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Students' attitudes towards history: Does self-identity matter?

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Students' attitudes towards history:

does self-identity matter?
a b b
Rhys Andrews , Catherine McGlynn & Andrew Mycock
a
Centre for Local and Regional Government Research, University
of Cardiff, Colum Drive , Cardiff, CF10 3EU, UK
b
School of Human and Health Sciences, Ramsden Building,
University of Huddersfield, Queensgate , Huddersfield, HD1 3DH,
UK
Published online: 10 Aug 2009.

To cite this article: Rhys Andrews , Catherine McGlynn & Andrew Mycock (2009) Students'
attitudes towards history: does self-identity matter?, Educational Research, 51:3, 365-377, DOI:
10.1080/00131880903156948

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 Educational Research
Vol. 51, No. 3, September 2009, 365–377

Students’ attitudes towards history: does self-identity matter?

Rhys Andrewsa*, Catherine McGlynnb and Andrew Mycockb
a
Centre for Local and Regional Government Research, University of Cardiff, Colum Drive,
Cardiff CF10 3EU, UK; bSchool of Human and Health Sciences, Ramsden Building, University
of Huddersfield, Queensgate, Huddersfield HD1 3DH, UK
(Received 28 November 2008; final version received 20 March 2009)
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Background: In England, the promotion of ‘national values’ within the history

curriculum has become an increasingly topical issue in the wake of recent debates
about ‘Britishness’ and community cohesion. However, despite the swathe of
policy statements and pronouncements, there is little empirical evidence linking
young people’s identities and their attitudes towards history.
Purpose: Drawing on a survey of undergraduates, we explore young people’s
attitudes towards the history curriculum and how these relate to their ethnic,
national and political identity. We anticipated that students ascribing to a strong
sense of national identity may be particularly receptive to a traditional approach to
teaching national values within history classes, while those with a strong sense of
political identity would be receptive to a multicultural approach; and vice versa.
Sample: The sample consisted of 353 undergraduates attending five universities
in the North of England. The sample was composed of British citizens, the
majority of whom would have recently experienced secondary education
including discrete or cross-curricular teaching designed to promote ‘British’
national values.
Design and methods: Students’ attitudes towards history and their self-identity
were estimated using a questionnaire survey asking respondents a series of
questions about history teaching and identity. Exploratory factor analysis was
used to reveal underlying patterns in students’ responses to items assessing their
attitudes towards history. Items gauging relevant dimensions of self-identifica-
tion, such as the relative importance of their national identity, along with other
individual background characteristics, were then regressed on to attitudes
towards history.
Results: We found that students’ attitudes towards history were connected with
two distinct factors: traditional/conservative and multicultural/liberal. The
regression results revealed a positive relationship between a strong sense of
national identity and a traditional attitude towards history, and, a negative
relationship between a strong sense of national identity and a multicultural attitude
towards history, even when controlling for students’ background characteristics.
Conclusions: Our exploratory research suggests that students’ self-identity is
likely to influence their attitudes towards approaches to history teaching.
Educational policy-makers and practitioners must therefore pay careful attention
to students’ self-identity and the context in which this is formed when seeking to
inculcate an inclusive national identity in history classes.
Keywords: attitudes towards history; self-identity; undergraduates; empirical
analysis; England

*Corresponding author. Email: Andrewsr4@cardiff.ac.uk

ISSN 0013-1881 print/ISSN 1469-5847 online

Ó 2009 NFER
DOI: 10.1080/00131880903156948
http://www.informaworld.com
 366 R. Andrews et al.

Introduction
Debates about community cohesion, culture, identity and citizenship have led
politicians and policy-makers in England to urge schools to promote ‘British’ values
through history lessons (Brown 2007; DfES 2007). Such calls for the promotion of
UK-wide values reflect the emergence of a ‘politics of Britishness’ in educational
debates in England, which has not been evident in Northern Ireland, Scotland and
Wales, where issues of British national identity have been notably absent from
policy-makers’ pronouncements since devolution in 1998 (Andrews and Mycock
2008). Indeed, the discourse around the use of history as a vehicle for promoting
national values in England mirrors recent deliberations about the historical and
contemporary articulations of ‘Britishness’ in the wake of devolution amongst
historians and social scientists (e.g. Bryant 2006; Robbins 1998; Stone and Muir
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2007). Nevertheless, many of the theoretical and practical implications of the

