ancient history

Artefacts from ancient history - Qin dynasty

Dude, here’s how to get fizzle in your conclusion?

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For students in ancient history, generic writing advice is insufficient. Advice about structure, such as, say what you are going to say, say it, then say what you have said, or acronyms, such as PEEL (Point Example Elaboration Link) emphasize repetition and connecting ideas. They aren’t much help to students needing to evaluate historical figures and events. What else can teachers do to help?

In our study (part of an ARC funded research project, https://doi.org/10.52289/hej10.106) we want to help ancient history students with writing for exams. The extended responses are daunting and high-stakes in terms of marks that contribute to the overall exam grade. In our data set, drawn from a lower Index of Community Socio-educational Advantage (ICSEA) in Western Sydney, we found that students struggled with writing conclusions and tended to just fizzle out – as if there was nothing new to say. In our data set, one-line conclusions were common, such as:

Extract 1
Despite his achievements to unify China he should still be considered a cruel king.

Flunking the conclusion section and getting confused about where and how to evaluate a historical figure makes it very hard for students to achieve higher grades. 

To tackle this issue, our study investigates how Yr 12 ancient history students can successfully write a discussion in which they evaluate historical figures, like Emperor Qin. While students could critique behaviour, like saying the Emperor was cruel, they often didn’t know how to gradually build towards a standpoint where values are connected to historical concepts. In ancient history, these concepts include collections of values that are abstractly packaged as ~isms, such as individualism, collectivism, socialism, democracy, etc. This means students need to express values (cruel, powerful, successful, etc) as a connection point for saying something broader about historical concepts, like the ~isms of history.

How to evaluate Emperor Qin

 In our data nearly all students could use evidence from artefacts and events to express specific values, but few could pull the values together. They missed the ~isms boat. 

Yet this identifies a teaching opportunity. We can teach students to marshal evidence and build towards a culminating standpoint. Instead of the fadding one-liners, conclusions are an ideal place for the ~isms. This is because a broad claim in the conclusion can be well supported by all the evidence and corresponding evaluation that has been previously introduced. Here’s an example adapted from our data where evaluation (ruthless, barbaric, brutality, rigidity) is pulled together under the concept of Legalism.

Example Conclusion

In conclusion, the discovery of the Terracotta Warriors reveals both negative and positive aspects of Qin’s rule. He can be perceived as a successful leader with respect to his role in the unification of China and reforms which led to a more prosperous and advanced society. However, the ruthless and barbaric bloodshed of his own people reveals an underlying obsession for power and control. For Qin, it seems that the price of progress and domination was never too high. Ultimately, the rigidity and brutality of leadership grounded in Legalism led to the demise of the Qin dynasty.

Heavy lifting

In the example above, the heavy-lifting for evaluation is done in the first and final sentences with corresponding evidence in between. It’s the final part of this ‘evaluation sandwich’ where students ‘go beyond the dude’ (in this case the Emperor Qin) and point towards historical concepts, like unification and Legalism. 

In our project, we used a theory from within the sociology of education, called Legitimation Code Theory (LCT) to understand how students can use evaluation to talk about the ~isms. This theory, developed by Professor Karl Maton at the University of Sydney involves the concept known as semantic gravity. When analysing student writing, semantic gravity can be used to compare and contrast how tied to context something is. For example, when students say that Emperor Qin’s behaviour is ruthless, barbaric or brutal, their writing displays relatively strong semantic gravity (SG+). They discuss a specific figure, doing specific things in a specific setting. In contrast, writing about the concept of Legalism has weaker semantic gravity (SG-). It is not necessarily only tied to the Emperor Qin but could be linked to other historical figures in other times and places. 

Ruthless, barbaric or brutal

In our research, we plotted the relative strength of semantic gravity as it changes throughout students’ text. This creates what is known as a semantic profile. Points at the top of the semantic profile represent more abstract and generalised meanings, whereas points at the bottom represent meanings that are more strongly tied to context. Here’s a sample (please see our article for more detailed analysis and an earlier blog post for another example with a different kind of exam question).

Figure 1: Plotting a semantic profile that builds towards a conclusion

What this kind of semantic profile highlights is that the fragments of evidence can be connected to values. Students can organise the pairing of evidence and values in series of body paragraphs, such as a paragraph with evidence of why Qin can be perceived as cruel, or another with examples of being powerful. These ‘evidence-value’ connections involve students controlling degrees of context dependency. Then in the conclusion, students can further reduce context dependency so that collections of values are interpreted as an ~ism (like Legalism). 

