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Using historical discourse to find narrative coherence in the GCSE period study
Teaching History article
When planning a GCSE period study on the American West, Alex Ford wrestled with reconciling the content demands of the examination specifications with the need to provide his students with a memorable narrative. In this article, Ford shows how he drew on the latest academic scholarship to construct a rigorous,...
Using historical discourse to find narrative coherence in the GCSE period study
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Polychronicon 164: The End of the Cold War
Teaching History feature
A quarter-century on from 1989-91, with a large amount of archive and media material available, these epic years are ripe for historical analysis. Yet their proximity to our time also throws up challenging questions about the practice of ‘contemporary history’, and the complexity of events raises larger issues about how...
Polychronicon 164: The End of the Cold War
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Why are you wearing a watch? Complicating narratives of economic and social progress
Teaching History article
Frustrated by the traditional narrative of the industrial revolution as a steady march of progress, and disappointed by her students’ dull and deterministic statements about historical change, Hannah Sibona decided to complicate the tidy narrative of continual improvement.
Inspired by an article by E.P. Thompson, Sibona reflected that introducing her...
Why are you wearing a watch? Complicating narratives of economic and social progress
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Podcast Series: The History of Science
Multipage Article
In this series of podcasts we take a look at the history of the Royal Society and the influence it has had on the history and development of science.
This series features: Keith Moore, Head of Libraries and Archives at the Royal Society, Dr Jordan Goodman, Dr Patricia Fara of...
Podcast Series: The History of Science
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Transforming Year 7's understanding of the concept of Imperialism: a case study on the Roman Empire
Teaching History article
Those of us in the U.K. know that many of our pupils finish their entire historical education without a satisfactory grasp of basic substantive concepts as they are used in history. Do all our low-attaining or ‘low ability’ 14-year-olds who are pressured to drop history at 14 really emerge with...
Transforming Year 7's understanding of the concept of Imperialism: a case study on the Roman Empire
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Creating controversy in the classroom: making progress with historical significance
Teaching History article
No longer is historical significance the ‘forgotten key element.’ Indeed, it is now being remembered at last – by politicians, telly-dons and the media in any case. Matthew Bradshaw suggests that the popular emphasis on significant events is wrong. Instead, we should be enabling our pupils to make their own...
Creating controversy in the classroom: making progress with historical significance
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Film: What's the wisdom on... Change and continuity
Your Virtual History Department Meeting
We’ve been talking to our secondary school members and we know how difficult life is for teachers in the current circumstances, so we wanted to lend a helping hand.
'What’s the wisdom on…' is a new and already popular feature in our secondary journal Teaching History and provides the perfect stimulus for a...
Film: What's the wisdom on... Change and continuity
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Using nominalisation to develop written causal arguments
Teaching History article
How nominalisation might develop students’ written causal arguments
Frustrated that previously taught writing frames seemed to impede his A-level students’ historical arguments, James Edward Carroll theorised that the inadequacies he identified in their writing were as much disciplinary as stylistic. Drawing on two discourses that are often largely isolated from...
Using nominalisation to develop written causal arguments
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Film: What's the wisdom on... Enquiry questions (Part 1)
Your Virtual History Department Meeting
We’ve been talking to our secondary school members and we know how difficult life is for teachers in the current circumstances, so we wanted to lend a helping hand.
'What’s the wisdom on…' is a new and already popular feature in our secondary journal Teaching History and provides the perfect stimulus for a...
Film: What's the wisdom on... Enquiry questions (Part 1)
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Who inherits the house? Using heritage to shape pupils’ thinking about historical significance
Teaching History article
Reflecting on the reasons why generic models for teaching historical significance are never quite adequate, Rachel Foster found herself considering, instead, the specific contexts in which arguments about historical significance arise. These reflections took her to the fascinating example of stately homes. Drawing on scholarship such as that of Peter...
Who inherits the house? Using heritage to shape pupils’ thinking about historical significance
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Teaching History 151: Continuity
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
02 Editorial
03 HA Secondary News
04 HA Update
08 Rachel Foster - The more things change, the more they stay the same: developing students' thinking about change and continuity (Read article)
18 Polychronicon: The Revolution of 1688 - Ted Vallance (Read article)
20 Cunning Plan: The 'Glorious' revolution of 1688...
Teaching History 151: Continuity
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Teaching the very recent past
Teaching History article
‘Miriam's Vision' is an educational project developed by the Miriam Hyman Memorial Trust, an organisation set up in memory of Miriam Hyman, one of the 52 victims of the London bombings of 2005. The project has developed a number of subject-based modules, including history, which are provided free to schools...