emerging discourse on promoting national values in the history curriculum remain
under-explored. In particular, despite the existence of a small literature analysing
students’ attitudes towards history teaching and identity (e.g. Carrington and Short
1998; Barton and McCully 2005), to date, few empirical studies have systematically
examined their association with sources of self-identity, especially amongst those
who have recently completed their period of secondary education (Cinnirella 1997;
Grever, Haydn and Ribbens 2008).
Renewed focus on the role education can play in promoting both ‘Britishness’
and awareness of the cultural diversity that now characterises British society has seen
two major government-initiated reviews undertaken to address these issues. In 2006,
the Department for Education and Skills asked Sir Keith Ajegbo to lead a review
panel, which reported back in January 2007. Its findings were multiple but key were
the proposals that (English) schools should teach and debate core British values
through the lens of history and that a further strand (‘Diversity and identity: Living
together in the UK’) be added to the Citizenship curriculum (DfES 2007, 9). The
subsequent House of Commons Education and Skills Committee (2007) report on
Citizenship suggested that ‘many different aspects of British social, cultural and
indeed political history should be used as points of entry in the citizenship
curriculum’ (HMSO 2007, 42). Both reviews strongly influenced subsequent revisions
of the secondary National Curriculum programme of study published in July 2007
and have been evident in proposals relating to the appropriateness of the history
curriculum in promoting understanding of the diverse values of the UK (Maylor
et al. 2007; QCA 2007).
The history programme of study and schemes of work for the post-primary
curriculum include numerous suggestions intended to ‘help pupils understand and
appreciate aspects of cultural difference, context and change, while challenging and
extending their perceptions of themselves and other people’ (http://www.qca.org.uk/
qca_7964.aspx). For example, teachers are encouraged to enable pupils to reflect on
their own cultural identity and what it means to be British, by drawing on issues such
as struggles for civil rights, religious conflicts in the middle ages, the contribution of
Irish labour to British industrialisation and post-war migration (http://www.qca.org.
uk/qca_7964.aspx). In reviewing the provision of history and citizenship education,
policy-makers have thus (inadvertently) highlighted a number of tensions inherent in
linking young people’s identities and their attitudes towards history. In particular,
extensive debates endure on whether the history taught in secondary schools should
 Educational Research 367

be traditional in orientation, seeking to promote patriotic loyalty founded on a single

homogenous national story, or multicultural, encouraging critical engagement with a
series of alternative national narratives (Clark 2006; Lévesque 2005).
These debates about the role of history in promoting national values assume that
the ‘nation’ is an ‘imagined community’, which is constituted by whatever its people
believe it to be (Anderson 1983). This suggests that the state can impart a sense of
national community through a variety of more or less subtle devices. For example,
Billig (1995) has noted that citizens are reminded on a daily basis of their nationhood
through ‘flagging’ by other ‘banal’ symbols of nationality such as flags, coins and
other symbols. Thus, a key consideration for those reviewing the history curriculum
has been its ability to deliver a coherent national narrative, which both contributes to
a common understanding of British citizenship and identity but is also more
inclusive and recognises the contributions of the many different ethnic, national and
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cultural groups to the British historical experience (OSE 2004; Historical Association
2005). The attempt to reconcile these contrasting aims is symptomatic of a semi-
paradoxical desire to preserve the national heritage, while simultaneously cultivating
a new multicultural narrative of the nation.
Since the 1960s, successive British governments have pressed schools to teach
‘better’ history in an effort to compensate for the breakdown of the ‘inherited
consensus’ caused by the loss of empire, European supranationalism and the impact
of (‘new’ Commonwealth) immigration (Phillips 2002). For example, the ‘new
history’ taught in secondary schools in the 1970s promoted alternative multicultural
histories and sought to encourage pupils to question and critically evaluate
established national narratives. Despite the subsequent influence that these
developments had on the content of the National Curriculum, some commentators
claimed that such a multicultural approach would inevitably undermine the
accumulation of historical facts and even denied Britons their history (Slater
1995). Recent efforts to equip students with the critical capacity to evaluate
alternative national narratives within the history curriculum have elicited a similar
range of responses, which reveal the on-going politicisation of the ‘history wars’
across the UK.
Progressive educationalists regard the teaching of a more generous revisionist
view of the British national past as an indication of a greater sensitivity to those
pupils from social and ethnic backgrounds that have previously been omitted or
portrayed negatively within orthodox school history (Arthur et al. 2001; Osler 2008).
However, other more conservative commentators believe this critical or negative
history damages national cohesion through the deliberate dilution and liberalisation
of organic historical narratives (McGovern 2007). Whatever the merits of these
opposing arguments, it is clear that attempts to accommodate a multicultural
approach to history that reflect Britain’s diverse society, through projects such as
‘Black History Month’, may compartmentalise this aspect of the curriculum, by
drawing on racialised historical stereotypes and highlighting its distinction from
‘mainstream’ British history (Grosvenor 2000; QCA 2005). When such tensions are
taken into consideration, the potential for policy-makers to articulate a coherent
historical narrative that emphasises shared national values is open to many
important questions.
Calls for the inculcation of shared values within history classes assume that
students are willing and able to ascribe to state-authenticated versions of history.
However, there may be a host of empirical issues that influence the likelihood of
 368 R. Andrews et al.

