Teaching and Learning > DISCOURSE
Report on a History of Science, Technology and Medicine Workshop
Author: Graeme Gooday
Journal Title: PRS-LTSN Journal
ISSN:
ISSN-L:
Volume: 1
Number: 1
Start page: 61
End page: 76
Return to vol. 1 no. 1 index page
This was a well-attended workshop at which participants explored many important issues of pedagogy in History of Science, Technology and Medicine (HSTM) in a very constructive and amiable fashion.
On the first day, participants explored common experiences of challenging aspects of teaching HSTM to a wide range of undergraduate constituencies. Colleagues offered diagnoses of the relevant problems and suggested techniques and resources that could be effective in dealing with some of these challenges.
The second day of the workshop was addressed to wider issues arising from two ‘external’ initiatives: QAA Benchmarking standards and the planned new AS level in History and Philosophy of Science. Responses to these were explored and some valuable suggestions were made on how the HSTM community might offer a positive input to these developments.
The workshop concluded with a discussion of specific topics in learning and teaching HSTM to which LTSN resources could usefully be devoted—either by co-ordination at the PRS-LTSN centre, or by HSTM practitioners undertaking research projects with or without the collaboration or sponsorship with the LTSN.
1. Problems experienced by students in learning HSTM: A Critical Response to Graeme Gooday’s on-line paper The Challenges Of Teaching History & Philosophy Of Science, Technology & Medicine To ‘Science’ Students
http://www.prs-ltsn.leeds.ac.uk/hist_science/discussions/problems.html
In British Higher Education (HE) institutions, students come to HSTM courses with a wide variety of different backgrounds, motivations, interests and levels of skill. Apart from occasional trips to museums and brief exposure at the GCSE level, the great majority has not studied any HSTM before. In their first extensive encounter with HSTM at University, some students are quickly able to adapt well to the subject, whatever their prior educational experience. A significant proportion of students does not, however, adjust with such ease or dexterity to the learning styles and values involved. And it is not obvious to all HSTM teachers how they can effectively help students to adapt to new ways of learning in their field if such students only have one HE opportunity to study HSTM, typically in a single short ‘elective’ course or ‘service teaching’.
It is all too easy to over generalize about the nature and intensity of challenges presented to both teachers and learners in these sorts of contexts. There are considerable differences between levels of study in any given institution and also great variation between the experiences of different kinds of H.E. institution; the Open University, for example, is arguably unique in the prevalence of mature skilled learners. A further complication in analysing these problems is that undergraduates can respond in ambivalent and unpredictably dualistic ways to the challenges of learning HSTM (see below). Nevertheless, we can usefully analyse the problems facing teachers and students of HSTM into two dichotomised categories:
a. Generic to all students vs. Constituency-specific
b. Process (learning) vs. Product (assessment)
Generic
a. students can come to HE teaching of HSTM with expectations and learning techniques developed in secondary/further education that centre on producing a uniquely ‘right answer’—an effective tactic to maximize A level results. They can thus resist or distrust more open-ended approaches to discussion-based learning fostered in much HSTM teaching. There is, however, scope for optimism that this will change as new approaches are adopted in the teaching of A/AS level sciences.
b. many students tend to have a great deference to science (and to technology/medicine also?) and are often reluctant to hold critical discussions of it in classes and written work. Ironically, they can be much less reluctant to do so in informal or non-institutional contexts, but suppress their tendency to be critical or sceptical if they suspect (however wrongly) that such behaviour might run them the risk of getting lower marks.
c. students do not all come equipped with the skills for reading primary and secondary sources for HSTM in an informed and evaluative fashion. They can sometimes fail to see the point of looking at primary sources and or place undue trust in the authority of textbooks. Moreover, the IT-intensive nature of some students learning practices can lead them to uncritical use of on-line web sources rather than recommended course texts in writing essays. (see Section 3 below)
d. students are not uniformly skilled in essay-writing techniques and even those that do have relevant experience might nevertheless find that they need to adopt different conventions, styles or new level of refinement to perform effectively in HSTM essays—whether written for developmental or assessment purposes.
