
 27% of respondents simply wrote that they didn't know the reasons why Britain
wanted an Empire. This would suggest that students hadn't studied this before
which may well impact on their ability to engage with the lessons’ content.
In question five (see appendix A) students were asked if they thought the British Empire
had achieved anything, and of the 117 students to have answered this question:
 42% of respondents stated that the British Empire had gained more money for
Britain and
 31% of respondents stated that Britain had gained more power from its Empire.
 The remaining 27% of respondents had stated that they ‘don’t know’.
However, with only 16% of students stating that they had previously studied the British
Empire, it was surprising to see a higher amount answering this question. It is possible to
infer that perhaps some students were proffering their opinions having not studied the
36
British Empire, or were simply confused over which Empire they were being asked
about, or this perhaps shows that some students may have gleaned information from those
around them, as the British Empire is a popular and contentious topic (Vizram, 1994).
In question six (see appendix A) students were asked to name another country’s
History that they would like to study and why they would like to study it:
 25% of respondents said that they would like to study American History; with
 15% of respondents saying that they would like to study Japanese History, and
 12% of respondents stating that they would like to study Indian History; and
 8% wishing to study Chinese History.
 The remaining 40% of students stated a wide range of countries that they would
like to study: these were in order of frequency, France, Australia, Russia,
Afghanistan and Turkey.
The most common reason that students stated for wishing to learn about a
particular country’s History was that they found this country to be “interesting”, or that
they had travelled there on holiday and wished to know more about its History. Finally,
some students stated that they wanted to learn about a particular country as it was about
their “roots”.
Having completed the first questionnaire, it was becoming apparent that
quite a few students had studied quite a diverse range of countries’ History before they
had come to this particular scheme of work. As stated earlier, a combined total of 80% of
students had attached some importance to the study of different countries’ histories,
which was higher than I had originally expected. Also, a combined total of 86% of
students had stated that it was important to study the British Empire, with a higher ratio
37
(see appendix C) stating that it was very important to study the British Empire, which
was what I was expecting to a certain extent, as evidenced by some of the students
comments, it was seen as important because it was about Britain; “our country”.
Moreover, 15% of students had stated that they wanted to study a particular country
because they had visited it before, so therefore basing their judgements not on historical
interest, but purely through interest piqued by holiday making, which was a surprise to
me, as a sort of ‘History tourism’ (Nemko, 2010). This is in terms of students reflecting
not on what they had studied in History, but rather having their interest piqued for further
study on countries they had visited, and not based on Historical merit.
However, there were several constraints to consider; first of all was the
issue of timing, as there was only a finite amount of time to complete the questionnaire,
which was roughly ten minutes within lessons for students to finish their questionnaires;
so perhaps students could have written more detailed answers had they been given more
time. Leading on from the issue of timing, was the fact that 32% of the questionnaires
were not completed. Also, as mentioned before, some students found it difficult to access
the questionnaire, especially questions four, five and six; which may have been to do
probably to do with the fact that a Likerts scale wasn’t used with these questions. In
hindsight, it may well have been more beneficial to include a Likerts scale in all the
questions in order to provide some kind of scaffolding for students, particularly more less
able students. Also, it was noticed that some students had probably copied some of their
answers, as in a small number of questionnaires some of the answers were exactly the
same. However, despite verbal and written reminders that this was to be a personal
response, the assurance that this was not an exam may have led pupils to believe it was
acceptable to copy. In addition to this, the fact that the questionnaire was hoped to be a
38
personal response – more flexibility had been granted within the classroom in terms of
the teacher not interfering as much to avoid ‘exam conditions.’ Finally there is the issue
of illegibility with some of the questionnaires, as the handwriting was hard to decipher,
thus making it difficult to fully understand what point the student was making. As
mentioned before in the previous chapter, these limitations and constraints were taken
into consideration when formulating the layout of the second questionnaire.
As stated in previous chapters, one of the research methods used was a
teacher’s journal, this was the teacher keeping notes on how the different lessons around
this topic progressed; which is espoused by the likes of Rubin (2005) as through Action
Research the teacher is striving to change their own practice. This would involve
recording my ideas as to how I felt the students had responded to the lesson, and also
what I had heard students say or comment upon during the lesson. I taught three different
History classes with 75 students in total. These findings from the journal are by no means
exhaustive and a selection of them have been included in this chapter; which as Bell
(2005) suggests is a powerful way of showing changing viewpoints through the research
process. Moreover, as mentioned in the previous chapter, the notion of trade was used as
a common theme in order to highlight to students how these diverse civilisations came
into contact with one another. As mentioned in previous chapters the aim of the series of
lessons was to illustrate to students the inter-connected nature of History in terms of how
people from ethnically diverse backgrounds have influenced World and British History.
With the first lesson on African Empires, all three classes were engaged in the
lesson of building up a more detailed picture of the complexities of pre-colonial Africa. I
overheard such comments as “didn't realise there was so much trade happening”; also as
the mineral wealth of Central and Northern Africa was highlighted to students, some
39
pupils commented that they “didn’t know how rich Africa was” . Even though this
journal is extremely subjective, as the students moved on to look at the slave trade under
the auspices of the burgeoning English Empire of Queen Elizabeth I, I was confident that
students would view Africa in a less negative light; and as Wrenn (2007) suggests that
through engagement student attitudes can be transformed. Though this is not to say that
all students displayed negative stereotypes of Africa, in fact many in my experience
displayed great sensitivity when we went on to look at the Atlantic Slave Trade.
Moreover, many students were disbelieving that such a trade could have happened;
saying such things as “they thought they were better”, though I felt more confident now
that students had a wider frame of reference when studying Africa.
Next students studied the Mughal Empire, focusing on Shah Jahan,
the near contemporary of Queen Elizabeth I; again many students were surprised at the
wealth and status of these Indian Emperors, and seemed to respond to the fact that they
could compare what was happening in Britain to what was happening in India in the same
time period. Though students didn't seem as engaged with this lesson as they had been
with the Africa lesson, which could be to do with the activities they had to do, or perhaps
because they found it difficult to contextualise the historical content.
The next lesson in the series was looking at Ming dynasty China,
where students were to look at the innovations made in fields such as astronomy, with the
hope that they would understand the contributions made to scientific knowledge made by
Imperial China. Again many students seemed engaged by the lesson content and some
were surprised by what they had learnt, “I didn’t know China was that advanced”, with a
few students commenting on the importance of China in today’s world. Though again I
felt that students appreciated the significance of imperial China, but didn't, as I had
40
hoped, really understand the global significance of these innovations (i.e printing,
medicine, exploration) and the impact they might have on the rest of the world. I wanted
students to see the inter-connectedness of History, but I felt they only understood half the
picture; which may well have something to do with the activities they did during the
lesson.
The following lesson was focused on 17th Century Japan, which was developed
as a way of showing students that some countries shut themselves off from the outside
world, and was an opportunity for pupils to evaluate the benefits of trade. This was also
an opportunity for students to develop an understanding of feudal samurai Japan. There
seemed to be less engagement with this lesson than the others, as some of the students
had a propensity to confuse Japan with China and seemed to struggle to see the relevance
of studying a country as disparate as Japan; perhaps as Dunn (2000) suggests students
find relevance in a shared experience between countries; which students struggled with
here. However, some students did start to vocalise the concept of development through
trade and its generation of wealth when completing the main activity.
The final lesson of the series was an evaluation of the legacy of the
British Empire where students studied the impact of the British Empire upon five former
colonies; which were, India, Kenya, Egypt, Australia and South Africa. Students
examined evidence to determine the positive and negative effects of empire upon these
former colonies. Again students seemed more engaged in this lesson, perhaps due to the
fact that they were more overtly studying a topic with a direct correlation with Britain.
Once having examined the evidence at hand, some students had quite a visceral response
to the subject matter, such as “the British murdered and robbed every bit of land they
conquered” to stating the significance of Britain’s contribution to the spread of
41
democracy and rule of law, which ties in with Dunn’s (2000) assertion of students
thinking within the ‘Western Heritage model’ as a framework for judging the legacy of
History. However, most students from what I observed did not adhere to a glorification of
the British Empire as a conduit of positive change, and were certainly more critical of its
achievements.
To conclude over the findings from my teacher journal, even with the
caveat of the subjective nature of a research method such as a journal, it did help in
tracking the developments of my hypothesis (Bell, 2005). I would tentatively claim that
most students were engaged with the subject matter, certainly more so when directly
involving Britain, and students did seem to glean a greater understanding of significant
episodes and civilisations in global history. However, I felt that students still looked upon
these other countries as having entirely separate, Historical narratives, and I’m not sure
how much they really understood in the development of History through the exchange of
ideas and culture between different countries through such mediums as trade. I would
also have to acknowledge that in hindsight, styles of teaching and resources may have
played a part in the construction of student responses.
After conducting this series of lessons, I then proceeded to carry out a
second questionnaire (see appendix B) to see what students thought they had learnt and
whether any of their attitudes towards diversity had changed. Also, having reflected over
the implementation of the first questionnaire I had made changes to the layout of the
