The rise and fall of Jackdaws: lessons for designing source collections to teach history

For more than a century, educators and historians have advocated for the importance of using primary sources for teaching history. One of the most innovative and popular collections of sources in the past 60 years were Jackdaws: Collections of Contemporary Documents, which were published by Jonathan Cape between 1963 and 1977. Jackdaws are folders that contain reproductions of primary and secondary sources focused on significant historical events, people, developments, themes and topics in history. In this article, I provide a brief history of Jackdaws, and explain why they were initially popular as a learning resource for teaching history, and why their popularity waned in the mid-to-late 1970s. I conclude by highlighting several lessons that can be learned from the rise and fall of Jackdaws that might help history teachers and educators design collections of primary and secondary sources for teaching history. The three reasons that best explain why Jackdaws became popular learning resources in school history classrooms between 1963 and 1977 are that they were aligned with innovative educational theories at the time, they were flexible and adaptable to diverse contexts, and they were interesting and exciting for students. Despite being heralded as a groundbreaking and revolutionary resource for teaching history, Jackdaws failed to transform history teaching and learning for four main reasons: they were too difficult for some students; they were an awkward fit for some school history curricula; they were expensive and difficult to manage; and there was a lack of pedagogical supports to help teachers use them effectively.