{"id":3814,"date":"2016-05-22T20:05:22","date_gmt":"2016-05-22T17:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/activehistory.co.uk\/updates\/?p=3814"},"modified":"2016-05-22T20:05:22","modified_gmt":"2016-05-22T17:05:22","slug":"theory-of-knowledge-in-history-the-challenge-of-source-material","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.activehistory.co.uk\/updates\/key-stage\/ib-history\/theory-of-knowledge-in-history-the-challenge-of-source-material\/","title":{"rendered":"Theory of Knowledge in History: The Challenge of Source Material"},"content":{"rendered":"<h1><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/www.activehistory.co.uk\/historiography\/tok\/calvin.jpg\" width=\"500\" height=\"377\" \/>Session 1: Sources<\/h1>\n<p>[<a href=\"https:\/\/www.activehistory.co.uk\/historiography\/tok\/2016\/1_Evidence.doc\">student worksheet<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.activehistory.co.uk\/historiography\/tok\/2016\/teacher\/1_Evidence.doc\">teacher notes<\/a>]<\/p>\n<h2>Introduction: Why and How is History Produced?<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;History&#8221; is not &#8220;What happened in the past&#8221; or even &#8220;The surviving evidence of what happened in the past&#8221;.<\/li>\n<li>It means &#8220;What historians choose to interpret from the surviving evidence of the past&#8221;<\/li>\n<li>To reduce this to a formula, we might say:<\/li>\n<li><strong>Sources + Historians = Histories<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>So it is important to consider what the nature of the surviving evidence is, and how historians then choose to select and present it.<\/li>\n<li>In these three TOK sessions, I therefore investigate three ways in which we gain a &#8220;knowledge&#8221; of History:\n<ul>\n<li>Session 1. The Sources: What are the limitations of the surviving evidence?<\/li>\n<li>Session 2. The Historians: What are the limitations of the historians using that evidence?<\/li>\n<li>Session 3. The Histories: What, therefore, are the limitations of the histories produced?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>The Historians and their Sources<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The first way in which we gain knowledge of the past is through historical evidence (&#8220;sources&#8221;). Two questions raise themselves:\n<ul>\n<li>How can we extract knowledge from the sources? (issues of quality and quantity)<\/li>\n<li>How useful is the knowledge that we extract in this way? (issues of comprehensibility and the &#8216;language gap&#8217;)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Session 1: Sources [student worksheet\u00a0|\u00a0teacher notes] Introduction: Why and How is History Produced? &#8220;History&#8221; is not &#8220;What happened in the past&#8221; or even &#8220;The surviving evidence of what happened in the past&#8221;. It means &#8220;What historians choose to interpret from the surviving evidence of the past&#8221; To reduce this to a formula, we might say:&#8230; <\/p>\n<div class=\"link-more\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.activehistory.co.uk\/updates\/key-stage\/ib-history\/theory-of-knowledge-in-history-the-challenge-of-source-material\/\">Read More<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3814","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ib-history"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":3816,"url":"https:\/\/www.activehistory.co.uk\/updates\/key-stage\/ib-history\/historians-and-theory-of-knowledge-in-history\/","url_meta":{"origin":3814,"position":0},"title":"Historians and Theory of Knowledge in History","author":"Russel Tarr","date":"July 1, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Session 2: Historians [Student worksheet\u00a0|\u00a0Teacher notes] Sources are incomplete, untypical and unreliable, as we found out in our last session. Historians therefore need to: Select sources to use, based on what questions need answering; Interpret those sources and make deductions from them; Organise and present their main conclusions to the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;A-Level \/ IB History&quot;","block_context":{"text":"A-Level \/ IB History","link":"https:\/\/www.activehistory.co.uk\/updates\/category\/key-stage\/ib-history\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.activehistory.co.uk\/historiography\/tok\/calvin.