HIS 3.1: Historical Research
Research an historical event or place of significance to New Zealanders.
๐ The Big Idea
History is not just facts; it's an investigation. In this unit, you become the historian. You will choose a contested event โ like the Dawn Raids, the Springbok Tour, or the Treaty of Waitangi โ collect evidence, and critically evaluate the reliability of your sources.
๐ What you need to know
1. Gathering Evidence
Find diverse primary and secondary sources. Primary: letters, photos, diaries from the time. Secondary: books, articles written later by historians.
2. Annotation
Don't just collect โ analyze. Annotate your evidence to explain what it shows, why it is relevant to your focus questions, and any potential bias.
3. Evaluation
Assess the reliability of your sources. Consider the author, audience, purpose, and context (cross-check with other sources).
4. Focus Questions
Develop deep, open-ended questions to guide your research. (e.g., "To what extent did the 1981 Tour divide New Zealand families?")
๐ How to succeed
For Merit (M)
- Annotate evidence with detailed comments linking it directly to your research questions.
- Begin to note limitations or biases in your sources.
For Excellence (E)
- Perceptively evaluate the reliability and usefulness of evidence.
- Identify gaps in the evidence or contradictory perspectives.
- Show a deep understanding of the historical context in your evaluations.
โ ๏ธ Common Misconceptions
Focus Questions That Are Too Narrow or Too Broad
A question like "What was the Dawn Raids?" can be answered in one sentence โ it's too narrow. "What was wrong with New Zealand in the 1970s?" is too broad to investigate with available sources. Aim for a question that is specific enough to answer but open enough to require evidence from multiple sources.
Annotation as Transcription
Copying out what a source says is transcription, not annotation. An annotation must explain what the source shows, why it is relevant to your question, and what its limitations are. If your annotation could apply to any source, it is not specific enough.
Judging Reliability by Date Alone
Saying "this source is unreliable because it was written in 1975" misses the point. A source's reliability depends on who wrote it, for what audience, and with what purpose โ not simply how old it is. A recent source can be less reliable than an older one depending on context.
Treating One Account as Fact
A single source โ even a credible one โ represents one viewpoint. You must cross-reference by checking claims against other sources. Where sources disagree, that disagreement is itself historically significant and should be discussed in your evaluation.
๐ฟ Aotearoa NZ Context
Dawn Raids (1974โ76)
Excellent for source diversity: government records justify the raids as law enforcement, Pacific community oral histories describe fear and humiliation, and newspaper coverage ranges from sympathetic to hostile. The contrast between official and community sources drives strong evaluation work.
1981 Springbok Tour
A rich archive of contradictory perspectives across media, government, and protest groups. Television footage, editorial cartoons, protest pamphlets, and police reports all survive โ giving students genuine primary source diversity to work with.
Women's Suffrage (1893)
Parliamentary debates, Kate Sheppard's petitions, and contemporary newspaper coverage are all accessible via Papers Past and the National Library. The contrast between the language used by suffragists and their opponents reveals how the same society held radically different views.
Parihaka
Te reo Mฤori sources, settler accounts, and official government reports all tell different stories about the same event. This is an ideal topic for demonstrating that historical "truth" depends on whose sources survive and whose voices were recorded.
๐ซ He Kลrero mฤ te Kaiako โ Teacher Notes
Start With a Shared Topic
Model the full research process with a single topic for the whole class before allowing independent topic choice. This ensures every student understands focus question development, annotation, and source evaluation before they work independently.
Teach Papers Past as a Core Skill
Papers Past is an excellent NZ-specific archive. Explicitly teach students how to search effectively โ by date range, keyword, and publication โ so they can find newspaper coverage from the time period they are investigating.
The Bain Formula for Focus Questions
Use the Bain formula to scaffold strong focus questions: "To what extent did [agent] [action] as a result of [cause]?" This structure pushes students toward causation and evaluation rather than simple description.
Source Requirements Before Topic Approval
Require students to locate at least 2 primary and 2 secondary sources before approving their topic. This prevents students from choosing topics where sources are scarce and avoids last-minute pivots mid-assessment.
๐งญ Planning for Teaching and Learning
Ngฤ Whฤinga Akoranga โ Learning Intentions
- Develop a focused historical research question about an event or place of significance to New Zealanders.
- Select and annotate primary and secondary sources that speak directly to that question.
- Evaluate how author, audience, purpose, and historical context affect the usefulness of evidence.
- Sustain a research process that shows why some voices are amplified, silenced, or contested in the historical record.
Hononga Marautanga โ Curriculum Alignment
This standard aligns with senior History practice where students investigate how people interpret the past differently, use evidence to support claims, and explain how context shapes perspective. The strongest research topics in this unit ask students to move beyond description and weigh competing accounts, silences in the archive, and the historical significance of those differences.
Teacher Planning Snapshot
- Launch with a shared case study such as Parihaka or the Dawn Raids so the class can practise turning a broad topic into a workable research question before students branch out.
- Checkpoint topic approval only after each student has located at least two primary and two secondary sources that can genuinely answer their focus question.
- Model annotation live with one source from Papers Past and one oral or community source so students see that evidence evaluation is different for each source type.
- Use research log conferences midway through the inquiry to catch students who are summarising sources instead of evaluating reliability, usefulness, and perspective.
Mฤtauranga Mฤori Lens
Historical research in Aotearoa is never neutral. Mฤori perspectives remind students to ask whose kลrero has been preserved, who controlled the archive, and what happens when whakapapa, whenua, and tino rangatiratanga are treated as secondary to official state records. Topics such as Parihaka, Te Tiriti, land confiscation, or the Dawn Raids become stronger when students compare government files with iwi, hapลซ, whฤnau, and community-held accounts, including oral histories and lived memory.
Inclusion and Accessibility
- Provide chunked source packs with glossary support for dense historical vocabulary, especially when students are reading older newspaper or legal language.
- Offer annotation templates with sentence starters so emerging writers can explain relevance, bias, and limitation without losing the analytical focus.
- Allow students to record oral source evaluations before drafting written annotations if handwriting load or processing speed is a barrier.
- Use regular mini-conferences to keep neurodiverse learners and students managing large research topics from being overwhelmed by too many sources at once.