The castles lesson was driven by th

The castles lesson was driven by the teacher's understanding of what history is about; for her the key point in doing this topic was that pupils should understand change over time. But it was not only her conception of history that was important. She also drew on her knowledge of the pupils and what they would enjoy. Her knowledge of her context was essential too and she needed to ensure that pupils would be sufficiently interested in history to carry on with it - to become the 'bums on seats' of the future. Her goal for just one lesson was dependent on knowing her history, knowing her learners and knowing her school's priorities. The teachers knowledge of their learners was most evident in the Robin Hood lesson. The teacher's goal centred around their need to learn how to use film critically and his knowledge of the ways in which the medium was acessible and attractive to them. While there was a sense that his own knowledge and understanding of history, both in terms of the substance associated with the Middle Ages and the use of a particular form of historical evidence are relevant and important to him (and it was evident that he was extremely knowledgeable about the fiIm genre), it was his knowledge of the pupils' lives that took precedence. In the Northern Ireland lesson,knowledge of what the coursework required and knowledge of her pupils united to make a central goal of the lesson a process of breaking down the coursework demands in such a way that the pupils would then be able to navigate a route through. The teacher was aware that the coursework rather than the history - might predominate, but she accepted this as inevitable if the pupils were to be successful. And as the lesson played itself out, it was clear that both agendas were very much to the fore; while the pupils were being led through the necessary steps to complete their coursework, they were simultaneously making detailed sense of the Good Friday Agreement. Like the coursework, the history too was broken down into manageable chunks. It was unusual to find the teacher's knowledge about the curriculum so evident from an interview about a particular lesson. Our conjecture is that it is partly a consequence of the particular sort of lesson that we saw but also because,while this is clearly an important type of knowledge that teachers hold, it would not often emerge in talking about an inđividual lesson when the focus was specifically on what had happened in that lesson,

Four teachers, four very different lessos, four different classes of pupils in four different schools. Sometimes the goals for these lessons were driven by the history, sometimes by the pupils, sometimes a particular curriculum requiremnent. All were affeted, in some way, by the pupils themselves. They all refected the way in which the teacher was juggling a range of concerns and in so doing drew on a range of types of knowledge to make these decisions about their lessons.

Much that has been written about effective teaching either suggests or recommend that having clear goals for learning is beneficial in bringing about learning（see,for example,MacGilchrist et al.1997;Ireson et al.2002）.