second one. For example, the amount of questions had been shortened from six to four
and the use of a Likerts scale had been extended to all four questions, in order to
hopefully provide enough structure (Wellington, 2000) so that all students could access it.
42
To a certain extent this is borne out by the fact that with the second questionnaire there
was a higher completion rate; as of the total 140 respondents, 13 questionnaires were
incomplete.
The first question asked students how much they thought they had learnt
from studying about different Empires. This question, was completed by all participants
(see appendix D):
 11% of respondents stating that they felt they had learnt a lot
from this series of lessons,
 59% of respondents saying quite a lot
 31% a little,
 3% not much
 5% not a lot.
The results for this question were fairly positive with students citing such things
as “how powerful countries became” and “I learnt what an empire is and that they didn't
always do good”, so would seem to suggest that students were beginning to understand
the complexities of History. However, a little over a third of students felt that they had
gained little from the series of lessons, and this was something that I wanted to
investigate in more detail. Though this proved slightly difficult as many students didn’t
qualify their opinions in greater detail on the questionnaire. Some of the responses cited
the lessons as being “boring” or that the student “didn’t see the point” of the lessons,
which was obviously disappointing in terms of pupil engagement. This would seem to
suggest that some students perhaps didn't find aspects of World History interesting in
themselves, or that the lesson activities were not engaging enough, or perhaps some
43
students couldn't make the link I was aiming for in seeing the relevance of the inter-
connected nature of History. I tried to delve more deeply into this quandary during the
series of interviews that I conducted.
The second question asked students if any of their ideas about History had
changed after studying about Empires. This question, was completed by all respondents
(see appendix D)
 3% stating that they had learnt a lot
 12% quite a few
 37% some,
 31% a few
 17% none.
These findings seem to suggest that most students’ ideas concerning History
had been changed to some degree by this series of lessons, with some citing the fact that
History was “a lot more complex than I thought” and that they had a “better
understanding of the world before me”. Even though some student opinions were more
generically about History rather than diversity within the series of lessons. Some students
expressed more clearly how their ideas abut History had changed; for example “Empires
caused quite a lot of harm” and “Britain wasn’t as Great as I thought it was”. However,
on reflection I felt that this style of question was too difficult for students to access, as the
term ‘idea’ is probably too vague and broad for Year 8 students to fully comprehend.
However, these results would suggest that some impact upon student ideas about History
had been made, though if this translates to diversity is unclear, and again was something
that I wanted to explore in more detail during the pupil interviews.
44
The third question asked students how important they thought it was to study
the history of different Empires. This question, was completed by 135 out of the 140
respondents (see appendix D)
 12% of students stating that it is very important to study different
Empires,
 54% quite important,
 27% don’t know,
 4% not important and
 3% not very important.
This would seemingly suggest that a significant amount of students attached
some importance to diversity within History, though this would be tempered by
Reynolds’ (2006) assertion about how students grasp the understanding of what
constitutes an Empire. Taking this into consideration, it could be argued that students can
see some sort of relevance and importance to the study of ethnically diverse countries’
History, though Empires only form one element of their Historical make-up. This is
evidenced by some of the students’ answers, such as “it gives you a broader insight into
History”. However, it would seem that students are reading multiple meanings into the
study of different Empires, as another trait that emerged was the sense of History as
correcting human behaviour; for instance “it’s useful not to make the same mistakes as
they did”, so perhaps hinting at what White (2004) calls the civic nature of History.
Furthermore, the results show that a third of respondents found difficulty in seeing any
importance in the study of different Empires, which would either suggest that they
genuinely didn't attach any importance to the study of different Empires, or that the series
45
of lessons did not sufficiently enable students to build up their own layers of meaning.
However, as with previous questions, there was the issue of trying to find sufficient
evidence through the qualifying of answers as to why perhaps students didn't attach
importance to the study of different empires. Some students mentioned that they “won’t
really need it”, in the sense of not seeing any relevance in the subject matter.
The final question asked students whether they would want to study more
world History having done this series of lessons. This question, was completed by 132
out of 140 respondents (see appendix D)
 25% of students stating that they would definitely want to study
more World History,
 30% possibly,
 10% don't know,
 27% maybe
 8% no.
These findings seemingly suggest that students would be willing to study more
World History; the qualification of their answers bore this out. For example, a fairly
common type of answer was that the student wanted “to know more about the world” or
to “see how countries are different to ours”; though I was mindful of Barton’s (2004)
assertion that students can see difference as inferiority, and would want to explore those
ideas during the pupil interviews. However, another theme in the answers that emerged
was that it’s “important to learn so we are not closed off”, hinting possibly that some
students can see how different countries’ historical narratives are inter-linked and perhaps
interdependent. However, almost half of the students stated that they were unsure as to
46
whether they wanted to study more World History. For instance, some students declared
that they “prefer English History to World History” and that they “still want to learn
about British History”, again hinting at the notion that perhaps students find it difficult to
see the relevance of studying the Histories of other countries, as they see relevance in
British History as they can identify with it more easily and believe it's something they
ought to study, as borne out by the first questionnaire.
Having taught the series of lessons and conducted two questionnaires, I
now proceeded to interview a random selection of pupils (Lodico, 2010) to try and delve
more deeply into their ideas about what they had learnt. In total ten students were
interviewed, five boys and five girls, with an ethnic mix that was representative of the
school’s as a whole. The interviews were no more than ten minutes in length and the
student’s questionnaire and a feedback sheet (see appendix E) was used as a scaffold for
the interview, in order to establish a framework on which the interview could be guided
(Cohen, 2007). Students were asked to try and provide more detail to their answers, so
that they could qualify them in terms of what they thought they had gained in studying
this series of lessons. Students did tend to struggle in verbalising their ideas, which no
doubt had something to do with speaking one to one with a teacher. These in turn raised
problems for myself as a researcher in terms of trying to stay as impartial as possible, as
there is a fine line between prompting a student who is struggling to express their ideas
and actually influencing their thought processes to such a degree that what they say isn't
actually of their own making.
Generally speaking most of the students said that they had enjoyed the
series of lessons, though when asked to explain what they meant, most struggled to give a
detailed explanation. Though six out of the ten students mentioned that it was “good to
47
find out about other countries”, so almost learning for learning’s sake. Moreover, three of
the students mentioned this idea of a “bigger history”, so in terms of the lessons countries
like China and Japan were “big countries”, by which I can perhaps deduce that they mean
important in the sense of their economic and political influence today, so the students had
perhaps felt they’d gained an historical context of these countries. However, three of the
students still would have preferred to have more British History within the series of
lessons; and when asked to elaborate on this, the students mentioned it would make
History more relevant. One student mentioned that they study quite a lot of World
History already in school, so wouldn't want there to be more in the History curriculum.
However, most of the students attached a certain amount of importance to the study of
World History and could see the how countries might influence one another; as one of the
students said the lessons helped to show “world as one community” and developed a
“wider perspective”, which chimes with Hadyn and Harris’ research (2008)
On the whole the interviews hadn't been as useful as I had expected, as it
was much more difficult that I had anticipated in getting students to express their
opinions. This is partly down to students feeling shy in talking to a teacher (Rubin, 2005),
but also that we had time constraints in being able to conduct longer interviews, or being
able to interview the students again several weeks or months after the series of lessons
had finished. Further to this, I would have liked to have interviewed perhaps twenty or
thirty students in order to have a wider sample group of respondents, which would enable
me to validate more easily various student answers (Grady, 1998) as I would be able to
cross-reference them against a larger pool of interviewees. A suggestion for future study
would be to perhaps conduct this research across two or more year groups.
Overall the findings suggested that students considered World History
48
to be important, though were less sure about what this actually meant for British History,
as some struggled with their conceptual understanding of what ‘diversity’ and ‘Empires’
actually meant, so this hindered them in making more analytical links between role of
diversity within World History in shaping and influencing British History.
49
Chapter 5:
Evaluation
In this chapter I will attempt to evaluate the findings from my research and draw
out possible themes that have emerged from my research method results. As mentioned in
previous chapters, the aim of this dissertation was to explore pupil perceptions of
diversity in History and how much importance they attached to the study of it. Moreover,
as previously stated this pilot of lessons was carried out with Year 8 students as part of
their Key Stage Three curriculum, and I will attempt to evaluate these findings in the
context of current theory and assess how this test cohort’s ideas fit into the wider picture
of diversity in History.
Firstly, one of the most salient themes to emerge from my findings was that the
majority of pupils considered it important to study the British Empire, as they deemed it a
part of their ‘heritage’ and is something that they ought to know about; which would
seem to support the idea of a common, inherited past (Phillips, 1998) that students felt
that they needed to develop more knowledge about. However, having studied the series
of lessons some pupils stated that they had a developed a more complex and detailed
picture of the British Empire in terms of its accomplishments, as they had a greater
knowledge of the positives and negatives of the British Empire. This would support the
notion that Wrenn (2007) suggests of the teaching of controversial History helping to
transform pupil attitudes. However, for whatever reason there were a significant amount
