Change and continuity

Consideration of change and continuity tends to be a feature of period and thematic studies. The latter, in particular, make it possible for students to examine trends and turning points over time, looking at those dimensions which remain stable while others alter, and examining the varying pace, direction and nature of those alterations.  Another aspect of change and continuity – one that can also be explored within shorter depth studies – is the lived experience of change: how particular developments were experienced and understood by those who lived through them.  These materials provide important insights into common student misconceptions and illustrate a range of strategies for planning and teaching (including the choice of worthwhile historical questions) that will support the development of more effective analytical descriptions of change and continuity. Read more

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  • Engaging Year 9 students in party politics

    Article

    Sarah Black wanted to remedy Year 9's lack of knowledge about nineteenth-century politics. With just five lessons to work with, she decided to devise a sequence on Gladstone and Disraeli, shaping the sequence with an enquiry question that invited argument about change and continuity. Black analyses the status and function of different layers of knowledge within her sequence, evaluates the interaction...

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  • Cunning Plan 159: Was King John unlucky with his Barons?

    Article

    Typical teaching of King John and Magna Carta focuses either on the weakness of John or the importance (as Whig historians would see it) of Magna Carta. The first question is a bit boring and the second discussion unhistorical. This enquiry sequence is designed for students aged 11 to 13. It...

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  • Historical Perspective & 'Big History'

    Article

    Moving forward, looking back - historical perspective, ‘Big History' and the return of the longue durée: time to develop our scale hopping muscles ‘Big history' is a term receiving a great deal of attention at present, particularly in North America where considerable sums of money have been invested in designing curricula...

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  • Transforming Year 11's conceptual understanding of change

    Article

    For all that history teachers appreciate the need to build substantive knowledge and conceptual understanding systematically over time, they are also likely to have experienced that sickening moment when they realise that a Year 11 pupil has somehow missed something fundamental. In Anna Fielding's case, her pupil's misconception was related to...

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  • Using timelines in assessment

    Article

    Bridging a twenty-year gap in their practice, Elizabeth Carr and Christine Counsell bring out the similarities in their use of timelines in their planning, teaching and assessment. What they also have in common is the fact that their experimentation with timelines as a way of strengthening cumulative knowledge emerged in...

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  • Helping Year 9s explore multiple narratives through the history of a house

    Article

    A host of histories: helping Year 9s explore multiple narratives through the history of a house Described by the author Monica Ali as a building that ‘sparks the imagination and sparks conversations', 19 Princelet Street, now a Museum of Diversity and Immigration, captivated the imagination of teacher David Waters. He...

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  • Unpacking the suitcase and finding history: doing justice to the teaching of diverse histories in the classroom

    Article

    Unpacking the suitcase and finding history: doing justice to the teaching of diverse histories in the classroom It has become a truism that Britain is a multi-cultural society yet, as Mohamud and Whitburn argue, there is still a great deal of thinking to be done by history teachers in accounting...

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  • Continuity in the treatment of mental health through time

    Article

    Where's the other ‘c'? Year 9 examine continuity in the treatment of mental health through time Helen Murray, Rachel Burney and Andrew Stacey-Chapman show how they strengthened three goals of their practice - secure knowledge, narrative shapes and conceptual analysis - by securing strong connection between them. The curricular focus...

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  • Developing students' thinking about change and continuity

    Article

    The more things change, the more they stay the same: developing students' thinking about change and continuity Finding ways to characterise the nature of change and continuity is an important part of the historian's task, yet students find it particularly challenging to do. Building on her previous work on change, Rachel...

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  • Teaching History 151: Continuity

    Article

    02 Editorial 03 HA Secondary News 04 HA Update 08 Rachel Foster - The more things change, the more they stay the same: developing students' thinking about change and continuity (Read article) 18 Polychronicon: The Revolution of 1688 - Ted Vallance (Read article) 20 Cunning Plan: The 'Glorious' revolution of 1688...

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  • New, Novice or Nervous? 150: Getting pupils to see change over time

    Article

    This page is the starting point for all who are new to the published writings of history teachers. Every problem you wrestle with, other history teachers have wrestled with too. Quick fixes don't exist. But if you discover others' writing, you'll soon find - and want to join - something...

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  • Out went Caesar and in came the Conqueror: A case study in professional thinking

    Article

    A case study in professional thinking Michael Fordham examines the evolution of his own practice as an example of how history teachers draw upon collective, professional knowledge constructed by other history teachers in journals, books, conferences and seminars. Fordham explains how a  particular Year 7 enquiry examining historical change from the...

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  • How students make sense of the historical concepts of change, continuity and development

    Article

    First order knowledge and understanding, relating to the ‘stuff' of history, is, of course, absolutely fundamental to the development of children's historical knowledge and understanding. However, as Frances Blow shows, in a contribution to a series of articles exploring second order concepts in history published in Teaching History by Peter...

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  • Key Concepts at Key Stage 3

    Multipage Article

    Please note: This unit was produced before the 2014 National Curriculum and therefore while much of the advice is still useful, there may be some out of date references or links. For more recent resources on key concepts, see our What's the Wisdom on series. The key concepts can be divided into three...

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  • Understanding 'change and continuity' through colours and timelines

    Article

    The small-scale research that Yosanne Vella reports in this article was driven by concern to help pupils develop ‘big picture' visions of the past and to engage effectively with the idea of change as a process rather than an event. The strategy that she adopts - asking groups of students...

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  • 'Picture This': A simple technique to teach complex concepts

    Article

    When Peter Clements was introduced to the creative strategy that he describes in this article, his immediate reaction was to dismiss it as childish and trivial. Yet, upon closer examination, he realised that ‘Picture This' offered far more than a lively way of increasing variety and engagement in his GCSE...

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  • Move Me On 139: teaching about change and continuity

    Article

    This issue's problem: Debbie Samson is finding it difficult to teach about change and continuity in meaningful ways.

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  • From human-scale to abstract analysis: Year 7. Henry II & Becket

    Article

    Tim Jenner was working on a causation enquiry with his Year 7 students when he noticed that weak conceptions of change were limiting their ability to produce powerful and period-sensitive arguments. He therefore decided to digress into a temporary but explicit focus on analysing historical change. He created a deceptively...

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  • Teaching history's big pictures: including continuity as well as change

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. School history teachers are not the only ones wrestling with the challenges of building ‘big pictures' that do justice to complexity. In this article, social and cultural historian Penelope Corfield puts our interest in long-term...

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  • Year 9 use a 'road map' to problematise change and continuity

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Rachel Foster, a trainee teacher on teaching placement in November of her PGCE year, wanted her Year 9 pupils to understand the complexity of historical change. She also wanted them to find the difficult challenge...

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