Diversity in the past

The materials in this section are all focused on the choices that teachers have to make about the substantive content of their curriculum. The diversity that all students encounter within the past – the range of specific individuals and groups of people about whom they learn – and the ways in which different topics are treated within the curriculum are known to impact on the extent to which young people engage with school history and on the connections that they see between past and present. The resources in this section illustrate different ways in which teachers have increased the diversity of their curriculum – paying more attention, for example, to women other than monarchs in the early modern period; examining the work of  Black British civil rights campaigners; or questioning the stereotype of the English ‘Tommy’ in examining who fought for Britain on the Western Front. Teachers will need to develop their own subject knowledge if they are to teach more diverse pasts and many of these resources help to provide some of that new knowledge or show where it can be found.

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  • Illuminating the possibilities of the past

    Article

    Claire Holliss reports here on the ways in which she has responded over time to the call to ‘do justice’ to the histories of those long neglected within the school curriculum.  Reflection on the need to ensure that the discipline of history remained central to any reform prompted her to...

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  • In pursuit of shared histories: uncovering Islamic history in the secondary classroom

    Article

    In 2005, in a Teaching History article entitled, ‘A need to know’, Nicolas Kinloch built an argument for teaching the history of Islamic civilisations to all pupils. Afia Chaudhry returns to this theme, reflecting deeply on the needs of her own students – Muslim and non-Muslim alike – within a...

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  • Integrating black British history in the National Curriculum

    Article

    The question of what to include is a constant challenge to those given the responsibility of education, whether writing at the level of a national curriculum or the departmental scheme of work. Dan Lyndon and his department have been rethinking inclusion in history. In any school, representative history is essential...

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  • Inventing race? Using primary sources to investigate the origins of racial thinking in the past

    Article

    Having been given some additional curriculum time, Kerry Apps and her department made decisions about what had been missing in the previous curriculum diet. Building on an existing enquiry (in TH 176), Apps decided to focus on how and when the idea of race in its modern sense developed in early modern...

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  • Move Me On 183: sees no reason to include Black or Asian British history

    Article

    Move Me On is designed to build critical, informed debate about the character of teacher training, teacher education and professional development. It is also designed to offer practical help to all involved in training new history teachers. Each issue presents a situation in initial teacher education/training with an emphasis upon...

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  • Move Me On 192: analytical focus with diverse histories

    Article

    Move Me On is designed to build critical, informed debate about the character of teacher training, teacher education and professional development. It is also designed to offer practical help to all involved in training new history teachers. Each issue presents a situation in initial teacher education/training with an emphasis upon...

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  • Music, blood and terror: making emotive and controversial history matter

    Article

    Lomas and Wrenn, co-authors and compilers of the Historical Association’s DfES-funded T.E.A.C.H 3-19 Report (Teaching Emotive and Controversial History), explore further ideas and examples of good practice from issues arising out of the report’s conclusions. Lomas and Wrenn propose five distinct categories of emotive and controversial history that further develop...

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  • New, Novice or Nervous? 173: including BME history in the curriculum

    Article

    This page is for those new to the published writings of history teachers. Each problem you wrestle with, other teachers have wrestled with too. Quick fixes don’t exist. But in others’ writing, you’ll find something better: conversations in which history teachers have debated or tackled your problems – conversations which any history teacher...

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  • No more ‘doing’ diversity

    Article

    Catherine Priggs and her history department colleagues were increasingly concerned that their curriculum was too narrow. They feared that major areas of history were being left out and that many of their own pupils were not seeing themselves, in their various ethnic, cultural and world identities, in the past. Priggs...

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  • Northamptonshire in a Global Context

    Article

    Produced by the Northamptonshire Black History Association and originally published in 2008, this is one of a set of resources for schools offering a more inclusive map of the past that includes an appreciation of Black History within the local, national and global context. The resources provide a range of opportunities to promote diversity within the curriculum....

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  • Nutshell 135: The challenge of analysing 'difference'

    Article

    Hello Nutshell. What's all this stuff in the NC Attainment Target about ‘nature', ‘extent' and ‘interplay' of diversity? The trick is to look behind the word ‘diversity'. Then it all makes sense...

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  • Planning a more diverse and coherent Year 7 curriculum

    Article

    In this article, Jacob Olivey describes his department’s efforts to both diversify their Key Stage 3 curriculum and secure greater curricular coherence. Building on a large body of research and practice, Olivey sought new forms of curricular coherence through the selection and sequencing of substantive content across the curriculum. He...

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  • Polychronicon 113: slavery in 20th-century America

    Article

    Polychronicon was a fourteenth-century chronicle that brought together much of the knowledge of its own age. Our Polychronicon in Teaching History is a regular feature helping school history teachers to update their subject knowledge, with special emphasis on recent historiography and changing interpretation. This edition of 'Polychronicon' is on 'Interpreting...

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  • Polychronicon 173: From American Indians to Native Americans

    Article

    Few sub-fields of American history have undergone as many changes over time as the study of Native Americans/American Indians. While nineteenth- and early twentieth-century historians portrayed Native Americans as savage barbarians or ignored them entirely, late twentieth-century historians portrayed them as victims of circumstance and aggressive European conquest. Today, modern...

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  • PowerPoint presentation on developing ways to mainstream Black and Asian British history

    Article

    A new PowerPoint presentation by Dan Lydon on developing ways to mainstream Black and Asian British history in the secondary classroom...Click the link below to open the presentation>>>

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  • Putting black into the Union Jack: weaving Black history into the Year 7 to 9 curriculum

    Article

    Making a passionate case for teaching Black British history in the secondary school curriculum, Hannah shares here the personal journey she has travelled in planning for Black British history in her curriculum. She cites her inspirations and offers striking examples to illustrate her rationale and approach to teaching this history....

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  • Reimagining the ‘Aba Riots’

    Article

    As an Early Career Teacher, Eleri Hedley-Carter set out to make the history she teaches in school more reflective of her undergraduate study of history – a discipline that strives to uncover a diverse past through various lenses and historical methods. In addition to expanding her school’s curriculum to include an...

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  • Representations of Empire: Learning through Objects

    Article

    Produced by the Northamptonshire Black History Association and originally published in 2008, this is one of a set of resources for schools offering a more inclusive map of the past that includes an appreciation of Black History within the local, national and global context. The resources provide a range of opportunities to promote diversity within the curriculum. Contents of...

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  • Seeing a different picture: exploring migration through the lens of history

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Rosie Sheldrake and Dale Banham here share the results of their desire to use the curriculum changes which are upon us to do something which they had intended for some time. Their modern world study...

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  • Sharing The Past: Northamptonshire's Black History

    Article

    Northamptonshire Black History Association Pub 2008; ISBN:978 0 9557139 1 0; £12.95 [+£2.30 p and p] from: NBHA, Doddridge Centre, 109 St James Road, Northampton, NN5 5LD. How fortunate Northamptonshire history teachers are! With the current emphasis on community cohesion and diversity in the New Secondary Curriculum, they are presented...

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