Similarity & difference

The inclusion of ‘similarity and difference’ as a second-order concept within the National Curriculum is essentially concerned with helping students to move beyond stereotypical assumptions about people in the past, to recognise and analyse the diversity of past experience.  While some degree of generalisation is essential in making claims about the past, paying attention to the extent of similarity and difference between different sorts of people – and between people within the same group – is important in helping students to appreciate the reality of past lives. This collection of resources illustrates the ways in which teachers can help students to recognise the complexity of past societies, without being overwhelmed by it, and how teachers can plan for progression in students’ analysis of the extent and nature of similarity and difference. Read more

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  • 'Doing justice to history': the learning of African history in a North London secondary school

    Article

    ‘Doing justice to history': the learning of African history in a North London secondary school and teacher development in the spirit of ubuntu The medium is the message, Marshall McLuhan observed many years ago and the ‘form' of what we do carries ‘content' as Hayden White has argued. This article...

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  • A comparative revolution?

    Article

    Although the curriculum changes of 2008 brought with them new GCSE specifications, Jonathan White was disappointed by the dated feel of some ‘Modern World' options, particularly the depth studies on offer. Drawing on his experience of teaching comparative history within the International Baccalaureate, and building on previous arguments in Teaching History...

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  • Connecting past and present through the lens of enduring human issues: International Women’s Day protests

    Article

    While studying for his master’s degree in education, Arthur Casey became intrigued by research suggesting that analogies comparing past and present might improve students’ perceptions of the relevance of history. In this article he reports on the findings of his own small-scale research study, in which he used a present-day...

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  • Cunning Plan 149.2: Exploring the Migration experience

    Article

    Teaching a class of newly arrived immigrant teenagers from various backgrounds and ethnicities poses many interesting challenges: varied levels of schooling, varied levels of mastery in a new language, no common frame of reference, varied ways of understanding and making sense of the world and very varied ways of making...

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  • Cunning Plan 167: teaching the industrial revolution

    Article

    ‘Disastrous and terrible.’ For Arnold Toynbee, the historian who gave us the phrase ‘industrial revolution’, these three words sum up the period of dramatic technological change that took place in Britain across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We may not habitually use Toynbee’s description in the classroom, but it is...

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  • Cunning Plan 177: teaching about life in Elizabethan England by looking at death

    Article

    ‘We already did the Tudors in primary school’ was the most frequent comment made by students about our Year 7 scheme of learning in our annual review. Students reported covering the Tudors at least once, sometimes twice, before reaching secondary school and they had clearly not faced extensive further study...

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  • Exploring pupils' difficulties when arguing about a diverse past

    Article

    Wrestling with diversity: exploring pupils' difficulties when arguing about a diverse past How can we develop students' ability to argue about diversity? Sarah Black explores this question through classroom research that set out to help students think in complex ways about diversity, drawing on Burbules' work on conceptualising difference and...

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  • Film: What's the wisdom on...Similarity and Difference

    Article

    We’ve been talking to our secondary school members and we know how difficult life is for teachers in the current circumstances,  so we wanted to lend a helping hand. 'What’s the wisdom on…' is a popular feature in our secondary journal Teaching History and provides the perfect stimulus for a virtual department meeting....

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  • Hidden histories and heroism: post-14 course on multi-cultural Britain since 1945

    Article

    A school-designed, post-14 course on multi-cultural Britain since 1945  Robin Whitburn and Sharon Yemoh describe the design of a school-generated GCSE course on the challenges that British people faced in forging a multicultural society in post-imperial Britain. Drawing on their own research into their students' experience, they build a discipline-based case...

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  • How my interest in what I don't teach has informed my teaching and enriched my students' learning

    Article

    How my interest in what I don't teach has informed my teaching and  enriched my students' learning Flora Wilson argues here for the importance of maintaining a fascination with history as an academic subject for experienced, practising history teachers. Just as medical professionals keep their knowledge up to date by...

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  • New, Novice or Nervous? 155: Similarity & Difference

    Article

    This page is for those new to the published writings of history teachers. Every problem you wrestle with, other 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 better: an international conversation in which...

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  • Triumphs Show 148.1: collaborating to commemorate Olaudah Equiano

    Article

    How a drink in the bar at the SHP conference - and discovery of a shared interest in ICT - led to the campaign for a Blue Plaque for an eighteenth-century abolitionist. What do the 1970 Brazil World Cup-winning team, Charles Darwin and Vanilla Ice all have in common? This...

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  • Triumphs Show 167: Keeping the 1960s complicated

    Article

    During her PGCE year, it became evident to Rachel Coleman just how much pupils struggled with the complicated nature of history. They were troubled in particular by the lack of definitive answers, by the range of perspectives that might be held at the time of a particular event or development...

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  • Using databases to explore the real depth in the data

    Article

    Is it a good thing to have a lot of evidence? Surely the historian would answer that yes, it is: the more evidence that can be used, the better. The problem with this approach, though, is that too much data can be overwhelming for the history student - and, in...

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  • Using the present to construct a meaningful picture of the medieval past

    Article

    In this article, Jessica Phillips returns to a theme explored in the Historical Association’s publication Exploring and Teaching Medieval History in Schools – the challenge of teaching about the medieval past in ways that acknowledge its vibrant complexity and create a genuine sense of resonance rather than condescension or blank...

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  • What’s The Wisdom On... Similarity and difference?

    Article

    How often have you found yourself challenging a pupil’s use of ‘they’ or ‘people’? How often have you teased them with, ‘Really? All of them?!’ Every time we do this, we are pushing our pupils to respect the complexity of the past. We are pressing them to use their knowledge...

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  • Where are we? The place of women in history curricula

    Article

    Joanne Pearson reflects on her experiences as a history teacher and teacher educator, considering the ways in which she has seen women represented in the history curricula of different schools in England. She makes the case that greater attention needs to be paid by history teachers to the criteria against...

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  • Witchcraft - Using fiction with Year 8s

    Article

    Which women were executed for witchcraft? And which pupils cared?  Paula Worth was concerned that her low-attaining set were only going through the motions when tackling causal explanation. Identifying, prioritising and weighing causes seemed an empty routine rather than a fascinating puzzle engaging intellect and imagination. She was also concerned...

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  • Year 9 face up to historical difference

    Article

    How many people does it take to make an Essex man? Year 9 face up to historical difference Teaching her Key Stage 3 students in Essex, Catherine McCrory was struck by the stark contrast between their enthusiasm for studying diverse histories of Africa and the Americas and their reluctance to...

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  • ‘Man, people in the past were indeed stupid’

    Article

    In this article, which is based on Huijgen’s PhD dissertation Balancing between the past and the present, Tim Huijgen and Paul Holthuis present the results of an experimental method of teaching 14–16-year-old students to contextualise their historical studies in a different way. In the four lessons described, students’ initial reactions...

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