e. many students lack the confidence requisite for creative and critical thinking and fluent debate. They can very easily be daunted into passivity or resilient silence if teachers unduly flaunt their greater wisdom and expertise. Yet when they ask a question that is too difficult for the teacher to answer fully, the very same students then can paradoxically be disappointed that their teacher does not ‘know everything’ about the subject in hand…
f. in some contexts, students’ response to the challenges of learning HSTM can be dependent on whether a course is ‘optional’ or ‘compulsory’. In the latter case, conscripts can be much less enthusiastic or even hostile to the requirement to acquire new techniques of learning and to adapt to new kinds of assessment than those who have embraced the subject voluntarily.
g. Teachers of HSTM can all too often treat students learning challenges as problems created by the students and for them to solve. This is counterproductive since students’ learning of HSTM is much harder if their teachers are inflexible, expect too much, are out of touch, and unable to motivate their students. HSTM teachers can make a great deal of difference to students’ success if they try out new approaches; don’t impose unreasonable expectations, and find out what students do already know and what interests them about HSTM.
Constituency-specific:
Students can (but do not always) bring with them some counterproductive ‘baggage’ of fears, assumptions and convictions that might be specific to the learning culture of their specialist area of study. This topic was not explored in great detail at the workshop, but the following observations were made of some particular constituencies
a. history students without science qualifications (e.g. beyond GCSE) can be fearful of getting out of their depth in discussing science—showing their ignorance of it—in ways that can inhibit critical debate.
b. students in science, engineering and medicine can espouse a strongly whiggish conviction that HSTM essays should narrate how errors of the past were overcome in arriving at canonical present-day knowledge.
c. anthropology students can refuse to accept the pragmatic distinction between primary and secondary sources adopted in categorizing historical writings, and collapse all views on past events to being equally valid.
In considering how these problems might be dealt with it is important to differentiate further between problems that arise in
a. the ongoing process of students learning—in the student-teacher encounter in lecture, seminar, tutorial and supervision, or in feedback on developmental essays.
b. the final product of that learning process—work submitted for quantified assessment as essay, examination answer or oral presentation.
All topics above encompass these two dimensions, most notably students’ reluctance to evaluate texts and their resistance to adopt modes of critical thinking.
The following solutions to some of these problems outlined above emerged in discussions at the workshop.
Solving problems of the learning PROCESS
a. The friendliness and informality of the learning environment can be a crucial factor in students’ response. Enhancing the atmosphere of the lecture hall or tutorial/seminar room by suitable (re)arrangement of tables and chairs can make students feel more comfortable about the encounter with a teacher, and more prepared to give a new subject and new methods ‘the benefit of the doubt’. Even if chairs and tables are fixed in the room, much else can be done by the teacher (or and or by the institution) to enhance or optimise the learning conditions, especially with regard to temperature, lighting and ambient noise.
b. It is crucial to manage the first encounter with students with great care in order to build trust, confidence, good will and to open communication channels in both directions. Part of this could involve building up a collaborative learning contract between students and teachers which lays out the respective rights and responsibilities of both parties.
c. Teachers should start by identifying the skills and understandings that students already have and build upon these, rather than working on unwarranted assumptions about what prior knowledge and abilities these student do have or ‘ought’ to have (assumptions drawn from previous generations of students can be unhelpful here)
d. Developing active institution-wide strategies for identifying courses that cultivate particular transferable skills, so that individual teachers are not expected to take on the burden of wide-ranging skill-development in a single course. (University College, London and the University of Leicester already do this, and Chester College is working towards this.)
Solving problems of the learning PRODUCT:
e. Actively build skill-developing component such as essay technique or presentation skills into the curriculum of a module.
f. Give students exemplars of good practice to emulate and of poor practice to avoid—perhaps leaving students to judge which is which without prior labelling. Students are better at learning from these than they are in following abstract rules of procedure that underdetermine good practice and can in any case be followed in divergent ways (as noted by Wittgensteinians!).
g. Experiment with new assessment techniques that utilize skills other than essay writing e.g. oral examination or tracking tutorial performances, composing web pages. Especially useful could be the adaptation of existing skills that a particular constituency already has, such as the ability of science students in poster design; the HSS has attempted to develop this approach in the past. Further innovations in assessment tried by UCL include interviews, bibliographic essays and book reviews.
The next two sections address particular problem areas in more detail: critical/creative thinking, and use of on-line web resources.
