History
Congratulations on gaining a place on the University of Nottingham PGCE History course. We are very much looking forward to working with you.
In preparation for the start of the course we would like you to focus on building your subject knowledge, thinking about the purpose of history as a discipline, and beginning to explore some key debates around the teaching of history in school. We know that very good history teachers are well read, and they carry on reading throughout their careers. Through this reading they seek to challenge their own perspectives with fresh texts and new ideas. We suspect that you are already well read, and our pre-course reading and tasks are intended to build on this and get you thinking about what it means to teach history in secondary schools.
We hope you enjoy preparing for the course.
Vic Crooks
Gary Mills
Sally Burnham
What to expect on the course
Explore the links below to find our more details about the content of the course as well as what previous students thought about it.
Pre-course reading
There is a generic reading list for all PGCE secondary student teachers and a history specific reading list. Both will be shared with you at the start of the PGCE course. In the meantime we would like you to undertake some pre-course reading around the following areas:
- Subject Knowledge Enhancement
- The nature of history as a discipline
- History education in practice
Please see our reading listfor more guidance.
Pre-course tasks
Prior to commencing the course, we would ask that you complete:
Task 1: How I learnt history
In this short piece of writing we would like you to reflect upon your own learning in history. This thinking will be the first step in helping you to begin to understand other people’s learning, including school students.
Task 2: My history passion
We would like you to record a short presentation (five minutes maximum) as a podcast/ VLOG on an aspect of history you find exciting and fascinating and believe should be on the history curriculum. Save your presentation as an MP3 or MP4 file ready to upload to our MsTeams site on the first day of the PGCE.
Please see our pre-course task guidance for more details.