of pupils whose ideas about the British Empire hadn't changed, now this is partly due to
the fact that they may not have completed that part of the questionnaire, or perhaps found
it difficult to articulate their ideas or just did not engage enough with the lessons.
50
Moving on from this theme, a sub part of it was that a significant amount of
students saw the study of the British Empire important in terms of forming part of their
identity. This seemed to be true across all ethnicities of students, as a very common
explanation for it was because students were living in Britain and therefore needed to
know about this topic, which seemed to run contrary to Vansle’s study (Barton, 2004) of
secondary school students that suggested that few students said that History helped in
building a sense of self or identity. However, typically from my findings students from
non-white British ethnic backgrounds also stated the importance of studying another
nation’s history (e.g Turkey, Thailand) that they had family links to. To a certain extent
this links into Traille’s (2007) assertion that students bring in multiple identities into the
classroom.
Building on from this, what was borne out of some of the interviews was a sense
that students from a non-white British background would like to see an inclusion of more
ethnically diverse topics within the curriculum, though they were not disparaging in their
comments about what they were already studying as they felt that there was already some
inclusion; some students cited topics already studied earlier in Year 8 and in Year 7.
Therefore, there was the recurring theme from student questionnaires and
interviews that History was important in helping to shape student identity, though this
seemed for pupils across all ethnicities mostly to be within the context of a ‘British’
identity, perhaps in terms of a parent culture. However, what was more difficult to
ascertain was what the students meant by ‘British’. It would appear that a majority of
students felt it was important to study British History in the sense of illuminating how
their own country got where it is to today. However, the aim of the series of lessons was
to show that that journey was not undertaken in isolation and had been influenced by
51
other nation’s Histories and peoples. In a sense a people’s history (Pankhania, 1994) to
demonstrate to students how different peoples from around the world have helped to
develop British History.
Even though the notion of identity had been a prominent theme in the research
findings, and students had reiterated their belief that studying British History is
important, I was not particularly convinced that students fully comprehended that British
History had been influenced and in part shaped by the influences of other nations, which
was an aim of this series of lessons. These lessons had tried to encourage students, as
espoused by Dunn (2000) to see that it is important for pupils to be able to see their own
nation’s historical development within a wider more global context or what Stearn (1998)
terms ‘vital perspectives’ of World History. However, while the research findings would
suggest that some students gained a deeper understanding of Britain within a wider global
context, in the sense that they can appreciate how contact with other nations aided
Britain’s development in terms of ideas and knowledge. It is also apparent from the
findings that quite a lot of students did not make this connection. Even though many
pupils appreciated these Histories they did not consciously see a link between World
History and British History per se, rather seemingly viewing each nation more in
isolation of itself.
In terms of pupil perceptions of diversity in the History curriculum there was a
fairly even spilt between those pupils who did or did not see the inter-connectedness of
these Historical narratives regardless of ethnic background. However, the findings were
inconclusive in terms of how students now viewed diversity within the History
curriculum even though many had stated that they felt that the study of World History
was important and that they had learnt a lot from this series of lessons.
52
Moreover, this idea was further evidenced by the fact that even though students
evinced the importance of World History only a quarter of students would actively wish
to study more of it and see a greater inclusion of it in the History curriculum. This in turn
seems to be contrary to what many theorists (Jordanova, 2000/ Dunn, 2000/ Stearns,
1998) espouse in terms of the necessity of students to study aspects of World History as
an integral part of their History education in order for students to comprehend the diverse
nature of History.
Therefore, it would appear that a majority of students do attach some level of
importance to the study of World History though few make the link between it and its
relevance to British History and therefore perhaps the relevance of ethnic diversity in
British History. Furthermore, it would seem that these research findings reinforced what
Dunn (2000) cites as the ‘Western Heritage Model’ of History that students are exposed
to. However, it would appear that from the findings that students saw British History as
more relevant to study, though what sort of British History is unclear, in terms of how far
students can understand the ethnically diverse make up of British History. One of the
main thrusts of the series of lessons certainly from my perspective was to try and enable
students to make a link between the different national Histories influencing Britain
externally and the internally ethnically diverse nature of British History. However, on
reflection I feel that while students generally showed appreciation for studying elements
of World History, for many there was not the correlation between this and a deeper
understanding of the diverse nature of British History. This would then perhaps suggest
that the content of the lessons did not enable students to make those desired links.
Perhaps it could be argued that by focusing exclusively on World History and not
making more overt links to the development of British History students were unable to
53
develop an overview of the interconnectedness of History. In some ways this highlights
the quandary that Dunn (2000:132) says that teachers face in terms of making World
History seem more than just a ‘page in a book’. Moreover, as previously mentioned, even
though the research findings suggested that students struggled in making those
connections, however as particularly borne out through the interviews the majority of
students were more attuned to the relevance and importance of a global context of
History, which may illustrate how younger generations are more accustomed to global
perspectives in this modern era. Certainly, it would seem that there wasn’t the national
parochialism that Stearn (1998) warns of, with students more aware of Britain’s existence
within a global framework.
Further to this, another reason perhaps why students struggled with making clear
links between British and World History in terms of diversity was pupil conceptual
understanding of certain terms. For example, as argued by Dunn (2000) pupils found it
difficult to comprehend such terms as ‘nation’ and ‘culture’; or as Reynolds (2010) points
out the term ‘Empire’ can also be problematic for students’ understanding. So it could be
argued that using such terms could create a barrier to student understanding, however, the
fact that these were Year 8 pupils would go some way in mitigating this as younger
students will no doubt have more difficulty in comprehending such terms than perhaps
GCSE or A-Level students. Further to this as pointed out by Lee (1998) much of History
is mediated by language, so perhaps the use of these terms will be a perennial issue for
younger students in their conceptual understanding of History.
Moreover, in part, this study was concerned with raising the profile of the ethnic
diversity of History and making students more aware of the myriad of different narratives
that exist. Even though, as mentioned before the choice of using elements of world
54
History may have inadvertently hindered students drawing deeper conclusions in terms of
the interconnectedness of History. There are grounds to suggest, as Traille (2007) argues
that such topics can show humanity being ‘intrinsically linked’ and that teachers must be
more culturally relevant, and it could be argued that the choice of topics in this series of
lessons were relevant to the students as they catered to students from those ethnic
backgrounds (e.g Indian) and also highlighted the relevance of diversity to students from
other ethnic backgrounds.
However, as both Pankhania (1994) and Traille (2007) lament about how the
History curriculum at Key Stage Three can be counter-productive and actually reinforce
negative stereotypes of ethnic minority groups. This series of lessons and subsequent
findings suggest that students across all ethnicities certainly developed a greater
appreciation for diversity within History, insofar as they can see the positive
contributions that ethnically diverse societies have made to History. Though as
mentioned before, whether or not they can make a correlation between these civilisations
and their impact on British History remains to be seen, as it was inconclusive from the
findings from this particular cohort of students.
Moving on from this, any claims that have been made by myself can only be
made insofar as the dynamic of this particular school, even though it can be tempting to
extrapolate upon these findings, they are germane to this particular cohort. As mentioned
previously, the themes that arose from the findings highlighted possible learning
outcomes from the series of lessons, in terms of student perceptions of diversity.
However, there are several caveats in any claims that can be made from these
findings; for example the research approach that was used was Action Research, and even
though there are various arguments which have been investigated in previous chapters in
55
terms of the benefits of using Action Research (Bell, 2005/ McNiff 2006). Due to the
central role of the teacher in such research frameworks, this must also be considered
when evaluating the findings of such research in terms of how much bias and influence I
as a teacher would have on such research results. Even though, as pointed out by the likes
of Hopkins (2008) Action Research can be an emancipatory process for the teacher, it is
just that level of involvement and control over the research process that can introduce
bias whether intentionally or unintentionally to the gathering of data and the
interpretation of it.
However, in terms of my own professional situation, the practicalities of using
an Action Research framework was more pertinent, as I was attempting to investigate
elements of my own practice; and by which would help in improving my own teaching.
Though the possible bias in the data collection and interpretation process must be taken
into consideration when drawing any conclusions. Also, due to the fact that I am very
interested in World History and in the inclusion of diversity in the History curriculum,
this would probably create the dilemma for teachers such as myself, of trying to avoid the
trap of overcompensating in my enthusiasm, whether unwittingly or not, in order to get
pupils to be passionate about the topics that we as teachers are. This in turn may well
influence the way in which I reflect over the lessons and how I interpret the data as
pointed out by Wilson (2009).
Furthermore, any claims to knowledge from this research process must be
mitigated by the fact that the research process itself was not all encompassing. For
example, there was only a test group of one-year group at one school and the process
itself was only on one distinct cycle. For example, with Traille’s (2007) research there
were two cycles of interviews; so with my own research I would like to have extended
56
the process to another cycle of interviews and questionnaires at a later point after the
initial series of lessons in order to ascertain how student perceptions had changed after an
extended period of time. This I feel would have added a greater weight to any
conclusions drawn.

