The Post-Pandemic Pedagogy project aims to collect evidence of student and staff experiences of learning and teaching History during the pandemic, to gather their views on how teaching should be conducted afterwards, and do produce a series if discipline-specific recommendations that can inform planning for the future of History teaching in UK universities.
Universities are currently considering what teaching will look like after Covid, with each conducting its own enquiries into the effects of the various teaching innovations necessitated by the pandemic. Less common, however, is an attempt to reconcile the different perspectives of teachers and students, or to compare the effectiveness of different ventures in a single discipline. Given the potential magnitude of the changes being contemplated for teaching provision, the evidence base is either slim, generic or institution-specific.
Initially funded by the East Midlands Centre for History Learning and Teaching (EMC) and now also supported by History UK and the Royal Historical Society, Post-Pandemic Pedagogy involves a national survey of students and teachers of History in higher education to assess the effects and efficacy of Covid-inspired teaching changes. The resultant report, by collating evidence from across the sector and combining viewpoints of learners and practitioners, will help history programmes and university managers to devise a post-pandemic framework for teaching, learning and assessment in History. In common with History UK’s Pandemic Pedagogy project and the Royal Historical Society’s reports on gender, race, ethnicity and equality and LGBT+ issues, this project will examine existing initiatives in order to foster best practice in History and higher education more generally.
The initial phase, funded by the EMC, involved surveying staff and students at a number of institutions in the East Midlands. There were over 200 responses to the questionnaire. A 15-min talk by Marcus Collins outlining preliminary analysis of the first 100 respondents is available on YouTube.
The next stage of the project, conducted with the support of History UK and the RHS will involve extending the survey to History students and lecturers across the country. There are two versions of the survey, as follows:
- Regular version (2nd and 3rd yr UGs, MA students and teaching staff): https://lboro.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/ppps2
- First-year UGs only: https://lboro.onlinesurveys.ac.uk/pppf2
The questions cover all aspects of learning history, within and outwith scheduled teaching sessions, asking respondents to make direct comparisons between their experiences before the pandemic, the changes during the pandemic and their preferences after the pandemic. By reflecting on past and current practice, they collectively outline a vision of how history could and should be taught from now on. We encourage all History students and teachers in higher education to complete the survey and to share it with their peers.
As the research progresses we will update this page with more information about the project and its findings. Do feel free to contact any of us with your feedback.
Project team:
- Marcus Collins (Loughborough; co-author of Why Study History?)
- Peter D’Sena (Hertfordshire; VP Education of Royal Historical Society)
- Jamie Wood (Lincoln; co-convenor of History UK)
- Aimee Merrydew (Keele)