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Visual sources, Jane Card argues, are a powerful resource for historical learning but using them in the classroom requires careful thought and planning. Card here shares how she has used visual source material in order to teach her students about the women's suffrage movement. In particular, Card shows how a chain of questions that moves from the closed and specific to the more open, is a necessary part of helping students to access the complex messages that can be elicited from such sources.
Introduction
Pictures are powerful conveyors of messages, designed to attract and maintain attention. They can provide access to complex ideas, sometimes supported by an immediate emotional punch. This can be seen in examples as diverse as the Bayeux Tapestry, where Harold II is portrayed as an habitual oath-breaker and usurper who needed to be deposed, and Stalin's doctored photographs where he is shown as Lenin's right-hand man as a means of legitimising his policies. Where images were designed to secure contemporary popular support for new policies and reforms, history teachers can exploit their clarity to help our pupils understand the often complicated socio-political arguments behind the desire for change. This article is based on an example of this which occurred in my own practice, using pictures to explore with pupils the arguments made to support the enfranchisement of women in the early twentieth century.
The teaching context
Teaching in a girls' comprehensive school, our department decided many years ago to focus on suffragette campaigns as a means of engaging our Year 9 pupils and luring them into an interest in the political process. The enquiry questions and materials we used evolved over time according to our developing ideas of good practice, the availability of resources and the individual interests of teachers. Throughout this evolution, a constant feature was our use of visual historical sources. In some cases visuals were used to explore Victorian and Edwardian stereotypes of the ideal woman or to scrutinise the views of the popular press and anti-sufirage groups. In Other cases, we used propaganda to analyse the ways in which suffrage groups tried to convey their message and, crucially, to understand the arguments used by women's suffrage campaigners to promote their cause. In each case we...