57
Chapter 6
Conclusion:
In this chapter I will attempt to draw conclusions about my research findings in
relation to my stated objective of exploring pupil perceptions of diversity in the History
curriculum. As stated previously the main questions that arose from the series of lessons
were:
 Has this series of lessons enabled students to see the interconnectedness of
History?
 Do students think that diversity is important?
 Do students want to study more World History?
Firstly I will deal with the notion of an ‘interconnectedness’ of History; as
mentioned at the start of this dissertation I felt that diversity in terms of different people’s
narratives was an integral part of History and was something that I felt, through my own
classroom teaching experience was something that students didn't fully appreciate or
comprehend. Further to this I had the intimation from a significant part of the student
body that they saw History in terms of a ‘mono narrative’ (Pankhania, 1994), in the sense
of Britain’s History being distinct and separate from other people’s Histories in some
kind of ‘Anglo-Saxon story’ (Visram, 1994). From this I wanted to use this dissertation to
explore what ideas and perceptions students had about the idea of ethnic diversity within
History.
Therefore, this series of lessons was devised to try and help students to
develop a deeper understanding of the impact that diverse peoples have made on British
History through the spread of ideas, culture and knowledge. From the initial
questionnaire it was clear that many students, around 80%, stated that it was important to
58
study the History of different countries, however, I was not certain why they felt it was
important. This may well have been (Rubin, 2005) an issue with students not being able
to articulate themselves fully in the interview process, perhaps due to being nervous when
being interviewed by their own teacher, rather than a data issue (Bryman, 2008) as a
considerable amount of pupils had expressed that they attached importance to the study
of World History. It seemed from this first questionnaire and subsequent interviews that
students from an ethnic minority background were more inclined to say that studying
different nations’ histories was important because it formed part of their identity. For
example, some students from an ethnically Indian background highlighted the lessons on
India as being particularly interesting for them. However, this does not mean that
students couldn't see the importance of studying diverse Histories for the sake of doing
so, as quite a few students for example from White-British backgrounds cited its
importance in History in order to gain a greater understanding of the world around them.
So it seemed that if students had some sort of personal connection (Traille, 2007) to a
particular topic of History it made that all the more moving and powerful for them.
However, as mentioned before many students cited the importance of studying World
History and a significant amount explained it through the research findings as being
necessary in order to gain a greater sense of the world in which they live, though I would
conclude that the majority of students apart from those who may have had some family
connection to the topic seemed to see the lessons in isolation from one another; even
though the chronology was largely contemporary. This may well have be influenced by
the chronological frameworks being used in the lessons (Howson, 2007) in terms of
students building a wider picture of changes in History.
I would conclude that this was in part to the use of the theme of Empires as the
59
conduit for these lesson objectives. Initially I had thought that by using, what I
thought was, a fairly ubiquitous theme that had been a part of many diverse Historical
narratives would enable students to build a greater understanding of how History is
interconnected. Moreover, as evidenced by the first questionnaire, some students had
little idea what constituted an Empire (Byrom and Riley, 2003) (e.g Tudors), which in
turn probably hindered their capacity to fully comprehend how different Empires had
influenced one another.
Therefore, on reflection, if I were to conduct this type of research again I would
probably not use the theme of Empires as the main narrative framework, as I believe it
was too difficult a concept for some students to comprehend; however greater
clarification at the beginning of the scheme of work may well have helped. Furthermore,
I would try and develop the content in order to encourage the students to see the impact
of diverse Historical narratives on British History, as this was one element of the series of
lessons that I felt that students did not fully grasp. I felt that students gained an
understanding of the existence of other nation’s Empires and that they had created or
developed certain technologies or ideas, but didn’t really make the connection to how it
influenced the course of British History. Perhaps making the traders who came to Britain
from around the globe the conduit for student enquiry might have helped students more
easily see that diverse peoples and nations have influenced British History, in terms of
following these people’s personal accounts.
Leading on from this was the notion that students enjoyed and found interesting this
series of lessons, but what was surprising to me was that many felt that this series of
lessons was enough World History to study. What I would like to look into for possible
future research was why they felt that this was the case. In some respects this confirms

