All of us who arrived on that hot and muggy day at the The Monticello Teacher Institute’s Barringer Research Fellowship knew Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton lyrics off by heart. We had committed to memory his unforgiving representation of Thomas Jefferson and were keen to discuss the short shrift he’d been given by the most successful Broadway musical of the decade.

Monticello was Jefferson’s home when not serving his nation. It is also an artwork of his own architectural design and the only house in the US designated a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The Barringer Research Fellowship is an “immersive professional development opportunity” . Through a week of tours, activities, library visits and research, teachers are supported “to bring conversations about Jefferson’s ideas and Monticello into their classrooms, schools, and communities”, and create teaching materials utilising Monticello’s resources. Each teacher was given time to develop lesson plans and teaching materials on their topic of interest.

This opportunity for teachers to delve into the history of the American Revolution and the early republic is not unique to the Monticello Institute. Others on my course attended similar professional development at Fort Ticonderoga in New York, at the Newseum in Washington DC, at the National World War II museums in Hawaii and in New Orleans.

Their programmes were all committed to developing history teachers’ understanding of historical events, the management of primary sources and the teaching of shifts in historiography. It is through such sharing and support of knowledge, especially in the places where US national identity was forged, that teaching demanding and sensitive topics can be done without resorting to ahistorical judgements or unjustifiable hagiography.

What drives much of the US CPD system is a need that teachers “re-certify” in their subject every five years or so. To do so, it is necessary that teachers complete courses to gather “points”. The Monticello fellowship counts for a huge amount towards such measures, but the majority of the teachers present had already “maxed out” the training necessary for re-certification. They made the most of every opportunity for further training that they could, because of its quality and the difference it made to their teaching practice.

In contrast, a significant amount of CPD in the UK is exam-focused, based around the method of assessments for the students, rather than seeking to expand the horizons of the teachers’ own understanding of the subject.

With linear A levels now in place, the focus for history teaching is on a deeper comprehension of the subject in preparation for university study. Immersive and focused learning environments for UK history teachers may well serve to support this new focus.

A 2012 study from the University of Oxford suggested the most successful forms of professional development for teachers included a number of features that immersive programmes at historical institutions could fulfil, such as bringing in expertise from outside the school, involving teachers in the choice of areas to develop and activities to undertake and enabling teachers to collaborate with peers.

Future programming

The National Archives and the Historical Association are driving efforts towards more immersive residential training, in association with university departments. This includes the Teacher Scholar Programme with the University of Sussex and the York History Programme. Like the US residential CPD, expenses for the course are covered. The Historical Association has also launched a new programme this year “that will focus on teacher subject knowledge and subject pedagogy to help embed the teaching of late-18th and early-19th century history in school”.

UK historic sites and palaces could mimic the success of the US model of teacher support. Many sites could run extended residential programmes covering a variety of historic periods relevant to the site, such as the Palace of Westminster - where Parliament’s education department has already established three-day training sessions for politics teachers.

Other subjects could follow suit. The Royal Botanical Gardens could run residentials for Biology teachers; Down House, Darwin’s home in Kent, might do likewise; Greenwich for geographers, and so on.

The 2017 Conservative Party manifesto promised a “curriculum fund to encourage Britain’s leading cultural and scientific institutions to develop knowledge-rich materials”. Britain could use this funding, if it is forthcoming, to adopt the model used by US historical and cultural institutions and provide residential programmes for UK teachers.

Bill O’Brien-Blake teaches politics and economics in North East London