successful curriculum implementation. In particular, the different sources of self-

identification to which individuals ascribe have the potential ‘to be powerfully
consequential for other aspects of social life’ (Phillips 2002, 602). Several
educationalists (e.g. Lee 1992; Elliott 1998) have argued that teachers must pay
careful attention to young people’s preconceptions when seeking to encourage
learning. The attachment students feel for certain ‘imagined communities’ may
therefore play an especially salient role in shaping their attitudes towards the
curriculum and its contents, especially history teaching, given the increasing
importance of conceptions of national identity in public discourse.
Imagined communities are described by Calhoun (1991) as ‘large collectivities
(whose members are) linked primarily by common identities but minimally by
networks of directly interpersonal relationship’ (95–6). Individuals may draw upon a
multiplicity of such communities as sources of self-identification, combining and
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reconfiguring these in myriad different ways (Hall 1992; Sen 2006). Although the
bases for imagined communities emerge from a wide variety of social forms
(including place, gender or religion), territoriality and ethnicity are conventionally
regarded as especially influential sources of self-identification (Phillips 2002). The
distinctive narratives, myths and stories, which are embodied within geographical
and ethnic constructions of community constitute especially powerful ‘cultural
artefacts’ with ‘profound emotional legitimacy’ for individuals, strong enough to
make them ‘ready to die’ in certain circumstances (Anderson 1983, 13–14, 129). It is
therefore highly likely that young people’s sense of identity will be strongly shaped
by those imagined geographical and ethnic communities to which they feel a sense of
belonging.
Jenkins (1996) argues that although an individual’s identity is unlikely to be
exclusively determined by their national or ethnic identity, these sources of identity
may, nonetheless, have primacy over other important ones (Berger and Luckman
1966). Amongst their repertoire of identities, the influence of national identity on
individuals will predominate in certain contexts and situations, and may be more
prevalent (though to a varying degree) than other imagined communities, such as
class, gender or religion, as these ‘may overlap or combine with national identity but
they rarely succeed in undermining its hold’ (Smith 1991, 143). While Widdicombe
and Wooffitt (1995) have produced evidence to suggest that young people actively
resist conventional ‘adult’ forms of social categorisation, other studies indicate that
schoolchildren recreate established notions of ‘the other’ based on notions of
nationality and ethnicity (e.g. Archer 2003). Hall (1996, 4) suggests that the social
construction of nationhood is inevitably carried out via ‘the marking of difference
and exclusion’. This is often especially prevalent within history teaching. Hein and
Selden (2000, 4) note that stories about the past ‘are invariably prescriptive –
instructing people how to think and act as national subjects and how to view
relations with outsiders’. Thus, the relative salience of national identity as a source of
self-identification may be especially likely to have important implications for
students’ attitudes towards history and history teaching. Indeed, given the potential
for a strong sense of national identity to create impermeable social categories, it is
conceivable that students valuing it highly may be antagonistic towards attempts to
introduce diverse conceptions of national values within history classes.
Another related, though distinct, ‘imagined community’, which may influence
individuals’ self-identity in ways relevant to our study, is their sense of citizenship.
The extent to which people ascribe to a strong civic or political identity is likely to be
 Educational Research 369

