What Difficulties Do Children Have In Studying His

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What difficulties do children have in studying history and what approaches appear to work most effectively in overcoming problems? The study of history poses difficulties for children of all ages for different reasons. These difficulties range from getting to grips with evidence, understanding that different interpretations of the same event exist or accepting a different perspective that may go against what they have previously believed. It is the role of the teacher to recognise and understand these difficulties that pupils may face collectively or individually and provide pupils with challenging but achievable ways to overcome them. A major challenge for pupils to come to terms with in the history classroom is that for every question a teacher asks there may be a number of different ways to answer it and for many children this concept is alien to them. In the majority of other classrooms around the school be it maths or science when a child is asked a question there is usually only a right or wrong answer and pupils struggle to understand why this doesn’t lend itself to the study of history. History challenges pupils to think in a critical and challenging way. The sheer volume of knowledge and understanding of concepts that is required in the study of history is something that can be daunting for a child. The new curriculum at Key Stage 3 does lessen the amount of ‘knowledge’ required and rather allows pupils and teachers to focus on key concepts and values of history as a discipline. These concepts are built on throughout the study of history and in all the key stages. The concept I will focus on in my assignment is significance as for me I found this concept one that both students and myself admittedly struggled to fully grasp the meaning of. The difficulties that the study of significance poses is that it is not simply significance as in importance but
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