TLRI research stimulates ideas and questions

Paul Enright, head of social sciences at Logan Park High School, talks about his involvement in a TLRI project  'Thinking Historically: The role of NCEA research projects in motivating history students to develop disciplinary expertise.'

For me, what’s been more challenging has been looking at the pedagogy of history and it’s also been a lot more revealing and so that’s led me into all sorts of things. I’ve been fortunate enough to get involved in a teaching research learning initiative task (or project) that’s actually looking at historical thinking. Which is really, you know sort of, really exciting and has given me all sorts of ideas for how I want to actually carry on and refine it. And so what we’ve been doing is working with students - getting students to unpack, if you like, their research process. That I find really exciting because of the potential it offers for actually having a better understanding for what it is that goes on in your classroom. It gives me perhaps that greater certainty about what I feel people should be looking at, how they should be developing as teachers, it doesn’t mean - I don’t think (or hope) it doesn’t mean that I present myself as having all the answers but I think what it does do is it gives me a better range of questions.

More can be found at http://nzcurriculum.tki.org.nz/Ministry-curriculum-guides/Secondary-midd...

Mark Sheehan, Giselle Byrnes and Jonathan Howson's  'Thinking Historically' project is still in progress.