2. Problems of stimulating and assessing critical/creative work by students
The problem alluded to in e) above is that of nurturing students often latent or self-suppressed ability to think critically and or creatively. This is of crucial importance since, in the British HE system at least, such abilities are usually requisites of attaining higher levels of marks in work submitted for assessment. Whilst there is little doubt that many students do have such abilities to some degree, it is evident that they can effectively disengage them when learning HSTM if they are unfamiliar with the materials, or are pragmatically aiming for low-risk ‘right’ answers. Launching into critical/creative discussion is especially important as a starting point for small group teaching to prevent it degenerating into a mere repetition of a preceding lecture.
Several strategies emerged in discussion about how HE teachers can try to pre-empt students ‘switching off’ in this way. Again it is useful to differentiate between process and product: the considerations of stimulating critical/creative work are quite distinct from those of assessing it, and there was considerably less consensus on the latter.
Techniques for stimulating critical/creative thinking in the learning process
Carefully selected pictures can serve as an effective ice-breaker in classes in diverting students them away from a search for uniquely ‘right’ answers. Useful examples presented in relation to the teaching of early modern science were the icon-laden frontispieces from Sprat’s History of the Royal Society and Bacon’s Novum Organum (New Organon). Such pictures can stimulate students’ interest in the subject, and its much less risky for students to discuss in a forthright fashion than the seemingly authoritative content of textbook or lecture notes. If the picture is well-chosen with rich diversity of imagery, there is always more than one response that students can offer and more than one pedagogically important point or issue to be drawn out from it.
a. presenting students with set of juxtaposed extracts from primary sources on a common theme can stimulate them to think about historical evidence independently of what has been said in lectures or written in textbooks. One example presented was a variety of letters and press cuttings by Einstein or about Einstein and the atomic bomb. Reading through these with heuristic questions can enhance interest and enable students to see that there is more than one perspective to be accounted for in past episodes, and more than one explanation of what occurred. From this experience they can perhaps develop greater empathy with past actors and think more critically about secondary sources on the topic.
b. there can be considerable value in sending students to a library to look at a complete original primary source for themselves. The sheer materiality and antiquity of the document can of itself evoke new interest among students and inspire them to read primary sources more intensively or carefully in developing a critical or creative understanding of their subject.
c. to help students deconstruct some of the categories and demarcations conventionally adopted in STM, carefully chosen boundary topics can help to stimulate student debate, especially if students are encouraged role-play to argue both sides. Strategically important here are topics where current expert discussion is not resolved e.g. the topic of UFOlogy can fruitfully be chosen to examine the question ‘what is a science?’
Useful resources here
a. University or local Libraries, archives or museums—although librarians can be uncomfortable with allowing undergraduates intensive access to valuable or rare items.
b. Prometheus web project for on-line pictures at the University of Oklahoma—this is still under development, but should eventually be free to use, although many US institutions charge for access to resources.
c. Primary source websites—although there is the problem of checking for authenticity and accuracy, as well as the loss of the sense of periodicity/materiality of the sources. Whatever the merits of using on-line primary sources, there is a prima facie need for HSTM scholars to share these as openly as possible.
d. specialist materials available from Open University and Leicester University.
Problems in assessing creative/critical work (for both summative and formative assessment)
Whilst we can develop techniques to encourage critical/creative thinking among our students, it is not so easy to know how to assess this since it is difficult to develop uncontentious criteria for what is most valuable in this regard. This is evidently the case despite the fact that we often (tacitly) expect students to exercise such critical/creative thinking in order to get the highest marks—especially ‘First’ class marks.
a. Notwithstanding the extensive educational literature on the general issues of assessing critical thinking, it is still difficult to specify how to reward creative/critical work in HSTM in a systematic and impartial manner - especially if such assessment has to be expressed in quantitative terms. Given the many ways in which students can be critical or creative, should we give equal weighting to each possible mode? This problem is compounded by the fact that some individual teachers might be inclined —despite their efforts to the contrary—to award higher marks to students who follow the teacher’s line when developing a particularly advanced critical line and who use that teacher’s work as a launch point for their own high level creative/critical discussion. (Further question: are our practices of internal or external examining sufficiently effective to curb this problem)?
b. colleagues can disagree about what kinds of creativity and critical work are appropriate e.g. can a highly creative approach to acquiring sources ever be sufficient for award of the highest marks, or is it also necessary to show effective critical use of them? Some consideration is needed of when it is appropriate to override or ‘trump’ standard assessment criteria when a piece of work is judged (unusually) meritorious but for non-standard reasons.
c. it is not always easy to specify unambiguously the kinds of critical perspectives that are allowable and those which are not. One important question is whether historians should award credit for critical (vis-à-vis explanatory) analysis where the student’s critique is of the ethics of historical actors; obvious cases in point here are practitioners of eugenics or medical practice exploitative of women or ethnic groups. Is it reasonable to discourage students from criticizing the activities of such individuals in the past or even to penalize them for this (perhaps because such criticism as is a diversion or digression away from the explanatory goals of the historian’s endeavour)?
