Offered five weeks to teach ‘whatever he wanted’ to Year 7, Andrew Slater decided that he wished to tackle the concept of significance head-on early in his students’ time in his school. He chose the expectedly unfamiliar substantive content of the Khmer Empire, challenging his students to justify the significance of...

In principle, Rachel Foster had long been aware of the value of creating an interplay between depth and overview across the history curriculum. But in practice, as she acknowledges here, she had tended to shy away from telling outline stories that encompassed a big chronological or geographical range. Recognising the...

Since the first stirrings of religious reform in the sixteenth century, people have been writing the history of the Reformation, debating what happened and why it happened. John Foxe arguably became the first historian of the English Reformation when he published Actes and Monuments in 1563. Better known as ‘The...

As part of her department’s effort to diversify the history curriculum, Paula Worth began a quest to research and then shape a lesson sequence around the Inkas. Her article shows how she allowed the new topic and its historiography to challenge and extend her own use of sources, particularly oral tradition....

‘Gruesome!’ was how we decided to describe our teaching of seventeenth-century British history, although ‘inadequate’ was probably more accurate. Oh, how much was wrong!  We had… Incoherence. The Civil War and Protectorate years plonked in between the Elizabethan Age and the origins of the industrial revolution. We had lost years! A...

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...

The authors of this article take a well-known structural framework for students’ thinking about the Reformation and give it a twist. Their Tudor religious rollercoaster is informed by local visits in their setting in Guernsey – an area where the local picture was not quite the same as the national...

The history of medicine, health, and illness between c. 500 AD and 1500 has received a great deal of scholarly attention in recent decades. It’s a fascinating field that can tell us a great deal about medieval people’s everyday lives and their day-to-day worries: after all, everyone is ill or...

History teachers frequently show pupils visual images and often expect pupils to interrogate such images as evidence. But confusions arise and opportunities are missed when pupils do this without guidance on how to ‘read’ the image systematically and how to place it in context. Barbara Ormond gives a detailed account...

These podcasts and the accompanying scheme of work provide an introduction to some of the key rituals of Ancient Greek religion. The podcasts are for advanced KS2, and KS3 students; Year 13 students (ancient languages) have also successfully used them for background, and they may be helpful in preparation for...

In Part 5 of our series on Social and Political Change in the UK 1800-present we look at religion in the U.K. This set of podcasts features Dr Janice Holmes of the Open University, Revd Dr Jeremy Morris, Dean, Fellow, and Director of Studies in Theology at King's College, Andrew Copson,...

In this HA Podcast Series Professor Joanna Story of the University of Leicester looks at the history of the Anglo-Saxons.

An HA Podcasted History of the Crusades featuring Professor Jonathan Riley-Smith, Professor Jonathan Phillips of Royal Holloway, University of London and Dr Tom Asbridge of Queen Mary, University of London.

In this set of podcasts Professor Mark Humphries of the University of Swansea discusses the life and significance of both St Peter and Constantine the Great, focusing on their roles in the development of Christianity in the Roman Empire.

In this series of podcasts we look at British and Irish History from the Union of the Crowns to Queen Anne. This series features: Mr Simon Healy, Dr Frank Tallett, Professor Jackie Eales, Dr Andrew Hopper, Professor Michael Braddick, Dr Jason Peacey, Professor Peter Gaunt, Professor Barry Coward, Professor John...

An HA Podcasted History of the Spanish Golden Age featuring Dr Glyn Redworth of Manchester University and Dr Francois Soyer of the University of Southampton.

It is a truism to say that religion and politics were inextricably mixed in the seventeenth century. "So natural" wrote Richard Hooker,"is the union of religion with Justice, that we may boldly deem there is neither where both are not" Sir John Eliot observed that in the House of Commons...

An HA Podcasted Series on Modern Irish History featuring Professor Peter Gray, Dr Fearghal McGarry & Dr Stuart Aveyard of Queen's University of Belfast and Dr Matthew Kelly of the University of Southampton.

An HA Podcasted History of the Rise of an Islamic Civilisation featuring Dr Caroline Goodson of Birkbeck, University of London.

In this podcast Dr Conrad Leyser of Worcester College, University of Oxford, looks at the life, ideas and significance of St Augustine of Hippo (354-430 AD).