If students write in this kind of way, then their culminating claim can be perceived as justified by the reader and not come out of the blue. For evaluating historical figures, a conclusion can be far more than ’say what you’ve said’. It’s more helpful to ask, ‘what can you say now that you couldn’t authoritatively say before?’ 

Evaluative bits

In our study we argue that teaching students where all the ‘evaluative bits’ go and what their evaluation can build towards should be explicitly taught. 

Given that the NSW curriculum reform requires teachers to “clarify and strengthen ‘writing’ content” in all subjects, identifying what is valued in writing and why is vital. Through teaching practices, such as modelling and co-constructing texts, we can show students how to control context dependency and explain why it matters so much.

For year 12 students doing ancient history, this means learning to evaluate the dude but getting to the ~isms.

Lucy Macnaught, senior lecturer and learning advisor, Learning and Academic Engagement team within the AUT Library, collaborates with the Graduate Research School and faculty to integrate academic literacies in programs. Her research draws on theories of Systemic Functional Linguistics and Legitimation Code Theory to investigate what students are expected to create. She designs teaching making these expectations clear.  Twitter @lucy_macnaught and LinkedIn

Erika Matruglio, associate professor, School of Education, University of Wollongong, draws on theories of Systemic Functional Linguistics and Legitimation Code Theory, and on Design Based Research, to research literacy practices in schooling. She has published on the nature of classroom discourse, conditions which enable cumulative knowledge building, disciplinarity and the demands of writing in the disciplines. Twitter @Lingitude and LinkedIn.

Roman Empire statue

Think about the awesome Roman Empire every day? Excellent. Here’s what else to do

teaching history, , , , , ,

It’s not (ancient) history. A viral post on TikTok revealed we think about ancient history all the time, even now. But it’s how we think about it that matters. That’s why what students do when they bring Ötzi, The Iceman, out of the ice, that really matters.

Our aim is to develop historical thinking with high school history students.

If students think history is only about dates and battles, then they are not fully appreciating the purpose of studying history. What is not necessarily obvious to students is that they need to use concrete details for the purpose of saying something more generalised about them. Each time they write about an artefact, historical event or figure, that content is an opportunity to display their historical thinking.

In writing about Ancient History, the NSW syllabus says students must be able to shift from concrete particulars to more abstract historical concepts. This means, for example, getting Ötzi, The Iceman, out of the ice. In writing about the details of how Ötzi was discovered and preserved, students need to connect to recurrent processes and cultural practices that are not only about Ötzi.

To examine how students can successfully connect details with more abstract concepts, our research https://doi.org/10.52289/hej10.106 investigated what happened when students wrote about Ancient History under timed practice exam conditions. We were part of an ARC funded research project and collected data from schools, including one with a lower Index of Community Socio-educational Advantage (ICSEA) in Western Sydney. In this school, a teacher was motivated to join the study because she felt her students could express their historical knowledge in classroom discussions but struggled to move beyond description in their writing. 

Here’s an example from our data set (original wording from students). It is a response to the short-answer exam question of: How are human remains preserved?

Student one
If the weather is either freezing cold or hot and dry, bacteria cannot survive and the body doesn’t decompose. An example of a body found in the freezing cold is the Iceman who was found in the Alps.

Here the student includes contextual details about environmental conditions, but they are not yet repackaging this knowledge in a more abstract form. 

In the next example, a student demonstrates better control of relating concrete details to more abstract concepts: 


Student two
Human remains can either be preserved by natural or artificial process of mummification. For a body to decompose, bacteria must be present in order for the decaying process to occur. Certain conditions may disallow bacteria to use a human body as host and as a result, a preserved human remain is left.

Naturally mummified bacteria occur by accident and are dependent on the conditions of the environment of which the body lies. An example is the iceman who was frozen in ice, those frozen are not suitable for bacteria to flourish and as a result the body was preserved.

Artificial mummification, or embalming was for such reasons like religion and an example are the ancient eqyptian mummies where the body was preserved with chemicals for the “after life” and religious sacrificial purposes.

Student One’s text about Ötzi was descriptive – i.e. it stayed stuck in the ice. Student Two foregrounds abstract processes, such as mummification. They then connect a concrete example (the iceman) to this process. From the perspective of an examiner, Student Two is more successfully demonstrating historical thinking because they are not only describing concrete evidence, but highlighting its relevance and significance beyond the context in which it was found.

