How would I teach this subject? Well, that is rather a difficult question. Personally, while I find the nature of power and control and how it changed over the 2 centuries I have discussed in this series of posts a fairly easy concept to understand I find it rather more difficult to explain. I have, however, thought of an analogy which I believe students would understand, well some of them at least.
I believe the concepts discussed can be likened to gangs and bullies in school. The school serves as the crown in this analogy and the bullies/gang leaders as the nobility, with the gang members and bullies' cronies as the nobility's supporters and retainers. If the school has inadequate control or power over the students then the bullies and gang leaders will be able to fill the power vacuum by offering their cronies and gang members protection from other bullies and gangs and from themselves; roughly the situation in 1485. If the school is able to operate an effective anti bullying regime (government) then the bullies and gang leaders become less able to offer protection to their supporters who are more likely to be "punished" for being in a gang. Significantly the school itself is able to offer that protection to the majority of the other students and thereby undermine the power of the bullies and gang leaders; roughly the situation in 1569. In the analogy, the key to this shift in the balance of power is to give the ordinary students more involvement in the government or policing of the school to act as a counter balance against the bullies and gangs.
I am not making any judgement statement about giving students more involvement in school government, I am simply using the analogy as a means to bring the historical theme to life for school students who might otherwise struggle with the concepts.
An alternative is to create a kind of game for the students to play whereby they play the role of nobles and have various choices they can make about gaining power and influence. Different choices might provide them with varied dilemmas and solutions. The choices, dilemmas and solutions would all be based on historical facts and events. the point of the exercise would be to make the learning experience more real by helping the students to gain a better insight into what it must have been like for the nobility making decisions about their security.
Rutland Water
14 years ago
These last group of posts have shown a good spread of knowledge and I like the idea of using analogy to help pupils understand, certainly this can work well but is usually only a short part of the learning, the idea of devising a game is excellent. How about before you leavce this topic, you devise sucha game ? It can be a board game, card sort activity or role play with decision making a key aspect of the game. Using this kind of activity should help ensure and assess pupils` understanding of Tudor government and the role of faction.
ReplyDeleteYou would need a real scenario and real characters for pupils to play in groups - Elizabeth and her advisers, other factions and also commentators such as Bishops, heads of state in Europe and the like. Chose one dilemma from her reign and devise something around that. If there are only 6 or 8 characters trhen you would run the game with three groups
track down Ian Dawson's A-level text book for tudor history for some examples from Henry VIII`s reign or look at his website http://www.thinkinghistory.co.uk/ in case there are any role play games for decision making on there
OK, I will do. I will have a think about it and come up with something. I will try to keep it simple. You never know, I might even get to use it over the next 12 months...!
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