60
that our History department is including diversity within its schemes of work though I
would want to incorporate this further through years 7 and 9 with perhaps some sort of
overarching narrative framework in order to help students to link the different topics
together chronologically. Therefore, students would study a series of lessons in Years 7,8
and 9 with each series building on the next, so that by the end of Key Stage Three
students would have a more complex understanding of diversity within History. At the
moment there are lessons that focus more overtly on diversity, for example, looking at
Walter Tull in Year 9 or Nelson Mandela in Year 7; I would want to integrate these
topics and themes together, though finding an accessible theme as a conduit is vital for
this to work; as borne out by this Empire series of lessons.
As stated before, the use of Empires, as a theme may well have been a
problematic one, however on reflection the methods used I would argue, had some value.
For example, the practicalities of conducting this research within a classroom
environment presented certain restrictions; namely time-scale and subjective research. In
evaluating my investigation, certain research methods I would have changed if I had had
the time to do so. For instance, to try and allay the criticism of Action research as being
too subjective (Wellington, 2000) I would have incorporated the teaching of my
colleagues more closely in the interpretation of data, even though this did go on to a
certain extent, I would have liked to have allowed colleagues more time to critique the
data and findings, in order to gain a more objective perspective. Further to this I would
have liked to have observed classes other than my own being taught with these lessons, or
have a colleague to observe me teaching some of these lessons in order to gain another
more objective viewpoint on the lesson outcomes and student responses.
Moreover, in terms of research methods I would have liked to have used at least
two distinct research cycles, ideally this would have been composed of conducting

