Celebrating LGBT+ History Month 2021: Triangulating Tutor, Trainee and Academic perspectives

ITE providers of History and practitioner communities alike have increasingly considered the intellectual and practical means to address legitimate demands for greater inclusion and diversity within the school History curricula. This blog entry serves to highlight tutor, trainee and expert academic perspectives about the current state of LGBT History in schools, the attendant challenges and opportunities, and to outline a promising framework for inclusive historical enquiry therein. It also provides a selection of links and resources that may be of interest to teachers and those home schooling at present.

University Tutor Perspective: Tom Donnai, Subject Leader, PGCE History, University of Manchester

Over the past two years, the PGCE History trainees at UoM course have sent a considerable amount of time considering how to integrate LGBT histories into school History curricula. Doing so in a way that goes beyond a superficial or tokenistic approach is a challenge and one thing has become clear to trainees from the past two cohorts is this: inclusive curriculum planning is contingent on locating expertise and locating the stories of marginalised or underrepresented groups. Yet many histories are simply not written, and the challenge for PGCE trainees, and teachers in general, is to locate these stories and plan historical enquiries accordingly.

The framework by which many schools currently seek to teach of the past experiences of the marginalised majority (e.g., women, black, LGBT+, Working-Class, etc.) varies significantly and often serves as ‘bolt-on’ to the often ‘traditional’ approach to school History, which has been dominated by a male, Eurocentric ‘dominant narrative’ since the inception of the National Curriculum in 1988. This diet History education is largely removed from learner’s everyday reality and backgrounds, adding further abstraction and distance from a subject that is already conceptually removed for many students. The following quote, from L.P Hartley, seems apt with this in mind: ‘The past is a foreign country – they do things differently there’.

As a PGCE subject leader with little experience of teaching LGBT History during my own 13 years in the classroom, I was faced with a conundrum of sorts when writing a curriculum for the University of Manchester PGCE History course. Read up on the subject and anoint myself as an expert? Locate pockets of best practice in schools? The former didn’t sit well with me and the later was hard to locate. In the end, a Google search and a conversation on the mobile (whilst walking down Deansgate) with Sue Sanders, activist and architect of the first LGBT History month, was all that was needed. Sue helped me to locate the expertise that PGCE Historians needed through Dr Jeff Evans, an expert in the field, who has been working with us over the last two years to develop a framework for locating and undertaking historical enquiries for such ‘hidden’ groups in the school curriculum. Jeff has been an active campaigner for LGBT+ and human rights for the past 40 years and founded ‘Outing the Past’ in 2015, the festival of LGBT activism and History. Jeff currently works as a Research Fellow at Liverpool John Moores University.

Central to our approach is the use of local archives, which have offer unique insights into LGBT History and often serve as the perfect ‘jumping in point’ to Historical enquiries. Anyone interested in accessing our suite of free to use lessons can contact me on thomas.donnai@manchester.ac.uk and I’d be glad to share.

ITE providers of History and practitioner communities alike have increasingly considered the intellectual and practical means to address legitimate demands for greater inclusion and diversity within the school History curricula. The framework by which schools currently seek to teach of the past experiences of the marginalised majority (e.g., women, black, LGBT+, Working-Class, etc.) varies significantly and often serves as ‘bolt-on’ to the often ‘traditional’ approach to school History, which has been dominated by a male, Eurocentric ‘dominant narrative’ since the inception of the National Curriculum in 1988. This diet History education is largely removed from learner’s everyday reality and backgrounds, adding further abstraction and distance from a subject that is already conceptually removed for many. ‘The past is a foreign country – they do things differently there’.

Indeed, solid arguments can be made that the school History curricula are in fact ‘narrowing’ in their scope and focus. The content for GCSE History has been broadened significantly since the new specifications were introduced in 2017, yet there is a near complete absence of LGBT+ History within the specifications of the three main awarding bodies, AQA, Edexcel and OCR.  Moreover, with many schools now opting for a two-year Key Stage 3 and electing for a three year GCSE programme, there is pressure on departments to ‘cover’ significant tranches of the past relatively quickly and superficially, meaning that many History departments are being forced to narrow the scope of their curricula. Thus the price of a performative and ‘results driven’ culture in education is sometimes a ‘thin and watery’ curriculum.

A major obstacle faced by ITE providers in seeking to make the curriculum more inclusive, and thereby of greater relevance to learners, is the near absence of a cohesive intellectual platform on which to devise practical answers.  The University of Manchester PGCE History course has sought to address this with promising early results. 

Expert Academic perspectives: Dr Jeff Evans

The purpose of ongoing collaboration with the University of Manchester PGCE programme is relatively straightforward:

1. To validate and promote an accessible methodology providing of unique set of teaching skills by which to implement and develop school’s history the provides an inclusive and thereby more reliable reading of our collective past. This practical teaching methodology (aka ‘Dan Chesters Method’) is embedded with a formal historiographical (philosophical, etymological & providential) reading.  An approach all the more necessary given the ambiguity of the topic (e.g. LGBT+, Queer History) a vagueness often compounded by past and contemporary identity politics.

• This Model exploits the greater immediacy and relevance to students when learning about readily relatable events and people. The flexibility of the core model facilitates its practical usage to exploit vast areas of the past, majority history, otherwise ignored or swept to the margins. Thereby this stepped model, currently piloting LGBT+ History into the classroom provides an intellectual and practical platform for opening-up the school’s History Curriculum to a whole range of more inclusive, immediately relevant, and thereby more reliable reading of the past.