This is clearly an area on which further reflection and discussion is needed, especially in relation to Benchmarking issues (See session 4).
3. Problems of students’ (mis)use of WWW resources
The World Wide Web evidently is a resource that can be of great benefit to both learners and teachers in HSTM, especially those involved in ‘distance’ and ‘open’ learning. There is no question that the WWW is here to stay – students will use it whatever we say, and there are plenty of ways in which HSTM teachers can turn it to their advantage. Yet it was agreed that there were pitfalls in using on-line resources as a supplement to conventionally library resources. Discussion at the workshop accordingly centred on and widespread concerns about its appropriate ‘proper’ usage for particular purposes and particular types of student constituency.
The RDN on-line tutorial ‘Internet for History and Philosophy of Science’
This was generally considered to be a very useful resource for guiding students in use of the internet, especially its guidance in helping students to assess the reliability of sites.
a. From discussion it emerged that there was much scope future for development of this resource, principally the tutorial:
- could give a simpler introduction/map through the plethora of relevant resources
- could further refine the treatment of certain topics
- should be updated regularly as important new websites come on-line and others become obsolete or are withdrawn.
b. Following the RDN’s identification of useful resources for teaching and learning HSTM, and development of the tutorial ‘portal’ to them, it is clear that there is plenty of scope for further web resources to be developed by HSTM practitioners. A particularly valuable addition would be an on-line guide to help students read paper texts (sic!)
c. Furthermore, HSTM practitioners needed an effective portal to good on-line primary resources and bibliographies, especially those that facilitate (expert) user evaluations of the websites in question. This evaluative role could, for example, be undertaken by in relation to the planned BSHS Wheeler Virtual Library; while HUMBUL and SOSIG have already taken an initiative in future plans to develop an XML metadata/taxonomy facility for cataloguing on-line resources in specialist academic areas.
Pedagogical Problems in Web-based learning and teaching of HSTM
While some institutions—notably the Open University—are developing ways of managing students’ use of web resources as an effective aid to distance learning, others are experiencing problems with web usage. The simplistic fallacy that WWW resources are necessary and sufficient for all effective study of HSTM has lead to two kinds of abuse in using web materials in assessed work. The following problems are persistent and increasingly widespread in UK HE institutions:
a. some ingenuous students use web sources in an uncritical fashion in preference to consulting recommended library materials in preparing their written work.
b. some disingenuous students plagiarize directly from web-resources, irrespective of the speed and ease with which search-engines can detect this.
Both problems can lead to radically reduced grades for the students in both categories, and potentially catastrophic results for the future careers of those in the latter.
To pre-empt these abuses turning Web-usage into a burden rather than a pedagogical asset, it is evident that HSTM teachers need some sort of strategy regarding when and how to introduce their students to internet-based resources for learning HSTM.
TRUSTING WEB SOURCES
There was no absolute consensus about this, and the following positions emerged regarding students taught in introductory level courses for HSTM:
a. Students on introductory courses should be discouraged from consulting WWW sites
b. Students on such courses should not be encouraged to cite Web sources in their essays
c. Students should not cite Web sources in essays at least until they are familiar with the scholarly use of conventional textual resources, and only then with proper guidance on which web sources can be trusted and how they can be used.
d. Students can cite Web sources in essays so long as they are given adequate guidance on which sources can be trusted and how they should be used.
e. Students can be trusted to be astute and critical consumers of visual/video web materials, so should be encouraged to use web resources in essay writing so that they can build up their confidence in handling texts before learning to read more traditional textual forms.
PLAGIARISM
There was more consensus here:
a. Students should be informed in the most explicit fashion how easy it would for us to detect their efforts at web-plagiarism and how serious the penalties are for this activity.
b. Since students can fall prey to accusations of plagiarism through incompetent source referencing, they should be encouraged to pre-empt this by develop note-taking practices that enable them to identify sources they have used with all due accuracy.
c. Development of more idiosyncratic/individualized courses and assessment tasks can make it very difficult for students to engage in web-plagiarism. Rotating essay questions on a regular basis (e.g. 2-3 year cycle) makes it much less likely that students on a given course will be able to ‘sell on’ their essay to future cohort. That being said, the wealthiest students can always illegally pay for specially ‘commissioned’ essays to be written. The only way of dealing with that problem is to set ‘unseen’ examination papers.