61
another series of questionnaires and interviews at a certain time period had elapsed; as
carried out by Traille (2007) in order to gain a greater understanding of the longer term
implications of this study. However, as mentioned before, there were the issues of time
and practicalities of doing this within school time (Baumfield et al, 2008). Also, in terms
of seeing how far-reaching the implications for this study might have been, I would have
liked to have conducted a similar study in other secondary schools, therefore providing a
far wider range of data which may well have helped in confirming or dispelling certain
themes or ideas that had arisen from the research findings; for example, ‘how important
students considered World History to be?’. Moreover, in terms of the ‘Generalizability’
(Anderson, 1998) of these findings, it would be difficult to make any comprehensive
assertions as they are unique to this school and particular cohort of students (Bryman,
2008); though in the context of other theorists such as Hadyn and Harris (2010) it would
appear that the notion of identity is a recurring one across different groups of students.
Furthermore, any new knowledge generated from this investigation is embedded in the
situation in which it was created (Rubin, 2005), so in terms of extrapolating it into a
wider picture, it must be done with the caveat that knowledge will change depending on
the context that it was generated in.
Overall, I believe that my investigation was fairly valuable insofar as helping
me to improve my own practice, in gaining a clearer insight into pupils’ perceptions of
diversity in History. In some respects it had confirmed my idea that pupils had a quite
Euro-centric perspective on History, though the findings had also shown me that quite a
few students seemed to embrace and gain from this series of lessons and had shown an
interest to study more World History. However, my investigation also showed that
students struggled with concepts like diversity and Empires, which in turn prevented
62
them from fully appreciating how interconnected History is, and I still feel that the
majority of pupils still see History as isolated narratives, though not necessarily with a
view that one is inherently better than the other, though perhaps with a view that one is
more relevant to them than another. This is in terms of pupil identity, which was a salient
theme throughout the investigation findings, and I feel that students were drawn more to
elements of History that they had a personal connection with, though this didn't mean that
they couldn't see the benefits of studying topics with less of a personal connection. So
therefore, I would say that students generally saw diversity as a necessary part of History,
though perhaps more as an add-on and not necessarily as an integral part. Within a wider
picture, this could have connotations for how diversity is taught in school, with more of
an effort to incorporate it more comprehensively into school curricula, so that students
see it as a part of History. Therefore, a possible further research enquiry may be to look at
teacher perceptions of diversity in terms of schemes of work, and perhaps also looking at
student perceptions of diversity solely in terms of British History when the ‘drip’
(Lyndon, 2006) approach has been used in a curriculum, as opposed to the approach of
giving over sections of the curriculum to the teaching of diversity. Then perhaps there
might be an opportunity to evaluate different approaches to the inclusion of diversity
within the History curriculum and through student feedback ascertain which might be
more conducive to a more inclusive curriculum. However, this investigation has
highlighted that it is problematic to draw generic themes around the topic of diversity; as
by its very definition the perception of it will change from school to school.
Further to this, it will be interesting to see how the wider picture of diversity
will change within schools’ History over the coming months and years, as educational
63
changes come into effect. Also, this investigation has shown to me the effort that has
taken place to raise the profile of diversity within the curriculum and to have its inclusion
on merit, in terms of its inherent value to the teaching of History. It would seem that
many students do see this value to their History learning, though whether they can see the
intrinsic links in History between diverse peoples remains to be seen. This perhaps is the
on-going challenge for History teachers and those who shape education policy, in order to
create a more comprehensive and truly diverse Historical narrative.
Word Count: 18,284
64
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68
Appendices:
69
Appendix A:
Name: Form:
Dear student,
I am requesting your help with my MA research and would be grateful if you
would complete this questionnaire with your honest opinions.
Your names and any information you write down will be kept anonymous.
1: Which different empires or countries’ history have you studied before?
2: How important do you think it is to you, to study the history of empires of