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1152,"url":"https:\/\/www.activehistory.co.uk\/updates\/key-stage\/ib-history\/1152\/","url_meta":{"origin":3814,"position":1},"title":"The Historians and their Sources","author":"Russel Tarr","date":"July 10, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Sources are incomplete, untypical and unreliable, as we found out in our last session. Historians therefore need to: Select sources to use, based on what questions need answering; Interpret those sources and make deductions from them; Organise and present their main conclusions to the public. Arguably, this process of selection\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;A-Level \/ IB History&quot;","block_context":{"text":"A-Level \/ IB History","link":"https:\/\/www.activehistory.co.uk\/updates\/category\/key-stage\/ib-history\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1150,"url":"https:\/\/www.activehistory.co.uk\/updates\/key-stage\/ib-history\/historiography-historians-sources\/","url_meta":{"origin":3814,"position":2},"title":"Historiography: The Historians and their Sources","author":"Russel Tarr","date":"July 7, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"The first way in which we gain knowledge of the past is through historical evidence (\"sources\"). Two questions raise themselves: How can we extract knowledge from the sources? (issues of quality and quantity) How useful is the knowledge that we extract in this way? (issues of comprehensibility and the 'language\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;A-Level \/ IB History&quot;","block_context":{"text":"A-Level \/ IB History","link":"https:\/\/www.activehistory.co.uk\/updates\/category\/key-stage\/ib-history\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1155,"url":"https:\/\/www.activehistory.co.uk\/updates\/key-stage\/ib-history\/theory-knowledge\/","url_meta":{"origin":3814,"position":3},"title":"Theory of Knowledge","author":"Russel Tarr","date":"July 13, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"It has been said that \"all history is contemporary history\" (Croce) and \u201cHistory tells us more about the person who wrote it than about the people being written about\u201d (Carr). In this sense, works of history themselves become sources for later generations of historians! In this session, we will look\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;A-Level \/ IB History&quot;","block_context":{"text":"A-Level \/ IB History","link":"https:\/\/www.activehistory.co.uk\/updates\/category\/key-stage\/ib-history\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3818,"url":"https:\/\/www.activehistory.co.uk\/updates\/key-stage\/ib-history\/schools-of-history-historiography-and-tok-in-history\/","url_meta":{"origin":3814,"position":4},"title":"Schools of History &#8211; Historiography and TOK in History","author":"Russel Tarr","date":"July 5, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Session 3: Histories [Student worksheet\u00a0|\u00a0Teacher notes] It has been said that \"all history is contemporary history\" (Croce) and \u201cHistory tells us more about the person who wrote it than about the people being written about\u201d (Carr). In this sense, works of history themselves become sources for later generations of historians!\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;A-Level \/ IB History&quot;","block_context":{"text":"A-Level \/ IB History","link":"https:\/\/www.activehistory.co.uk\/updates\/category\/key-stage\/ib-history\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.activehistory.co.uk\/historiography\/tok\/calvin.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":3182,"url":"https:\/\/www.activehistory.co.uk\/updates\/key-stage\/igcse-gcse-history\/sarajevo-sandwich-syndrome-questioning-the-reliability-of-historical-sources\/","url_meta":{"origin":3814,"position":5},"title":"&#8220;Sarajevo Sandwich Syndrome&#8221; &#8211; Questioning the Reliability of Historical Sources","author":"Russel Tarr","date":"November 28, 2014","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Sarajevo Sandwich Syndrome\"\u00a0-\u00a0Questioning the Reliability of Historical Sources Your task is to investigate six assertions made by a famous BBC documentary about the Origins of World War One. For each one, determine whether it is: (a) Incorrect: Other vidence contradicts the documentary; (b) Inconclusive: Other evidence shows that historians disagree\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;1900-2000 (GCSE History)&quot;","block_context":{"text":"1900-2000 (GCSE History)","link":"https:\/\/www.activehistory.co.uk\/updates\/category\/historical-periods\/20th-century\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Screen Shot 2014-11-09 at 12.57.56","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/activehistory.co.uk\/updates\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/11\/Screen-Shot-2014-11-09-at-12.57.56-300x118.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.activehistory.co.uk\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.activehistory.co.uk\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.activehistory.co.uk\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.activehistory.co.uk\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.activehistory.co.uk\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3814"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.activehistory.co.uk\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3815,"href":"https:\/\/www.activehistory.co.uk\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3814\/revisions\/3815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.activehistory.co.uk\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.activehistory.co.uk\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.activehistory.co.uk\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}