Breadth and Depth

This is my third year now taking my students along to the HTA Senior History HSC Study Day that's held annually at the University of Sydney, and one thing I've noticed (in comparison to previous years) is the emphasis on breadth and depth when instructing students on the best strategy for tackling Modern History essays. 

It makes sense, and it's not particularly revolutionary in concept, but I really like the use of these terms to bring clarity to the art of writing an extended response in the History topics. I have a tendency to sometimes think of Modern History essays as a poor cousin to the kinds of essays we have students write for Standard and Advanced English, but in the adoption of a model that emphasises breadth and depth it becomes a bit more specific to History. 

At the HSC Study Day, the presenters Jonathon Dallimore and Michael Molkentin both spoke in some detail about this essay model in a periphery sense. Here's an example given by Molkentin in relationship to Part A of the Personality Section of the HSC Modern History exam (for our comrade Trotsky, of course):

Let's say there's a question about Leon Trotsky's rise to prominence (and it's fairly likely, as this is one of the four major dot points of the Trotsky syllabus).

In order to achieve breadth, the student will need to cover at least three different aspects of Trotsky's rise to prominence, with good examples being:

• Trotsky's role in the 1905 Revolution
• Trotsky's writing between 1906-1917
• Trotsky's role in October 1917  

These act as themes for students to hang their response on. You could also call these 'ideas', and it wouldn't be a bad thing at all if a student structured their response as a paragraph per theme or idea.

Of course, it isn't enough to just have breadth. That doesn't make for a very long essay. In addition to breadth, there needs to be depth. That is, there needs to be detail or elaboration on the points that have been made about the themes.

Here is what Molkentin offers as depth for the examples given above:

• Trotsky's role in the 1905 Revolution
• Belief that workers should be involved in the revolution (which contrasted with Lenin's belief that the Party should act as the vanguard of the revolution).
• His role in the Petersburg Soviet as its leader before his arrest.
• Speaking for the workers in the General Strikes (which acted as a prelude to the revolution).

• Trotsky's writing between 1906-17
• Results and Prospects (1906) and its expression of the theory of Permanent Revolution.
• His work as a war correspondent in the Balkans in 1912-13, and on the Western Front.

• Trotsky's role in October 1917
• Making amends with Lenin and the Bolsheviks during 1917.
• His role in the July Days and his continued disagreements with Lenin.
• The seizure of power in October. 

Pretty good, huh? There's more than enough there to fill approximately 17 minutes worth of writing in the HSC exam (17 minutes being the projected time that students should limit themselves to in completing Part A of the Personality Section of the paper).

So, in summation, students are asked to come to terms with questions in the Modern History HSC exam, whether it be the National Study, Conflict Study, Personality Study or even an extended response at the end of the World War I section (the extended response draft structure above is just one example). In doing this, students need to demonstrate both breadth and depth of understanding. This means constructing a response that makes use of multiple themes, and with each theme backed up with sufficient detail. 

That's one way to do it, and I reckon its worth getting your students to give it a try, especially if they're struggling with structuring their responses in exam conditions.