Teaching the very recent past
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The teaching and learning of history for 15-16 year olds: have the Japanese anything to learn from the English experience
Teaching History article
What would you expect the differences to be between Japan and England in how pupils learn history in the post-14 phase? Perhaps your guess would be: Japanese school students learn a lot of historical facts and focus upon their own identity and English school students talk a lot more in...
The teaching and learning of history for 15-16 year olds: have the Japanese anything to learn from the English experience
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Marr: magpie or marsh harrier?
Teaching History article
The quest for the common characteristics of the genus ‘historian' with 16- to 19-year-olds
Diana Laffin writes about historical language and explores how understanding different historians' use of language can help sixth form students refine and deepen both their understanding of the discipline of history and their abilities to practise...
Marr: magpie or marsh harrier?
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New, Novice or Nervous? 162: GCSE Thematic Study
Teaching History feature: the quick guide to the no-quick-fix
Thematic studies have been a long-standing feature of the Schools History Project (SHP) GCSE specifications in England and Wales; but for teachers of ‘Modern World’ GCSE specifications, the thematic study in the new GCSE specifications for teaching in England from September 2016 is unfamiliar territory. Perhaps you are entirely new...
New, Novice or Nervous? 162: GCSE Thematic Study
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What they think they know: the impact of pupils' preconceptions on their understanding of historical significance
Teaching History article
Robin Conway suspected that his students’ concepts of the significance of different aspects of historical periods was affected by the preconceptions that they brought to his lessons. These preconceptions were leading his students into making unhistorical judgments, without any real understanding on their part of what had affected their thinking....
What they think they know: the impact of pupils' preconceptions on their understanding of historical significance
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What do you think? Using online forums to improve students' historical knowledge and understanding
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
In Teaching History 126, the Open University's Arguing in History project team demonstrated the power that discussion fora can have to develop pupil thinking. In this article, Dave Martin revisits this theme through a discussion...
What do you think? Using online forums to improve students' historical knowledge and understanding
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New, Novice or Nervous? 157: Teaching Overview
Teaching History feature
Overwhelmed by overview? Bewildered by how to teach bigger pictures? Tied up in mental knots by trying to work out the difference between thematic stories, frameworks and outlines? You are not alone.
Like many history teachers, you feel more confident when teaching depth studies but find yourself beating a rapid...
New, Novice or Nervous? 157: Teaching Overview
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Film: Why does the massacre of the Armenians in the First World War still get overlooked?
Virtual Branch
Why is the term 'Armenian Genocide' controversial, with many countries still not acknowledging a genocide at all? What do we know about the event of 1915 and the plight of the Armenian community in Turkey? How can we grapple with a history that many people want to forget? In this...
Film: Why does the massacre of the Armenians in the First World War still get overlooked?
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Broadening and deepening narratives of Benin for Year 8
Teaching History article
Josh Garry describes his effort to refresh his approach to teaching the British transatlantic slave trade. Drawing on reading, lectures and discussions during an Historical Association Teacher Fellowship programme, Garry built a sequence of lessons designed to contextualise the trade while showing African agency and complexity. The result was a sequence...
Broadening and deepening narratives of Benin for Year 8
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What’s the wisdom on… enquiry questions
Teaching History feature
One way of explaining what is meant by an enquiry question is to start with what it is not.
What's the Wisdom On... is a short guide providing new history teachers with an overview of the ‘story so far’ of practice-based professional thinking about a particular aspect of history teaching. It...
What’s the wisdom on… enquiry questions
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Raising the bar: developing meaningful historical consciousness at Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
How can we help pupils make sense of the history that they learn so that the whole adds up to more than the sum of its parts? How can we help pupils develop and sophisticate...
Raising the bar: developing meaningful historical consciousness at Key Stage 3
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Dickens...Hardy...Jarvis?! A novel take on the Industrial Revolution
Teaching History article
‘Empathy with edge' was the editorial description given eight years ago to the kind of historical fiction that Dave Martin and Beth Brooke first argued history students should be writing (TH 108). The winning entries from the annual ‘Write Your Own Historical Story Competition' to which their work gave rise...
Dickens...Hardy...Jarvis?! A novel take on the Industrial Revolution
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Building an overview of the historic roots of antisemitism
Teaching History article
‘But I still don't get why the Jews': using cause and change to answer pupils' demand for an overview of antisemitism
Research by the Centre for Holocaust Education has suggested that students need and want more help with building an overview of the historical roots of antisemitism and that they...
Building an overview of the historic roots of antisemitism
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Triumphs Show: The BeBold Network
Teaching History feature
In April 2019, I was in a bit of a rut. My enquiry questions and lesson sequences seemed stale. I felt like I had been at my school for too long. To mix things up, I secured a new role for September at a start-up school.
Full of excitement, I...
Triumphs Show: The BeBold Network
