TY  - UNPB
TI  - Conceptions about the nature of accounts in history : an explorarory study of students ideas and teachers assumptions about students understandings in Singapore
UR  - http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.572906
EP  - 379
AV  - public
ID  - discovery10020665
N1  - Thesis: (PhD) University of London Institute of Education, 2012.
PB  - Institute of Education, University of London
A1  - Afandi, Sahaimi Mohamed
Y1  - 2012///
M1  - Doctoral
N2  - This thesis is an exploratory study of students' understandings about the nature of
accounts in history, and teachers' assumptions about those ideas. The study was
designed to achieve two related objectives: first, to explore and map out the range of
ideas students in Singapore may hold about the nature of historical accounts, and
second, to examine the assumptions teachers in Singapore may have about their
students' understandings.
Sixty-nine students (fifty in Year 9 and nineteen in Year 12) across nine institutions
completed two written task-sets designed to generate data on students' ideas about
accounts. Group interviews were conducted with all students. 93 teachers responded
to a questionnaire survey designed to explore teachers' ideas about students'
understanding of accounts. In-depth interviews with nine teachers were carried out to
supplement questionnaire data. Data analysis of students' ideas pointed to a broad
range of student conceptions about accounts, and to the possibility of viewing these
conceptions progressively across a 'factual-multiple-criterial' continuum. Analysis
of data that focused on teachers' assumptions about students' ideas revealed the
possibility of viewing students' conceptions in 'simple' to 'complex' terms, ranging
progressively from (i) static and binary, to (ii) subjective and perspectiveful, and to
(iii) dynamic and multi-dimensional.
This thesis makes the argument that approaching the teaching of school history in a
responsive way requires that Singapore teachers recognize the range of
preconceptions that students hold about accounts. Specifically, this is done by engaging students' ideas to help them make sense of new knowledge and develop
their disciplinary understandings about history. The implications these findings have
on planning, research, assessment and practice are discussed in the context of a
history pedagogy that is both receptive to an understanding of the methodological
underpinnings of the discipline, and responsive to the notion of developing students'
understandings of historical knowledge.
ER  -