The two key questions that needed to be addressed through the production of a framework were the academic legitimacy and the methodology by which to inform the trainees in their planning of the lessons in question. Each area required specific considerations:

1. Academic Legitimacy 

Enjoy a rigorous and professional status; to be soundly embedded within the science of History: historiography (i.e., its two branches philosophical and methodology). To this end specialist historiographical expertise is an essential ingredient providing academic credentials and general validation to trainees.

• Methodology – The Training/Delivery Model 

Needed to be suitable (i.e. s highly practical methodology) easily accessible to history graduates/ PGCE Trainees and to lend itself to ready applicability to a wide range of professional classroom practices and scenarios.

The potential and actual gains delivery by this model result from exploiting the attendant enthusiasm (of Trainees and Students) generated by the enhanced relevance offered by the introduction of a more ‘inclusive’ previously marginalised topic, including:

1. Deepening student’s engagement with the subject specifically and in general
   1. By creating more opportunities for local community centred learning 
   1. Offering upskilling opportunities related to collecting oral testimonies
   1. Generally developing motivational skills implicit with more engaged independent learning

Of interest to the wider school environment is that the teaching of a more relevant history also provides an invaluable contribution to students’ meaning system. The subconscious strategy by which we understand a meaningless universe (i.e., themselves and contextualise themselves with the concept of inter-personal otherness). That is greatly assisting the embedding of any and all individuals, great asset to maintaining good mental health and thereby enhancing stability.  

Trainee perspectives on LGBT+ History: Megan Kemp, PGCE Historian

When I was in school, sexuality wasn’t something to be discussed. The presumption was you were all nice normal heteronormative boys and girls – anything else was hidden under a veneer of shame and deviance. There was no room in the curriculum for LGBT history, which left me excluded as I struggled to understand my identity without the support of teachers, peers, or parents. Providing a safe space for pupils is central to the teaching doctrine, so why are classrooms not discussing more marginalised narratives – LGBT or not – for those that feel marginalised by yet another reoccurrence of ‘great white man’ history?

The structure of the PGCE History course at Manchester is invaluable – bringing marginalised narratives to the fore. Sensitive topics have been respectfully broached by experts from both inside and allied to the community. LGBT, post-colonial, disabled and other such testimonies have not been shied away from. My course mates have been fired with the zeal to smash down the door of conformity, and demand change from the ground up. I couldn’t be prouder.

However, whilst the National Curriculum is theoretically a ‘lump of clay’…you can do with it what you choose – its execution in the classroom is still lacking. The most inclusive lesson I have observed was a teacher discussing the persecution of LGBT individuals at the hands of the Nazis. That was yet another ‘well worn bullet point’ in an exhausted history Powerpoint. LGBT narratives are interwoven throughout all topics in history – we are people, and the people are what makes the past. And as Jeff is often apt to point out, ‘an inclusive reading of the past is a historically rigorous reading of the past. A cursory Google search provides numerous lesson topics for a variety of historical epochs, ripe with possibilities for including LGBT+ History: The Suffragettes? Investigate Mary Blathwayt. The Russian Revolution? Try Afansy Shaur.  The Middle Ages? An enquiry on Piers Gaveston. Integrating LGBT + Histories  into the curriculum isn’t an impossible task; it merely requires the expenditure of time and effort, just like any form of good curriculum planning.

 The National Curriculum is a relatively flexible and lightweight albatross around the neck of history teachers – it really is is what you make of it. It would be remiss of me in my duties as a teacher to expose students to the same pitfalls I experienced in school. We must do more to tell these stories, for the sake of our children’s wellbeing.

While I’m here, and for anyone that’s interested, see a short list of LGBT+ History resources that have been useful for me on my school teaching practice:

  http://www.schools-out.org.uk/

• https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/histories/lgbtq-history/
• https://www.stonewallscotland.org.uk/resources/lgbt-history-month-activities-secondary-schools-and-colleges
• https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/features/exploring-lgbtq-history-at-national-trust-places
• https://www.bl.uk/lgbtq-histories/articles/a-short-history-of-lgbt-rights-in-the-uk

LGBT+ Representation in the School Curriculum – James Clarke, PGCE Historian

Improving representation for minority groups has been an area of focus that has dominated discussion during my year on the PGCE Secondary History course at the University of Manchester. The importance of representing LGBT+ History, specifically, has been emphasised and is therefore an aspect of the curriculum I have sought to develop while on placement.

However, the problem of under-representation is one that cannot be solved by simply ‘adding in an LGBT+ lesson’ to every scheme of learning. During discussions with the head of history at one of my placement schools, she rightly pointed out that this could be tokenistic and thus problematic in its own right. Instead, her philosophy is to focus on ‘people’ throughout history and include LGBT voices in standard historical enquiries to normalise them, rather than singling out different minority groups as ‘LGBT people’ and teaching separate ‘LGBT enquiries.’ The matter is further complicated when teaching pre-modern topics. Same-sex relationships have, of course, been ever-present through history, yet describing them as LGBT+ would be anachronistic. The oft-cited same-sex male couples in ancient Greece, for example, would not recognise the term ‘gay’ as a descriptor for their sexuality.

Nevertheless, representation should not be shied away from purely because of these challenges. To avoid tokenistic lessons, we, as history educators, should seek to intersperse LGBT+ voices within historical enquiries. Instead of having a lesson solely focussed on the 1984-1985 Miners’ Strike, it would be better practice to explore the strike through the LGSM movement’s involvement. This provides an opportunity to address the Miners’ Strike while also broaching the topic of LGBT+ experiences during the 1980s – without inadvertently segregating the LGBT+ community or focussing entirely on the ways in which they were oppressed. This method of increasing representation in the curriculum offers much richer results and is a generally fairer approach to history teaching.