An independent enquiry

The coursework asks you to investigate a historical problem, question or issue and reach a critical view based on your own reading:

• You must engage with three main works by historians whose interpretations together offer a range of views or emphases.
• You analyse, explain and evaluate those interpretations - and, crucially, explain why historians have arrived at different views.
• You support your argument with your own knowledge and with primary (contemporary) source material, and you set out your reading in a bibliography with proper citations.

The big idea: coursework is about the nature and purpose of the work of the historian. You are not just learning history - you are studying how history is written and argued.

How many works?

A question worth arguing about

A strong enquiry begins with a question that historians genuinely disagree about - one with a real debate to weigh, not a settled matter of fact.

• Good enquiries sit on a live controversy, for example: Why did the English Civil War break out? Was the New Deal a success? Why did the Weimar Republic collapse? How central was Martin Luther King to the civil rights movement?
• Each of these has an established historiography - clashing schools whose works you can set against one another.
• A weak question ('What happened in the New Deal?') only invites description; a strong one ('How far did the New Deal solve the Depression?') demands judgement.

The right kind of question

Why historians disagree

The heart of the coursework (AO3) is explaining why historians reach different interpretations. It is rarely simple 'bias'. Historians differ because of:

• The evidence available: new archives can transform a debate - as the opening of Soviet or Chinese records reshaped histories of Russia and Mao's China.
• The questions they ask: a historian studying elites will see a period differently from one studying ordinary people ('history from below').
• Method and approach: Marxist, revisionist, social or political frameworks lead to different readings of the same events.
• The time and place of writing: a historian's own context and values shape the questions and conclusions.

Key move: to evaluate an interpretation you test its argument against the evidence and understand the lens it is written through - not merely label it 'biased'.

Which assessment objective?

Coursework is marked on three skills. Tap a task, then the objective it serves.

How to weigh an interpretation

When you evaluate one of your three works, judge it as a piece of argument and evidence:

• What is its core argument? Summarise the historian's thesis in a sentence.
• How well does the evidence support it? Test the claim against what you know of the period and against your primary sources.
• What questions and methods shape it? Recognise the school or approach - and what it illuminates or leaves out.
• How convincing is it, overall? Reach a judgement, and use the tension between your three works to build your own answer.

Avoid the trap: calling a historian 'biased' explains nothing. Explaining why they argue as they do, and testing it against evidence, is the mark of real historical thinking.

Evaluating well

Term to meaning

Tap a meaning on the left, then the term it defines.

Source or interpretation?

Order the enquiry process

Tap the stages of producing the coursework in the correct order, first step first.

Building the argument

A strong enquiry reads as a sustained argument, not a book review of each work in turn:

• Introduction: set out the question, the debate, and the line you will argue.
• Main body: work thematically, weaving your three works together, testing each interpretation against the evidence and your primary sources as you go.
• Judgement: reach a clear, supported conclusion that engages the debate - it should follow from the analysis, not appear from nowhere.
• Apparatus: reference quotations and citations accurately, and include a full bibliography.

The assessment objectives

Edexcel Component 4 (9HI0/04): 20% of the A-level, 3,000-4,000 words, internally marked and externally moderated.

• AO1: deploy accurate, relevant own knowledge of the period to support your argument.
• AO2: analyse and evaluate primary (contemporary) source material.
• AO3: analyse and evaluate the interpretations of the three works, and explain why historians differ - the central skill of the coursework.

Note: this is the one component where you choose the question and control the whole enquiry. Careful planning, wide reading and honest evaluation are rewarded far more than length.

The heart of the coursework

The big ideas to carry into the coursework

You now understand the craft the coursework is testing. Press Finish to see your score.