indicative of their commitment to the practice of active citizenship (Heater and

Oliver 1994). According to T.H. Marshall (1992), this implied that people were
‘inspired by a lively sense of responsibility towards the welfare of the community’
(41). Such an inclusive sense of political identity implies the ‘collaboration of all’
(Mackenzie 1978). In increasingly multicultural societies, the inclusiveness of active
citizenship can therefore be distinguished from potentially exclusionary sources of
self-identification, such as national or ethnic identity, which may be defined in
opposition to ‘the other’ (Ross 2007). Unlike their counterparts who feel an
especially strong attachment to national or ethnic identity, students ascribing to a
strong sense of political or civic identity might, as a result, be more receptive to
alternative perspectives on the history of the nation. Our research seeks to provide an
initial examination of these issues, by exploring the relationship between alternative
sources of self-identity and attitudes towards history teaching.
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Existing empirical studies on the role played by history in fostering national

identity draw mainly on documentary evidence (e.g. government policies, curriculum
guidance and political speeches). However, there is no compelling reason to think
that the history curriculum or the intentions of policy-makers have an indelible effect
on the views of students, as these sources do not explicitly address means of assessing
the potential impact of multiple influences on the identity and attitudes of students.
We examine whether self-identity matters for students’ attitudes towards history
using multivariate statistical techniques.

Research methods, context and data

Data on attitudes towards history teaching and sources of self-identification were
derived from a survey of 413 first-year humanities and social sciences undergraduates
in five universities in North West England carried out in autumn 2006. The survey
instrument contained a statement indicating that it posed students a series of
questions about the relationship between identity and history teaching based on their
own experiences at secondary school (available on request). Questionnaires were
distributed in lectures to at least 50 students in each university (the survey instrument
is available on request). Completion of the survey was on an entirely voluntary basis
with no incentives provided for participation. Students were assured that their
responses to the survey would be anonymised. The total sample consisted of 462
undergraduates, with an 89.4% informant response rate.
Some cases could not be matched when the independent and dependent variables
were mapped, because of missing data within the dataset. As a result, ordinary least
square (OLS) regression analysis of the relationship between social identity and
attitudes towards history teaching was conducted on 353 undergraduates. The
background characteristics of the matched sample are shown in Table 1.
These undergraduates are all British citizens, mostly aged 19 years or under. They
therefore offer a suitable group for examining attitudes towards history, as the
secondary schooling that the majority of them will have received was recently
experienced and would have included discrete and cross-curricular elements
introduced to promote ‘British’ national values. However, the sample was not
designed to be representative of the secondary school population.
The sample description shows that there were fairly even proportions of male and
female students. In terms of ethnicity, the majority of the students were white British.
Around half the sample defined their religious categorisation as ‘atheist/none’ and
 370 R. Andrews et al.

Table 1. Background characteristics of the matched sample.

Variable %
Age
19 and under 77.9
20 and over 22.1
Education
Old university 39.9
New university 60.1
Ethnicity
Asian 4.5
Black 1.5
Mixed 5.1
White 87.7
Other 1.2
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Gender
Female 43.9
Male 56.1
Political orientation
Far left 5.1
Left 36.3
Centre 42.5
Right 13.9
Far right 2.3
Religion
Atheist/none 51.3
Christian 40.8
Hindu 1.4
Judaism 1.7
Muslim 3.7
Sikh .6
Other .6
Social class
Middle class 37.7
Working class 22.2
Other/not relevant 40.1

Note: N ¼ 353.

the majority of the remainder described their faith as ‘Christian’; only relatively
small proportions of other world religions were represented.
Student’s attitudes towards history were measured with a series of items assessing
their views on the appropriate form and content of history teaching (the specific
items are shown in Table 2). Informants registered their responses on a five-point
Likert scale ranging from 1 (disagree with the statement) to 5 (agree with the
statement).
The descriptive statistics for the items measuring students’ attitudes towards
history indicate that, on average, informants responded positively to questions
gauging a multicultural approach to the study of history (the mean score for
encouraging the celebration of ethnic minorities’ history and culture in history
lessons is 3.37, whereas the mean score for students’ understanding of their country’s
history being strengthened by immigration is 3.19). Although informants indicated
that immigrants seeking citizenship should ‘pass a test which proves they understand
our national history and cultures’ (mean score ¼ 3.19), the mean scores for items
tapping an authoritarian view of history are all below the median possible score. This
 Educational Research 371

Table 2. Descriptive statistics for the survey items, factors and control variables.

