England's Medieval Immigrants: Migration History Resources for Schools

CONTEXT

England's Medieval Immigrants: Migration History Resources for Schools aims to maximize the impact of AHRC-funded advanced research from the project, 'England's Immigrants, 1330-1550', which ran between 2012 and 2015. Its major research output, www.englandsimmigrants.com, provides a database of nearly 65,000 named individuals born outside England who lived within its bounds in the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries. In particular, it captures all the data for the government inquiry conducted in 1440 in preparation for a universal tax on persons born outside the kingdom - the only such documented process before 1841. The 1440 data thus provide a unique snapshot of the names, nationalities, places of English residence, occupations, households and family structures of up to 20,000 aliens - approaching 1% of the population of mid-fifteenth-century England.

From Sept 2016, the GCSE curriculum for History will include major components on the long-term history of migration to the British Isles. The shortage of suitable resources to support teaching and learning for the medieval elements of these modules has prompted the designers of the new curriculum (the Oxford and Cambridge and RSA Examination Board, and the Schools History Project) to seek support from the England's Immigrants team. The present project is a collaboration of the University of York, The National Archives, and the Historical Association, together with an independent Consultant, to create online resource packages that support teaching and learning in the history of migration to Britain at Key Stages [KS] 2-5 of the National Curriculum, including GCSE, and to develop an impact evaluation tool that will generate significant data on the impact of research-based teaching and learning of History in schools.


AIMS AND OBJECTIVES

The aims of the present project are:
1. To enhance the impact of the successful AHRC-funded research project, 'England's Immigrants, 1330-1550'
2. To make a key contribution to the study of migration in schools (KS 2-5 and GCSE)
3. To create methodologies for measuring the impact of AHRC-funded research in schools

The objectives (fully detailed in the separate Objectives section) are:
1. To create a definitive online resource for KS 2-5 teachers and students that allows effective use of the database www.englandsimmigrants.com in the new GCSE curriculum from Sept. 2016
2. To create a definitive online resource for KS 2-5 teachers and students for the history of migration between the coming of the Romans (55BCE) and the expulsion of the Jews (1290)
3. To create a methodology for the systematic evaluation of the impact of this project during the academic year 2016-17
4. To enable a group of KS 2-5 teachers to engage pro-actively in the development of new, research-based teaching resources on the history of migration in the Middle Ages



APPLICATIONS AND BENEFITS

The online resource packages linked to Objectives 1 and 2 and the impact evaluation tool developed under Objective 3 (together with the resulting impact evaluation report) will be made freely available via www.englandsimmigrants.com and www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/education/.

The outputs are all designed to maximise the impact of AHRC-funded research in the teaching and learning of History in Schools. To achieve this aim, the project identifies five groups of beneficiaries:

1. Teachers and students who use the resulting resources at KS 2-5 and in GCSE
2. Examination boards, who will have access to reliable, research-based resources to support migration history
3. Public agencies, include RCUK and HEFCE Impact strategists, who will benefit from the findings and conclusions of the impact evaluation report
4. Researchers in Education, and specifically those working on research-based teaching and learning
5. Participants in the Teacher Scholar Programme run as part of the activities of the project, for their career development

The beneficiaries of the project will be:

1. Teachers and students who use the online resource packages for Key Stages 2-5 and in preparation for new GCSE modules on migration. The Oxford and Cambridge and RSA Examination Board and the Schools History Project, who have jointly developed the specifications for the new GCSE curriculum, expect a significant uptake on the migration options available from Sept 2016; the identification of the need for up-to-date, research-based resources to support the medieval elements of these options has been the main driver to this application. The two resource packages, 'England's Immigrants, 1330-1550' and 'Migration to Britain, 55BCE-1350', will be available online in time for the first cohort of students taking the GCSE curriculum from Sept 2016, and the project includes a dissemination strategy designed to provide timely and effective news of the availability of these resources.

2. Examination boards, who will have access to reliable, research-based resources to support their modules in migration history. In addition to the Oxford and Cambridge and RSA Examination Board, AQA have also indicated an interest both in the new resources to be created and in the impact evaluation report. By having the resources available in time for the first cohort of GCSE students, and by completing the impact evaluation report by the end of the academic year 2016-17, the project will ensure timely quantification of the uptake of its outputs, as well as generating key data on the ways in which migration history is being taught and understood within the National Curriculum.

3. Public agencies, include RCUK and HEFCE Impact strategists, which will benefit from the findings and conclusions of the impact evaluation report completed by the end of the academic year 2016-17. The timing and relevance of the report will have the potential to influence ongoing thinking about the methodology for evaluating the impact of research in the Arts and Humanities.

4. Researchers in Education, and specifically those working on research-based teaching and learning (including the project partner, the Historical Association; the Schools History Project; and other similar organizations), who will benefit from a model of collaboration between RCUK-funded research and schools-based education and, through consideration of the impact evaluation tool and impact evaluation report, will be able to advance understanding and further research on the nature and quality of History teaching in schools.

5. Participants in the Teacher Scholar Programme run as part of the activities of the project, for their career development. The Teacher Scholar Programme represents a direct response to the recent report, P. Cordingley et al., Developing Great Teaching: Lessons from the International Reviews into Effective Professional Development (Teacher Development Trust, 2014), which highlights the importance of CPD in enhancing the quality of teaching. Participants will be active contributors to the follow-on funding project, and will be encouraged to disseminate their experiences and reflections during and after the programme (including their own involvement in teaching the new GCSE modules from Sept 2016) through social media and through the publications and conference activities of the Historical Association, the Schools History Project, and other professional associations and contacts.