Andrew Wrenn is a Teacher Fellow of the Historical Association and Education Lead for this project on behalf of the HA. He has supported teachers at Woodhouse Grove School, near Bradford and King Edward the Seventh School, Sheffield in developing their differing teaching approaches using the research of Julie V. Gottlieb and the original source materials on which it is based. The document below ‘Reflections and guidance for teachers on fresh perspectives for teaching appeasement in the classroom’ has been developed from a presentation Wrenn made to a teachers’ conference held at Sheffield University on June 7th, 2023 to disseminate elements of the project at that point in its life.

He makes reference to the scholarship of historian, M-R. Trouillot who claimed that all historical narratives contain ‘a bundle of silences’. Wrenn relates Trouillot’s assertions about how history itself is produced to Gottlieb’s research and the evidence she draws on, particularly from the Mass Observation Archive. He suggests how extracts from the archive and other sources might be used by teachers to address the silence which Gottlieb identifies in past studies of appeasement- the opinions and attitudes of ordinary British men and women.