Factor 1 Factor 2
Mean SD (traditional) (multicultural)
Attitudes towards history (five-point response scale)
(1) History teachers must be loyal to the 1.91 0.99 0.69 70.32
state and always promote a positive
view of our country
(2) Some parts of my country’s history 1.62 0.86 0.69 0.30
should not be taught as they are
offensive to some citizens on
grounds of religion or ethnicity
(3) Religion should be the most 1.96 1.04 0.68 0.09
important dimension in the teaching
of my country’s history and should
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be respected at all times

(4) The state should control what is 2.17 1.13 0.72 70.26
taught in school history lessons to
ensure we all have a common view of
national identity and loyalty to our
country
(5) Ethnic minorities should be 3.37 1.04 70.02 0.73
encouraged to preserve and
celebrate their history and culture,
and this should be reflected in
history lessons
(6) Immigrants seeking citizenship must 3.19 1.29 0.28 70.65
pass a test which proves they
understand our national history and
cultures
(7) Immigration and globalisation have 3.01 0.98 0.10 0.52
strengthened my understanding of
my country’s history
Eigenvalues 2.02 1.51
Cumulative variance 28.89 21.50
Factors
1 (Traditional/conservative) 0.00 1.00
2 (Multicultural/liberal) 0.00 1.00
Importance to self-identity
National identity 3.43 1.31
Ethnic identity 2.65 1.32
Political identity 3.17 1.19
Control variables
Age 0.78 0.42
Education 0.40 0.49
Ethnicity 0.14 0.35
Gender 0.44 0.50
Middle class 0.38 0.49
Political orientation (left-right) 1.75 0.72
Religious 0.49 0.50

Note: N ¼ 353. Coefficients for survey items associated with each factor shown in bold.

mirrors evidence from a recent study, which suggested that young people may be
resistant to traditional approaches to history (Grever, Haydn, and Ribbens 2008).
Broad underlying attitudes amongst students were revealed through exploratory
factor analysis of the seven survey items, which produced two statistically significant
 372 R. Andrews et al.

and clear factors that accounted for 50.4% of the variance in the data. The two
distinct factors represent traditional/conservative (items 1–4) and multicultural/
liberal (items 5–7) attitudes towards history (see the factor coefficients for the
relevant survey items in bold in Table 2). These contrasting approaches to the study
of history mirror the polarised views of education that characterise the so-called
‘culture wars’ in Western societies (Evans 1997). The relevant factor loadings are all
over 0.5, and so can be considered important determinants of the variance explained
(Hair et al. 1998). These factors also represent dependent variables suitable for
multivariate analysis of potential determinants of attitudes towards history.
Three items from the survey were used to measure relevant dimensions of self-
identification amongst students. First, national identity was gauged by asking
informants about the extent to which their ‘national identity’ was ‘important in
describing who you are’. Similarly, informants were asked to assess how important
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their ethnic identity and political identity were to their identity. This ratings approach
enables the respondent to provide their views on the simultaneous ‘imagined
communities’ to which they belong. Indeed, each of these identification measures is
of sufficient magnitude to meet Anderson’s (1983) requirements that an imagined
community be larger than the traditional village and distinguishable in terms of the
style in which it is imagined. Cultural narratives are widely available for each of the
three measures of self-identification we use. Narratives of the nation can be found in
an array of more or less banal sources, ranging from scholarly works (e.g. Robbins
1998) to politicians’ pronouncements (e.g. Brown 2007) and popular culture (Billig
1995). Likewise, narratives of ethnicity are ever more apparent within contemporary
society, and can often influence educational outcomes in unexpected ways (Chan
2007). Political narratives, such as ideals of active citizenship, may be less prevalent
in the UK than in other countries with a stronger formal constitutional tradition
(e.g. France or the USA), but are increasingly recognised to play an important role in
shaping the identity of young people across the UK (Frazer 2000).
The descriptive statistics for the items measuring the different dimensions of self-
identity (Table 2) show that informants regarded national identity as being of
greatest importance to their sense of self-identity, followed by their political and
ethnic identity. Grever, Haydn and Ribbens (2008) also find that national identity is
rated as an especially important source of self-identification amongst pupils aged 14–
18 in metropolitan schools in England. Nevertheless, all of the mean scores for our
survey respondents were above the mean possible score, suggesting that the
‘imagined communities’ associated with their national, ethnic and political identities
are all influential sources of identity for this sample of students.
Additional individual-level variables were also included in the regression model.
The potential effects of the age of students was estimated by including a
dichotomous variable coded 1 for those aged 19 and under and 0 for all others.
We controlled for educational attainment by including a dichotomous variable coded
1 for the two older established universities in our sample and 0 for the three new
universities. This is a rough proxy for attainment as students attending old
universities are likely to have achieved higher tertiary education examination grades.
Ethnicity was measured as a dichotomous variable coded 1 for all minority ethnic
students and 0 for the majority ethnic group – white British. Students’ gender is a
dichotomous variable coded 1 for female and 0 for male. The survey also contained
five questions asking students if they regarded their political orientation as: far left,
left, centre, right or far right. To normalise the distribution of the responses to this
 Educational Research 373