One way to understand why this more elaborate response would be awarded a much higher grade in Ancient History is to examine student texts with tools for analysing English texts. In our project, we used a theory from within the sociology of education, called Legitimation Code Theory (LCT). This theory, developed by Professor Karl Maton at the University of Sydney, is about understanding the bases of achievement in social practices. This includes theorising differences in what kind of knowledge is seen as legitimate, how it is learned and who is valued as an appropriate authority. 

The part of this theory that we used involves the concept known as semantic gravity. When analysing student writing, semantic gravity can be used to compare and contrast how tied to context something is. For example, writing about the details of the arrowhead found in Ötzi, the Iceman has relatively strong semantic gravity as it discusses a specific artefact in a specific setting. In contrast, writing about the process of natural mummification has weaker semantic gravity as it is not bound to one artefact or setting but rather discussed in general terms. When analysing student writing, we used the convention of (SG+) and (SG-) for stronger and weaker semantic gravity. 

As we analysed student texts, we plotted the relative strength of semantic gravity as it changes throughout a text. This creates what is known as a semantic profile. Points at the top of the semantic profile represent more abstract and generalised meanings, whereas points at the bottom represent meanings that are more strongly tied to context. Here’s an example from Student 2’s successful text.  


Figure 1: Plotting a semantic profile from an exam response

What this semantic profile tells us is that students need to frequently shift between stronger and weaker context dependence. This kind of movement has been described as semantic waving, as visualised in Figure 1. Writing in waves enables students to connect concrete evidence clearly to more abstract historical concepts. For writing about mummification in Egypt, semantic waving enables students to not just describe fragments of physical evidence, but say something about its significance. Put another way, physical evidence becomes a stepping stone for elaborating on non-physical concepts, such as recurrent processes or religious beliefs and practices. This kind of connection is crucial because it provides a way to connect fragments of evidence to something more abstract. (See our article for precise categorisation of how context dependence may shift in relative strength from one word or group of words to another).

How students connect physical evidence to non-physical and more abstract concepts is also evident in how they deal with time. While they of course need to situate physical evidence in the past (e.g., was frozen), they also need to ‘get up and out’ of that single example and context. One option is to relate physical evidence to a potential or possible occurrence which is relevant to multiple artefacts and events  (e.g., …can be preserved…). Student Two clearly does this when connecting evidence to the recurrent processes of natural and artificial mummification. Controlling time in this way makes it easier to elaborate on the relevance and importance of the evidence. In LCT terms, these temporal choices contribute to widening the semantic range of a text. (See our article for precise categorisation of how context dependence may shift in relative strength from one clause to another).

The kind of analysis that we have briefly shared here aims to illuminate the ‘rules of the game’. If, for high achievement, the ‘rules of the game’ include saying something non-physical about physical evidence, and also relating physical evidence to recurrent processes and cultural practices, then we argue that this can and should be taught. It can be taught to students so that they know how to display more abstract reasoning and thinking in their writing, and it can be the focus of discussion and professional learning for teachers. 


Controlling context dependence has implications for subjects other than Ancient History and for further education. In Modern History, students might study World War One to learn how complex social forces may contribute to a situation in which international diplomacy breaks down and a war breaks out. In English, students might study poems of Wilfred Owen to learn how specific techniques such as alliteration, onomatopoeia and personification (among others) are used to convey meanings infused with emotion. In physics, students might race toy cars down ramps to learn about forces and motion. In each case, relative shifts in context dependence are essential to exploring and writing about something broader in the world or in the realm of human experience.

This ability to manage abstraction is also critical at the tertiary level, where students must be able to use all kinds of evidence, including their own experiences and research findings, to make knowledge claims in a wide range of writing tasks. It therefore seems likely that better supporting students to use evidence, in subjects like Ancient History, could provide a robust foundation for controlling degrees of context dependence in their future tertiary studies.

Lucy Macnaught, senior lecturer and learning advisor, Learning and Academic Engagement team within the AUT Library, collaborates with the Graduate Research School and faculty to integrate academic literacies in programs. Her research draws on theories of Systemic Functional Linguistics and Legitimation Code Theory to investigate what students are expected to create. She designs teaching making these expectations clear.  Twitter @lucy_macnaught and LinkedIn

Erika Matruglio, senior lecturer, School of Education, University of Wollongong, draws on theories of Systemic Functional Linguistics and Legitimation Code Theory, and on Design Based Research, to research literacy practices in schooling. She has published on the nature of classroom discourse, conditions which enable cumulative knowledge building, disciplinarity and the demands of writing in the disciplines. Twitter @Lingitude and LinkedIn.

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