I was delighted to be able to co-present at the HA Conference this May, with the perennially amazing Alex Fairlamb, on the subject of progression in sourcework. Sourcework is a field crowded with big names so it felt a bit daunting, but having spent much of last year really focusing on curriculum and getting it into a progression model that satisfied both myself and Ofsted, I’d spent a lot of time reflecting on how I could keep the consultant happy when she was asking how we were showing progression in ‘history skills’. I realise there has to be a certain amount of genericism when you’re consulting, but the conversation became circular pretty quickly as I flatly refused to entertain the idea that skills exist in history outside of the content you’re using to exemplify it and that any attempt to map progression of skills through our curriculum was a pointless waste of time. In the end, in an attempt to meet the poor consultant in the middle, I thought hard about how we progress students in source skills – from simple inferences onwards – and, though I came to much the same conclusion (that the way to get better at working with sources is to look at more sources, rather than attempting to come up with a one-size-fits-all-sources approach that invariably fails to fit when it’s most needed), I was able to develop a few phrases and exercises that, oft repeated, should lead to the progression we so desire to see. It’s been working quite well so far.

Happily, Alex had been working through much the same process at her through school and I think we managed to put together something helpful. Here are the slides for those who fancy a nosy through.

This should have been the highlight of the conference but then Rich and I did a Friday night pub quiz for the dinner and Mary Beard was on one of the teams, so that was hard to beat. I went to some superb workshops and lectures that fired my enthusiasm all over again. And what a lovely place Harrogate is! I stayed an extra night so I could fully appreciate it. The History subject community really is the best.