Assessing a School-Assessed Coursework Research Task on Frontier Conflict
A teacher is designing a School-assessed Coursework (SAC) research task on frontier conflict in the 1830s. Students must evaluate two sources: a settler's diary describing 'hostile natives' attacking sheep, and a modern historian's article arguing that settler accounts systematically misrepresented Aboriginal resistance as unprovoked aggression. The SAC asks students to explain how the two sources differ in perspective and reliability. One student argues the diary is useless because it is biased, and that only the historian should be used. The teacher must decide whether this response meets the outcome and how to give feedback that develops historical thinking rather than simply correcting the student.
1. Evaluate whether the student's response meets the assessment outcome, and justify your judgement.
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The response does not meet the outcome because it treats 'bias' as a reason to discard a source rather than as something to analyse. Historical evaluation requires students to consider a source's origin, purpose and perspective, and to judge what it can still reliably reveal. The settler diary is biased in its framing, but it remains valuable evidence of settler attitudes, language and justification for violence. The historian's article offers interpretation and context but is also a secondary source shaped by its own historiographical position. A response that simply prefers the secondary source shows limited understanding of how historians use evidence. Feedback should redirect the student to ask: what is this source evidence of? The diary is evidence of settler perception, not of Aboriginal motives. The student should compare the two sources' purposes and explain how the historian's argument depends on reading diaries critically rather than ignoring them.
2. Describe how the teacher should give feedback that develops the student's historical thinking.
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Feedback should model the reasoning rather than supply the answer. The teacher could ask the student to identify the diary's author, audience and purpose, then ask what the diary can prove even if its description of events is unreliable. A useful prompt is: 'If the diary misrepresents Aboriginal resistance, what does that misrepresentation tell us about the settler?' This shifts the student from judging sources as true or false to interrogating them as evidence. The teacher should also point out that the historian's article is not automatically more reliable-it is an interpretation built on primary sources, including diaries. The student could then be asked to write one sentence explaining how the two sources could be used together. This scaffolds the key skill of synthesis and ensures the feedback addresses the outcome's requirement to evaluate perspective and reliability, not just to identify bias.