4. The issue of ‘Benchmarking’ standards for HSTM
The introduction of QAA ‘Benchmarking’ standards for future Quality Assurance exercises in HE teaching generated a fertile discussion, especially in relation to how the Benchmark statement for single honours History degrees might be adapted or augmented to accommodate the teaching concerns of HSTM.
It was noted that the QAA currently had no plans to compel HE departments to relate their teaching and learning activities to ‘national’ Benchmarking standards. Some participants considered Benchmarking standards to be a benign development, welcoming the opportunity for HE teachers to locate their teaching within a wider framework of reference. Other participants actively disapproved of the apparently homogenizing principles embodied in the practice of ‘Benchmarking’. Accepting such principles now might create a slippery slope towards later enforcement of complete uniformity in HSTM teaching at all HE institutions.
It was also recognized, however, that some kind of HSTM Benchmarking statement developed by HSTM teachers themselves could potentially present a means of justifying and defending the diverse provision of HSTM in UK HE institutions. It was accordingly agreed that participants should proceed to debate some form of Benchmarking for HSTM to supplement existing History Benchmark standards. It was not yet clear whether this could or would be an appendix to History Benchmark standards, or be a separate benchmarking statement for, say, History, Philosophy and Sociology of Science, Technology and Medicine. That would obviously depend on whether philosophers and sociologists of science considered that the Benchmark statements for Philosophy and Sociology respectively satisfactorily represented all their current teaching practices.
Important points that emerged from discussion of HSTM benchmarking
a. Much HSTM teaching is of the one-off ‘service’ variety to students in other disciplines that does not neatly fit the QAA model of progression. In Benchmarking statement such teaching would need separate treatment from ‘progressional’ teaching, and reference may be required to Benchmarking statements in relevant subjects of student constituencies taught.
b. although we might be able to identify some core components to degree schemes containing HSTM (e.g. scientific revolution?), HSTM practitioners concur with the emphasis in the History Benchmarks on the importance of maintaining diversity and discretion in the historical knowledge, methodology and period-range to be included in the curriculum. Beyond the basic introductory level, it is not appropriate to specify what historical topics periods or approaches must be included in—or excluded from—a degree programme involving HSTM. It is important for individuals and institutions to be able to teach their specialist areas of knowledge so that students taking HSTM courses (from highly diverse backgrounds) have maximum freedom to get most benefit from the particular scholarly expertise of teachers at their institution.
c. although allusion is made to reflexivity and interdisciplinarity in the History Benchmark statement, it was recognized that these would be particularly important in differentiating the distinctness of HSTM teaching provision. It is widely agreed that training in HSTM should ideally use a wide range of disciplinary resources to develop a deep understanding of STM and its past—and an understanding on which students were able to reflect in a self-critical fashion.
d. further discussion is required over the relationship between ‘key skills’ or ‘key transferable skills’ that are expected in defining ‘graduateness’ (e.g. at the Universities of Leicester and UCL) and the particular sorts of skills specifically nurtured in students taking courses and or degree programmes involving HSTM.
e. consultation would be needed with other scholarly historical bodies esp. BSHS, SSHM over the formulation of Benchmarking for HSTM and with the BSPS for the related field of philosophy of science.
Essay writing as a key practice in HSTM
In relation to Benchmarking issues, there was a further discussion of essay writing as the principal (transferable) skill for developmental work in students’ learning of HSTM and for assessment. This discussion was formulated as a critical response to a pre-circulated piece by Dai Hounshell, ‘Reappraising and Recasting the History Essay’ in Alan Booth and Paul Hyman (eds.), The Practice of University History Teaching, Manchester University Press, 2000, pp181-93.
This piece analysed three different student conceptualisations of essay writing viz. argument, perspective and arrangement (of facts). It contended that the first of these should and did gain students the highest marks, and offered a paradigmatic feedback form for giving students developmental advice on the crucial areas of essay-writing skills. In relation to session 2, some participants disputed Hounshell’s conclusion on the superiority of ‘essay as argument’ in ways that were not resolved during the session.
