Rethinking progression in historical interpretations through the British Empire

Article

By Steven Mastin & Pieter Wallace, published 1st March 2006

Why don't the Chinese play cricket?

Let’s stop saying sorry for the Empire! Thus Mastin and Wallace introduce one of their lessons on interpretations of the British Empire. They develop Gary Howells’s ideas from the previous edition of Teaching History to demonstrate exactly what we might get our students to do with interpretations of the past. They produce an enquiry which effectively builds up their students’ knowledge of the multiple periods which they need to have in mind at once when writing on historical interpretations. They then get Year 9 to engage with Niall Ferguson by placing him in his social and historiographical context. This article is worth your attention for the lessons it presents alone, but it also provides a rigorous theoretical progression-based model of true interpretations teaching, moving on the debate ignited some years ago by Tony McAleavy.

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