Is it as easy as Key Stage 3?

Anna Dickson and her department sought a solution to the challenges posed to their pupils by the expanded curricular scope of the new GCSE. In particular, they wanted to address the difficulties their pupils experienced in understanding the Cold War. Dickson outlines here how she drew on the work of other history teachers theorising about the transferability of knowledge, to design an enquiry for Year 9 that would make her pupils ‘GCSE-ready’, without directly repeating topics or narrowing the curriculum. She explores how her enquiry provided substantive knowledge to support her pupils when they came to study the Cold War. Dickson also suggests how her approach to the teaching of interpretations strengthened pupils’ disciplinary knowledge of history, underpinning their ability to answer questions about interpretations at GCSE...