question, a three-point left–right scale was then created as a proxy for students’
political orientation, with 1 representing left-wing, 2 neither left nor right wing and 3
right-wing. Students’ religiousness was estimated using a dichotomous variable coded
1 for those practising religion and 0 for those classifying themselves as atheist or not
religious. Social class was measured as a dummy variable coded 1 for middle class
and 0 for all others. Table 2 presents the descriptive statistics for all the measures
used in our analysis and the loadings for the exploratory factor analysis of attitudes
towards history.

Statistical findings
OLS regression results for statistical tests of the relationship between self-identity
and attitudes towards history are shown in Table 3. The average Variance Inflation
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Factor score for all the independent variables is about 1.2 indicating that the results
are not likely to be distorted by multicollinearity (Bowerman and O’Connell 1990).
Most of the control variables achieve statistical significance in at least one of the
regression models. In particular, students’ identifying themselves as right-wing in
political orientation have a statistically significant positive association with a
traditional view of history and a significantly negative association with a
multicultural view of history. Furthermore, students with higher educational ability
are positively associated with a multicultural attitude towards history, but negatively
associated with a traditionalist attitude. Female students were statistically more
likely to be positive towards multicultural history, while religious and younger
students were positively inclined towards a traditional view of history.
The proposed relationship between national identity and attitudes towards
history is confirmed by the results shown in Table 3. National identity has a
statistically significant positive association with a traditional attitude towards

Table 3. Self-identity and attitudes towards history.

Traditional/
conservative Multicultural/liberal
Independent variables Slope t-score Slope t-score
Constant 71.112 75.22** 0.835 3.87**
Self-identity
National identity 0.157 3.59** 70.119 72.70**
Ethnic identity 70.026 70.63 70.075 71.82þ
Political identity 0.024 0.54 70.002 70.05
Background characteristics
Age 0.256 2.12** 70.058 70.48
Education 70.380 73.59** 0.219 2.04*
Ethnic minority 0.401 2.70** 0.436 2.90**
Gender 70.039 70.39 0.287 2.89**
Political orientation (left–right) 0.168 2.41** 70.220 73.12**
Social class 70.073 70.69 70.006 70.06
Religiousness 0.358 3.62** 70.113 71.13
AdjustedR2 0.16** 0.15**
No. of observations 353 353

Note: Significance levels: þp  0.10; *p  0.05; **p  0.01 (two-tailed test). Unstandardised coefficients
are presented.
 374 R. Andrews et al.

history, and, as expected, a significant negative association with a multicultural

attitude, even when controlling for a wide range of relevant background
characteristics. A keen sense of national identity therefore appears to be strongly
associated with students’ attitudes towards history. Indeed, national identity exhibits
the highest level of statistical significance in the traditional model (t-score of 3.60).
The negative relationship between national identity and a multicultural attitude
towards history casts significant doubt on the likely efficacy of attempts to promote
historically justified national values, such as ‘Britishness’, in order to build an
inclusive sense of civic identity. The extent to which a traditional attitude towards
history can be reconciled with respect to cultural diversity is a critical area for further
empirical investigation.
The hypothesised relationship between ethnic identity and attitudes towards
history receives scant support: the coefficient for ethnic identity has a negative sign
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and is borderline statistically significant at p 5 0.10 in the multicultural attitude

towards history regression model. However, the same coefficient is not at all
statistically significant in the traditional regression model. This finding indicates that
a strong sense of ethnic identity may potentially be associated with increased
hostility towards learning about the history of ethnic groups other than one’s own,
but that (in the present study) this is not manifested as a clear-cut affirmation of a
traditional approach. This corroborates the finding of Grever, Haydn, and Ribbens
(2008) on the predilection of young people from ethnic minority groups for subject
matter pertaining to the history of their own group.
The hypothesised relationship between political identity and attitudes towards
history is not supported by the statistical results. The coefficient for political identity
has a positive sign, but it is not statistically significant in either model. A strong sense
of political identity therefore appears to be having no independent influence on
students’ attitudes towards history. It is possible that students rating their political
identity highly are simply indifferent to different approaches to teaching history in
schools. Alternatively, it could be that their political identity is not as salient a
determinant of their attitudes towards history as their ethnic or national identity.
Further research exploring different dimensions of student’s self-identity in greater
depth would throw additional light on the relative importance of each of the different
imagined communities we consider here.