The skills and practices of essay writing in HSTM clearly require much further discussion, especially in relation to the issues of what kinds of essay writing students should be encouraged to adopt and which kinds of performance will be given the highest marks.
5. The planned AS Level in History and Philosophy of Science: ‘Perspectives’
The workshop devoted some time to considering this proposed pre-University qualification, especially its historical component. Although there was not complete consensus on all matters, the following points emerged in discussion:
a. Whilst it was agreed that it was important to have such a course at sixth form, most participants expressed reservations about some aspects of it, and had some suggestions to make about it how might be improved. Participants welcomed the invitation for input from the HE HSTM community to develop full plans for its conception and curriculum.
b. It was agreed that whilst many sixth form students who took this course would not necessarily go on to take HSTM courses at University thereafter, it was nevertheless important to avoid students acquiring views and understandings that would have to be overturned by subsequent HSTM teaching in HE.
c. Approval was given to the emphasis on ‘Science with a Human Face’, the focus on ‘Great Debates’ and on introducing pupils to primary source materials. Yet there was no clear statement about the aims and objectives of the AS programme, and it was thought essential to have these articulated, especially in relation to the science AS levels to which it related.
d. It was noted that some of the language employed in the pre-circulated document concerning ‘Key Thinkers’ and ‘Inspired Mistakes’ was specifically geared towards attracting the interest of science teachers and science bodies. Yet it was agreed that it would be undesirable for such terms to enter directly into the final version as they were seriously liable to mislead students about the nature of science and its history. They would moreover deter many history teachers at sixth form from taking any interest in the subject. One way of proceeding would be to give more attention to the experimental and collaborative nature of science (rather than just ‘key thinkers’) and to refer to the ‘fallible’ nature of science rather than anachronistic discussion of ‘mistakes’
e. It was nevertheless argued that students needed some sense of the important ‘myths’ about science that the AS level would be able to debunk. In that context such terms as ‘Key Thinkers’ and ‘Inspired Mistakes’ could have a pedagogical value in getting students to think about the concepts involved—but in that context only.
f. Examination of textbook material from an existing History of Medicine GCSE showed the dangers of course materials being produced for such teaching without the guidance of HE experts in HSTM. It was agreed that any textbook generated for the AS HPS course would need to have some kind of input from HE practitioners of HSTM if it were to avoid such pitfalls.
g. An ongoing programme of teacher training in history of science would be essential to make the teaching of this course effective in schools.
h. It was agreed that proper development of this new qualification would require substantial financial input to match that supplied by the Royal Society. A suggestion was made that the BSHS and BSPS might be approached about this matter.
i. there was a clear need for extensive field-testing in schools before the syllabus and teaching material could finalized.
6. Possible Future tasks for the LTSN and or HSTM practitioners
Concluding discussion at the workshop identified the following potentially useful areas in which research or supportive work could be undertaken by HSTM practitioners with the support or collaboration of the LTSN or other bodies.
Arising from Session 1:
a. Research into alternative methods of assessment for students taking service courses in HSTM e.g. posters, oral presentations, web pages
Arising from Session 2:
a. facilitating HSTM teachers’ access to useful pictorial
and textual materials for generating creative/critical thinking
b. fostering further debate on the assessment of critical/creative work (e.g.
developing draft criteria as an alternative to those in the appendix to the
History Benchmarking statement.)
Arising from Session 3:
a. in addition to further development of the RDN tutorial, we
can develop a project to offer further guidance to students on how to develop
their own HSTM web pages (e.g. in relation to Session 1 project above)
b. develop recommendations of useful HSTM websites for HE teachers to use
c. provide supportive guidance to HSTM teachers in effective means of using
web-resources in their teaching practices
Arising from Session 4:
a. Develop draft HSTM benchmarking guidelines in conjunction
with HSTM community
b. Liaise with QAA and BSHS, SSHM and BSPS about development/ratification
of such benchmarks
Arising from Session 5:
d. Coordinating HE practitioners input to historical component for planned new AS level
Finally: future LSTN workshops could be focussed on the more specific topics of HSTM learning and teaching
a. Benchmarking in HSTM, possibly in relation to related fields
in ‘Science Studies’
b. The setting, writing and marking of the HSTM essay
Endnotes
- This report is the product of feedback and comments from the workshop participants, to whom many thanks are due.
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This page was originally on the website of The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies. It was transfered here following the closure of the Subject Centre at the end of 2011.