different countries?
(tick one of the following)

Not very Not important Don’t know Quite Very
important important important
Explain why here:
3: How important do you think it is important to you, to study the history of the
British Empire?

Explain why here:
70
4: Why do you think Britain wanted an Empire?
5: Do you think the British Empire achieved anything? If so, what?

Explain your answer:
6: Which other countries’ history would like to study and why?
71
Appendix B:
Form: Name:
Dear student,
I am requesting your help with my MA research and would be grateful if you
would complete this second questionnaire with your honest opinions, having
reflected over the lessons you did about Empires.
Any information you write down will be kept anonymous.
Thank you very much for your help.
1: How much do you think you’ve learned from studying about different
Empires?

Not a lot Not much A little Quite a lot A lot
Explain here what you think you’ve learned:
2: Have any of your ideas about History changed after studying about Empires?

No, none A few Some Quite a few Yes, a lot
Explain your answer here:
72
3: How important do you think it is to you, to study the history of different
Empires?

Explain why here:
4: Having studied these Empire lessons would you want to study more World
History in school?

No Maybe Don’t know Possibly Definitely
Explain your decision here:
73
Appendix C
Question Not very Not Neither Quite Very important
74
important
How important is it
to you to study the 2% 3% 15% 61% 19%
History of different
countries’
Empires?
(percentage of
student responses)
How important is it
to you to study the
History of the 3% 2% 9% 47% 39%
British Empire?
(percentage of
student responses)
75
Appendix D:
Question 1 Not a lot Not Much A Little Quite a lot A lot

How much do you think
you’ve learned from 5% 3% 31% 59% 11%
studying about different
Empires?
(percentage of student
responses)
Question 2 No, None A few Some Quite a few Yes, a lot

Have any of your ideas
about History changed after 17% 31% 37% 12% 3%
studying about Empires?
responses)
Question 3 Not very Not Don’t know Quite Very

important important important important
How important do you
think it is to you, to study 3% 4% 27% 54% 12%
the History of different
Empires?
responses)
Question 4 No Maybe Don’t know Possibly Definitely

