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Move Me on 177: using questioning effectively
The problem page for history mentors
This issue’s problem: Christine Pizan is struggling to use questioning effectively.
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...
Move Me on 177: using questioning effectively
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The Pittsburgh Conference on 'Teaching, Knowing and Learning'
Teaching History article
Peter Lee and Ros Ashby report on a landmark conference on the future of history education in the USA held at Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh in 1998. They emphasise the substantial influence UK developments in history education continue to have in many parts of the world. They also warn that...
The Pittsburgh Conference on 'Teaching, Knowing and Learning'
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Exploring a logical conceptualisation of continuity with Year 9 pupils
Teaching History article
As a PGCE student, Miles Eades confronted the challenge of teaching about change and continuity. Reflecting on scientific, mathematical and sociological conceptualisations of change as a constantly occurring process led him to reconsider the common characterisation of continuity in history as the opposite of or absence of change. Eades set...
Exploring a logical conceptualisation of continuity with Year 9 pupils
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What time does the tune start? From thinking about 'sense of period' to modelling history at Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
A ‘sense of period' is the contextual backdrop to the study of any aspect of history. As experienced historians, we tend to take for granted both our structural map of the past and our rich...
What time does the tune start? From thinking about 'sense of period' to modelling history at Key Stage 3
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Cunning Plan 181: Incorporating a more global perspective within Key Stage 3
Teaching History feature
While lockdown, in response to the Covid-19 pandemic in the spring of 2020, brought a period of turbulence to the education sector, it also brought a wealth of generosity, with a vast range of free online CPD offered by different providers. One in particular was the webinar series ‘West African History before the 1600s’ hosted...
Cunning Plan 181: Incorporating a more global perspective within Key Stage 3
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Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime: using external support, local history and a group project to challenge the most able
Teaching History article
The most able can be challenged in a variety of ways and at a number of levels, from the extension question for the individual child to the extended enquiry for the most able class. In a Leading Edge History project, Guy Woolnough and his colleagues took the concept of challenge...
Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime: using external support, local history and a group project to challenge the most able
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... Anti-alienism in Britain c.1880–1925
Teaching History feature
The Aliens Acts, passed between 1905 and 1925, marked a significant development in the history of controls on migrants in Britain. Analysing this legislation and the social realities of how it affected migrant communities allows students and educators to reveal insights into histories of migration.
It has been suggested that...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... Anti-alienism in Britain c.1880–1925
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A comparative revolution?
Teaching History 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...
A comparative revolution?
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Planning and teaching linear GCSE
Teaching History article
Planning and teaching linear GCSE: inspiring interest, maximising memory and practising productively
As proposed changes to the National Curriculum are furiously debated, and details of future changes to GCSE are anxiously awaited, history teachers in England are already wrestling with the implications of one change to the public examination system:...
Planning and teaching linear GCSE
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Changing thinking about cause
Article
Aware both that causation is the bread and butter of the historian’s craft, and that trainee teachers find it far harder to teach well than they anticipate, Alex Ford sought to get to the heart of the problem with causation, especially at GCSE. When teaching to a specification and mark...
Changing thinking about cause
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Move Me On 107: Doesn't see point of teaching to those who find history difficult
Teaching History feature
This Issue's Problem: Brian, PGCE history student, doesn't see the point of teaching history to pupils who find it very difficult.
Move Me On 107: Doesn't see point of teaching to those who find history difficult
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Move Me On 195: trainee has not been given any scope to learn to plan
Teaching History feature
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...
Move Me On 195: trainee has not been given any scope to learn to plan
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Rigorous, meaningful and robust: practical ways forward for assessment
Teaching History article
How do we know how good our students are at history? For that matter, how precisely do we really know what ‘good' at history even means? Even harder, how does our assessment of our students' attainment fit in with the National Curriculum Levels for Key Stage 3? Simon Harrison has...
Rigorous, meaningful and robust: practical ways forward for assessment
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Teaching pupils to analyse cartoons
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
In this practical account of a key aspect of history departmental policy, Joseph O'Neill presents a rationale for the systematic teaching of analytical techniques. Alert to the dangers of mechanistic and formulaic examination responses, the...
Teaching pupils to analyse cartoons
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Telling rich stories about women’s lives in the American West at GCSE
Teaching History article
Concerned by the absence of women’s voices in her school’s scheme of work on the American West, and struck by the narrow, male-dominated narrative in her GCSE textbook, Nicole Ridley set out to rethink the way the topic was taught. Galvanised by her research into different ways to integrate women’s history,...
Telling rich stories about women’s lives in the American West at GCSE
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Bringing Rwanda into the classroom
Teaching History article
A short 20 years: meeting the challenges facing teachers who bring Rwanda into the classroom
As the twentieth anniversary of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda approaches, Mark Gudgel argues that we should face the challenges posed by teaching about Rwanda. Drawing on his experience as a history teacher in the...
Bringing Rwanda into the classroom
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Move Me On 184: struggling to see beyond tightly regimented teaching strategies
Teaching History feature
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...
Move Me On 184: struggling to see beyond tightly regimented teaching strategies
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... medieval science and medicine?
Teaching History feature
The phrase ‘medieval science’ may seem nonsensical. ‘How can... a synonym for “backward”,’ the editors of The Cambridge History of Science Volume 2 ask rhetorically, ‘modify a noun that signifies the best available knowledge from the natural world?’ To answer their question, we must rethink our assumptions, both about the...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... medieval science and medicine?
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History's future: facing the challenge
Teaching History article
Trevor Fisher argues that pressures on our subject are now so intense and multi-faceted that a wider coalition is necessary if history is to fight back. Our difficulties are compounded, he suggests, by a lack of consensus and by acute lack of knowledge about school history among those who produce...
History's future: facing the challenge
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New opportunities for history: implementing the citizenship curriculum in England's secondary schools - a QCA perspective
Teaching History article
In September 2002 Citizenship becomes a completely new subject in England’s secondary schools. Jerome Freeman, Principal Officer for History with the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (QCA) — the authority responsible for advising the British government on curriculum content and qualification standards in England - outlines QCA’s view on the connections...
New opportunities for history: implementing the citizenship curriculum in England's secondary schools - a QCA perspective
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Interpreting Cyrus the Great for the lower school curriculum
Teaching History article
Tom Leather describes in this article the process by which he and his department extended their ancient history curriculum through an interpretations enquiry about Cyrus the Great. This tested both the subject knowledge of a number of members of the department, and their planning process. His reflections are illuminating not just...
Interpreting Cyrus the Great for the lower school curriculum
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Cunning Plan 100: teaching the First World War in Year 9
Teaching History feature
History teacher and head of department stand outside noisy Year 9 class. Bombs (paper ones) fly everywhere; in corner of room mutiny is being discussed ... many pupils are refusing to follow their leader's last minute orders - they will not be opting for history! The war of attrition (excessive...
Cunning Plan 100: teaching the First World War in Year 9
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Using databases to explore the real depth in the data
Teaching History 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...
Using databases to explore the real depth in the data
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Polychronicon 115: historians and the Holocaust
Teaching History feature
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' focuses on historians...
Polychronicon 115: historians and the Holocaust
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Unpacking the enquiry puzzle
Teaching History article
The defining qualities of a good enquiry question have been regularly revisited by contributors to Teaching History in the 25 years since Riley first outlined what he saw as three essential characteristics. Despite these endeavours, Ben Arscott notes that the properties of a good enquiry question remain somewhat elusive. His...
Unpacking the enquiry puzzle