Conclusions
This paper has explored the relationship between attitudes towards history and
students’ self-identity. The statistical results show that variations in the attitudes of
undergraduates are significantly associated with certain dimensions of self-identity.
In particular, those rating their national identity highly seem to be more likely to
have a traditional view of history and be less receptive to multicultural notions of
history. Although at only a borderline level of statistical significance, the findings
also suggest that students rating their ethnic identity highly were less likely to be
supportive of a multicultural view of history. However, for this sample, students
rating their political identity were no more or less likely to favour either a traditional
or a multicultural view of history.
The analysis builds on previous work. First, it provides systematic quantitative
evidence on attitudes towards history. Prior studies have largely comprised normative
discussions of the respective merits of different interpretations of history amongst
 Educational Research 375

students (Phillips 1998) or surveys of documentary evidence (e.g. Phillips et al. 1999;
Crawford and Foster 2006). Second, it adds to recent survey research on students’
attitudes towards history (e.g. Grever, Haydn, and Ribbens 2008), by establishing a
direct connection between those attitudes and students’ ascribed sources of self-
identity. Finally, the analysis is conducted on undergraduates who have received a full
course of secondary education and who are eligible to vote in democratic elections.
The students in the sample vary in terms of age, ethnicity, gender, class, political
orientation and religion. Despite these differences, there appear to be important
relationships between sources of self-identity and attitudes towards history.
The analysis, however, has clear limitations. The statistical results may be a
product of where and when the research was conducted, and so further research is
required to evaluate the generalisability of the findings presented here. In particular,
we surveyed a subsample of British undergraduates with particular background
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characteristics in five higher educational settings, a sub-group who are not

representative of young people per se. Moreover, we did not collect data on the
type of secondary schools attended by students, and so were unable to control for the
potential influence of variations in teaching approaches across state and independent
schools on students’ perceptions. It is therefore important to identify whether
attitudes towards history differ in other educational settings, especially primary and
secondary schools in the state and private sectors, both in the UK and elsewhere.
The exploratory nature of the study could be expanded to focus on wider issues
around the social construction of knowledge within the history curriculum. In this
respect, extended quantitative investigation of these issues could cast further light on
the impact of attempts to teach Britishness on students’ attitudes and values. For
example, different measures of self-identity may also influence different measures of
attitudes towards history, and their impact may be either stronger or weaker than the
variables included in this model. In particular, longitudinal studies using panel data
or structural equation modelling could fully address the extent to which contrasting
approaches to teaching history may influence the self-identity of students. Because of
data limitations, it was also not possible to explore specific dimensions of self-
identity or attitudes towards history in detail on this occasion. Future research could
furnish further insights into the relationship between self-identity and attitudes
towards history by analysing the linkages between specific forms of identity, such as
‘Asian’, ‘British’, and ‘active citizen’ and different views of history. Nevertheless,
despite these limitations, our findings have important implications.
Recent debates surrounding Britishness, and how it is taught, have conflated a
traditional view of the ‘glorious’ national past with growing acknowledgement of the
multicultural future. Although many students affirmed a multicultural approach to
history teaching, the majority of them possess a strong sense of national identity.
The positive relationship between a strong sense of national identity and a
traditional, authoritarian approach thus indicates that the tensions in recent
education policy and the public pronouncements made by politicians and media
commentators may be even more difficult to resolve within the classroom. Our
exploratory research therefore highlights that the ‘imagined communities’ that shape
students’ self-identity could have an important effect on their attitudes towards
history, which may become manifested in more or less desirable ways. Given that
students’ attitudes towards history are only partially shaped by what they learn in
school, it is essential for policy-makers and educationalists to take account of young
people’s ideas about their own identity and how these relate to national history.
 376 R. Andrews et al.

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