Having studied these
Empire lessons would you 8% 27% 10% 30% 25%
want to study more World
History in school?
responses)
76
Appendix E:
Student Interviews
Name:
1) What do you think you’ve learnt about diverse cultures from these
lessons?
2) What have you particularly enjoyed studying in these lessons?
3) What didn't you particularly enjoy studying in these lessons?
4) You said in the questionnaires………….what did you mean by this?
77
Appendix F:
ETHICS BOARD
RESEARCH PARTICIPANT CONSENT FORM
Title and brief description of Research Project:
Exploring pupil perceptions of diversity in the History curriculum.
(Permission sought for pupil interview following programme of study)
Name and status of Investigator:
Richard Beaumont
History Teacher: Orleans Park School
Consent Statement:
I agree for my child to take part in this research, and am aware that I am free to withdraw him/her at any
point. I understand that the information my child provides will be treated in confidence by the investigator
and that their identity will be protected in the publication of any findings.
Name of Child………………………………….
Signature of parent………………………………
Date ……………………………………
Please note: could you please return this consent form via your child to Richard Beaumont, and if you have a
concern about any aspect of their participation, please raise this with myself.
Thankyou in advance.
Name: Richard Beaumont
Contact Address: Orleans Park School, Richmond Rd, Twickenham,

London, TW1 3BB
Phone No: 0208-891-0187 Email: [email protected]
78
Appendix G:
ETHICS BOARD
M.A RESEARCH PARTICIPANT INFORMATION
Dear Parent/Carer
I wanted to inform you that as part of my M.A dissertation I am conducting some research in
school regarding pupil perceptions of diversity in the History curriculum.
I will be giving Year 8 students a questionnaire to complete in order to garner their ideas about the
Key Stage 3 syllabus.
All information will be treated in the strictest confidence and with complete anonymity, and
participation in this research is voluntary. Should you wish to discuss any matters with me further
please email me at [email protected]
Yours sincerely,
Richard Beaumont
(History Teacher)
79
Appendix H:
Dear Ms Longhurst,
I am writing to you as I am completing my MA dissertation this academic year. As

part of the ethics guidelines for action research set out by Roehampton University, I must
inform you of the content of that research and ask for your permission to carry it out.
My research will centre around pupil perceptions of diversity in the History
curriculum and how these correlate with the outcomes of the curriculum and other
research carried out by academic theorists. I will use questionnaires, focus groups and
school data to analyse student responses. Any information will be treated in the strictest
confidence and with complete anonymity.
Please let me know if you are happy for me to conduct this research.
Yours sincerely,
Richard Beaumont..
80

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Richard James Beaumont

“Exploring pupil perceptions of ethnic

This dissertation is submitted in part

This dissertation is concerned with exploring pupil perceptions of ethnic diversity

Module EDU060L020 Student BEA07201929

Chapter 2: Literature review

Chapter 3: Research Methods methodology

Chapter 4: Research Methods findings

Chapter 5: Findings evaluation

Appendix A: First questionnaire

Appendix B: Second questionnaire

Appendix C: table of results of questions 2 & 3 of first questionnaire

Appendix D: Table of results of questions 1 – 4 of second questionnaire

Appendix E: Student interview template

Appendix F: Interviewee consent form

Appendix G: Parental consent form

Appendix H: Permission request to Head Teacher

Module EDU060L020 Student BEA07201929

Module EDU060L020 Student BEA07201929

The focus of this dissertation is to explore pupil perceptions of ethnic diversity

greater understanding of the ‘inter-connectedness’ of History and that people from

whether what I as a teacher want students to understand by diversity is what they

History classrooms for some considerable time.

Module EDU060L020 Student BEA07201929

Month’ so couldn’t see the point of such initiatives.

incredibly interested to know that people of an Afro-Caribbean or other non-white

backgrounds occupying differing jobs and roles within society today.

Further to this, I wanted to explore how pupils perceived History in terms of

Module EDU060L020 Student BEA07201929

a more conscious focus on it in the National curriculum since the 1990’s.

narratives of History to be included in the History curriculum, (Pankhania, 1994) though

I wanted to investigate if the pupils’ perceptions of diversity matched the objectives of

Therefore my research enquiry would centre around investigating the importance

is in History. In terms of diversity I wanted to concentrate on students from a non-white

was catering to their needs and expectations as students.

As a department we were already conscious of trying to provide a more diverse diet of

in British History that students would have studied in Year 7.

Module EDU060L020 Student BEA07201929

way in which I could evaluate students’ perceptions of diversity, in the sense of

examining their responses to the content and aims of these lessons.

reinforce negative stereotypes of Afro-Caribbean people, in the sense that it helped to

narrative. I will go into more detail about this in later chapters.

Module EDU060L020 Student BEA07201929

surround ethnic diversity in the History Curriculum. As mentioned in the previous

profile within History (M.Riley, 2007) or it is pandering to political correctness

As a teacher of History I have always been conscious in trying to get my students to

Module EDU060L020 Student BEA07201929

narratives. Moreover as argued by Slater (cited in Grovesnor, 2000:12) much of the

something to be squeezed into a history curriculum, but is an integral part of it and I

comprehensive and detailed version of Historical development and progress.

Module EDU060L020 Student BEA07201929

which inadvertently or not, have sometimes helped in augmenting these notions of

gone some way in alienating students from non-white ethnic backgrounds.

commissioned various reports looking at how students from non-white ethnic

Module EDU060L020 Student BEA07201929

institutions had previously shown sensitivity to a more ethnically representative version

he cites as an example of earlier attempts to raise the profile of non-white peoples’

contributions to British History by memorialising them in a museum. However, these

but as subjects of the British Empire.