Substantive concepts

Substantive concepts are those concerned with the subject matter of history – the substance about which students are learning. Some materials in this section focus on the teaching of highly specific contextualised terms and others explore more general strategies for building and reinforcing knowledge of recurring concepts over time. Read more

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  • Transforming historical understanding through scripted drama

    Article

    An article on scripted drama might seem an unlikely choice for an edition devoted to getting students talking. Surely the point about a script is that the words used are chosen and prescribed by others. However, the examples presented here by Helen Snelson, Ruth Lingard and Kate Brennan demonstrate how...

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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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  • Polychronicon 146: Interpreting the history of 'big history'

    Article

    In recent decades, a novel approach to history has emerged, called ‘big history', which provides an overview of all of human history, embedded within biological, geological and astronomical history covering the grandest sweep of time and space, from the beginning of the universe to life on Earth here and now....

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  • Developing sixth-form students' thinking about historical interpretation

    Article

    Understanding historical interpretation involves understanding how historical knowledge is constructed. How do sixth formers model historical epistemology? In this article Arthur Chapman examines a small sample of data relating to sixth form students' ideas about why historians construct differing interpretations of the past. He argues that understanding interpretation requires students to...

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  • The Holocaust in history and history in the curriculum

    Article

    In this powerfully argued article Paul Salmons focuses directly on the distinctive contribution that a historical approach to the study of the Holocaust makes to young people's education. Not only does he question the adequacy of objectives focused on eliciting purely emotional responses; he issues a strong warning that turning...

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  • Polychronicon 141: Adolf Eichmann

    Article

    Almost 60 years ago Adolf Eichmann went on trial for crimes committed against the Jews while he was in the service of the Nazi regime. His capture by the Israeli secret service and his abduction from Argentina triggered a number of journalistic books that portrayed him as a pathological monster...

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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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  • A modest proposal for change in Canadian history education

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Peter Seixas recounts the development of a history education reform project in Canada. Like all good histories, it is a complex story and a matter of unanticipated consequences and ironic narrative twists. Seixas' history is,...

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  • Helping students put shape on the past; systematic use of analogies to accelerate understanding

    Article

    One of the challenges facing pupils in the history classroom is conceptual understanding. Pupils also find it difficult to recognise themes or patterns across different parts of time and space. Ian Myson has recognised the importance of analogy as a way to facilitate pupils’ understanding. He is quick to recognise,...

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  • Developing conceptual understanding through talk mapping

    Article

    As history teachers, we talk about concepts all the time. We know that pupils need to understand them in order to make sense of the past. Precisely what we mean when we talk about concepts is less clear, however. Research into how history teachers talk about their practice suggests that,...

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  • Ranking and classifying: teaching political concepts to post-16 students

    Article

    Sometimes it is precisely in the interest of building better historical knowledge that facts and detail need temporarily to be abandoned. Gary Howells aims to secure discernible foundation understandings in his students by getting them to engage quickly with those aspects of political concepts that they can grasp. He is...

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