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Explaining the Historical, Geographical and Social Area of Understanding as part of Disciplined Innovation

Curriculum aims

Citizenship education is currently part of the non statutory framework for PSHE and Citizenship. In the Rose Review proposals Citizenship fits into the broader "area of learning" known as Historical, Geographical and Social Understanding. Though the Area of Learning approach is not a legal requirement, schools can use this approach as part of disciplined innovation in curriculum planning.

This HGS area of learning is one of six. It contributes to the achievement of the curriculum aims for all young people to become:

successful learners who enjoy learning, make progress and achieve
confident individuals who are able to live safe, healthy and fulfilling lives
responsible citizens who make a positive contribution to society.

Diagram by QCDA illustrating the new Primary Curriculum

Short guide to the new curriculum by QCDA (formerly QCA)

Historical, Geographical and Social Understanding

Why is this area of learning important?

This area of learning stimulates children’s curiosity to investigate the world and their place within it. Engaging children in questions about people and events in the past helps them understand the present and prepare for the future. Understanding people’s relationships with the physical and built environment helps them form ideas about how to live. They learn about the impact of their actions on the planet and understand the importance of developing a future that is sustainable. Through exploring cultures, beliefs, faiths, values, human rights and responsibilities, children develop a deeper understanding of themselves and others, and a sense of belonging.

Historical, geographical and social understanding encourages children to interpret the world around them, from the local to the global. They become aware of how communities are organised and shaped by people’s values and actions, and how communities can live and work together. They begin to understand how events that happened long ago or in other countries can affect our lives today and how we can help shape the future.

In these ways, children learn about similarities, differences, diversity and how we live in an interdependent world. They learn about right and wrong, fairness and unfairness, justice and injustice. Their growing understanding helps them make sense of the world and prepares them to play an active role as informed, responsible citizens.

1. Essential knowledge

Children should build secure knowledge of the following:

how the present has been shaped by the past, through developing a sense of chronology, exploring change and continuity over time, and understanding why things happened
how and why places and environments develop, how they can be sustained and how they may change in the future
how identities develop, what we have in common, what makes us different and how we organise ourselves and make decisions within communities
how people, communities and places are connected and can be interdependent.

2. Key skills

These are the skills that children need to learn to make progress:

undertake investigations and enquiries, using various methods, media and sources
compare, interpret and analyse different types of evidence from a range of sources
present and communicate findings in a range of ways and develop arguments and explanations using appropriate specialist vocabulary and techniques
consider, respond to and debate alternative viewpoints2 in order to take informed and responsible action.

EXPALNTORY TEXT:

1. This includes carrying out visits and fieldwork,using maps, films, and artefacts, and using digital information such as geographical information systems (GIS) and weather data, databases and the internet.

2. Including using ICT to consider viewpoints frompeople in remote locations.

3. Breadth of learning

a. The range of learning should encompass local, national and global contexts. In these contexts, children should learn about the ways people, communities, places and environments have changed over time, and how they are interconnected.

b. Through the study of people and communities, children should find out about the main political and social institutions that affect their lives. They should have opportunities to find out about issues and take action to improve things in their communities and make a positive contribution to society. They should engage with different representatives from the community3. Children should explore issues of justice, rights and responsibilities in their own contexts, as well as issues affecting the wider world.

c. Children should use fieldwork, first-hand experience and secondary sources4 to find out about a range of places and environments, including their own locality, a contrasting area in the UK and a different locality in another country. Children should explore views and opinions about local and global issues including sustainability, climate change, poverty, resource use and recycling. They should develop and extend local and global links through communications and collaboration tools5.

d. The study of the past should include aspects of local, British and world history. Children should have opportunities to study the past in outline and in depth, covering different societies and periods of history from ancient times to modern day. They should use dates and vocabulary concerned with the passing of time, placing events, people and changes within a broad chronological framework. Children should use a range of sources of information6 and visit historic buildings, museums, galleries and sites.

EXPLANTORY TEXT

3. Including those in business, public and voluntary sectors.

4. Including maps, charts, globes, GIS and ICT, film, books and devices such as data logging.

5. Such as email, video conferencing and podcasting.

6. Such as documents, printed sources, pictures,photographs, artefacts, databases and ICT-based sources including using data handling software to collate and analyse data.

5. Cross-curricular studies

Children should have opportunities:

a. to develop and apply skills of literacy, numeracy and ICT, particularly through reading and analysing historical documents, using maps, charts and measurements in fieldwork, and interrogating databases of information about people and services

b. to extend their personal, emotional and social development, particularly by learning to work collaboratively with others in community activities to improve the environment and to carry out first-hand investigations in their locality

c. to enhance their historical, geographical and social understanding through making links to other areas of learning and to wider issues of interest and importance, particularly through linking studies of sustainability to the impact of choices in economic wellbeing, linking studies of the material impact of geographical process such as erosion to the study of forces and materials in science, and linking studies of laws and justice to notions of rights and fairness in personal wellbeing.

Overview Diagram of Primary Curriculum by QCDA

The illustration below shows how this area of learning fits with the others, with the curriculum aims and with the overall outcome of primary education. The picture is hard to see on the screen so you can download it as a jpg image.

Short guide to the new curriculum by QCDA (formerly QCA)

Useful Documents - Right click to download

Primary Curriculum Overview Diagram by QCDA

Uploaded : 05 August 2009

Filename : primarydiagram2.jpg ( 3.05 MB )

Description : This diagram is produced by QCDA to show the inter-relationship of the areas of learning, the curriculum aims and the coherency of the new Primary Curriculum.

The HGS Area of Learning Programme of Study

Uploaded : 26 November 2009

Filename : historical_geographical_and_social_understanding_final_aol0.doc ( 91 K )

Description : This is the final version and will be in schools in January 2010