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Film: Khrushchev - After Stalin
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
In this film, Dr Alexander Titov (Queen's University of Belfast), discusses the leading figures jockeying for power after Stalin died, the short period of collective leadership, growing calls for reform within the Soviet Union and how Khrushchev gradually sidelined all of his rivals on his way to becoming Premiere of...
Film: Khrushchev - After Stalin
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The Olympics - politics, impact and legacy - its not just about the sport
Article
2024 is an Olympic Games year. Held every four years (with the exception of during the World Wars and Covid-19 restrictions), the modern Olympics is the largest international sporting event in the world. However, historically it has not always been just the sports that are played and the athletes’ performances...
The Olympics - politics, impact and legacy - its not just about the sport
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Harnessing the power of community to expand students’ historical horizons
Teaching History article
Many history teachers will already be familiar with ‘meanwhile, elsewhere...’, a website offering freely downloadable homework resources on individuals, events and developments in world history. In this article the website’s creators, Richard Kennett and Will Bailey-Watson, set out a curricular rationale for the project. They argue that using homework tasks...
Harnessing the power of community to expand students’ historical horizons
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Film: Yeltsin and Russia in the late 1980s
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
In this film, Dr Edwin Bacon (University of Lincoln), examines the political and economic repercussions of Gorbachev’s reforms. Dr Bacon reflects upon the dire state of the Soviet economy in the late 1980s/early 1990s and how that led to change but also unrest. In particular he addresses the way that...
Film: Yeltsin and Russia in the late 1980s
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History teacher subject knowledge reading list
One Big History Department blog post
Subject knowledge updating is enjoyable and a huge challenge in a busy teacher's life.
There are fantastic initiatives which make this process more collegiate. And some historians are incredibly generous with their time and engage with history teachers on social media and at conferences. Nevertheless, there can’t be many of us who...
History teacher subject knowledge reading list
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Maximising the power of storytelling in the history classroom
Teaching History article
James Hopkins’s Year 10 class had been excited by their course on medicine through time, but were less enthused about their new study of Norman England. They told him that the topic felt ‘distant’ and ‘not real’. Recalling his own experience as a student, Hopkins was interested in the ways...
Maximising the power of storytelling in the history classroom
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Cunning Plan... for studying medieval Ghana and Aksum
Teaching History feature
This Cunning Plan details an enquiry that I developed in order to achieve two curricular goals: to diversify our historical content and to help students to improve their disciplinary thinking and writing about similarity and difference. The enquiry addresses medieval Africa, specifically the East African kingdom of Aksum (approximately 300...
Cunning Plan... for studying medieval Ghana and Aksum
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Film: Yeltsin's second term and legacy
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
In this final film on Yeltsin, Dr Edwin Bacon (University of Lincoln), discusses Yeltin’s second term and how his public profile went from hero to growing embarrassment. Importantly he examines how Yeltin’s search for a successor that would secure his family’s security led to rapid changes in Prime Ministers in...
Film: Yeltsin's second term and legacy
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Film: Yeltsin's agenda
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
In this film, Dr Edwin Bacon (University of Lincoln), discusses the emergence of Russia as a democratic country and its nascent capitalist economy. He outlines how the issues Yeltsin faced in government such as the 1993 constitutional crisis, followed by the shelling by tanks in Moscow led to Yeltsin rewriting...
Film: Yeltsin's agenda
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Cunning Plan 177: teaching about life in Elizabethan England by looking at death
Teaching History feature
‘We already did the Tudors in primary school’ was the most frequent comment made by students about our Year 7 scheme of learning in our annual review. Students reported covering the Tudors at least once, sometimes twice, before reaching secondary school and they had clearly not faced extensive further study...
Cunning Plan 177: teaching about life in Elizabethan England by looking at death
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Widening the early modern world to create a more connected KS3 curriculum
Teaching History article
Readers of this journal will be familiar with a number of ways of approaching the Tudors. Kerry Apps provides here an article detailing her concerns about the differences between what she had been delivering at Key Stage 3 and the broader, connected experience she had as an undergraduate historian. How...
Widening the early modern world to create a more connected KS3 curriculum
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Year 7 challenge stereotypes about the Mexica
Teaching History article
After discussing a new book about the Mexica (Aztecs) during a routine meeting with a trainee teacher, Niamh Jennings decided to construct a sequence of lessons around the history of the Mexica Empire. Struck by the vivid storytelling of historian Camilla Townsend in her book Fifth Sun, and fascinated by...
Year 7 challenge stereotypes about the Mexica
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Connecting past and present through the lens of enduring human issues: International Women’s Day protests
Teaching History article
While studying for his master’s degree in education, Arthur Casey became intrigued by research suggesting that analogies comparing past and present might improve students’ perceptions of the relevance of history. In this article he reports on the findings of his own small-scale research study, in which he used a present-day...
Connecting past and present through the lens of enduring human issues: International Women’s Day protests
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The role of takeaways in shaping a history curriculum
Teaching History article
Jonathan Grande explains how he and his department faced up to the paradox that teaching rich detail is vital for good historical learning and is vital for students to remember in the short term, but is not essential to remember for ever. This article sets out his exploration of why...
The role of takeaways in shaping a history curriculum
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Triumphs Show 192: Balancing micro- and macronarratives of the Holocaust
Teaching History feature
Lien de Jong celebrates her 90th birthday in September 2023. In lots of ways, her biography is similar to many Europeans of her generation. She was born, grew up and went to school in The Hague during the 1930s. She trained to work in a nursery. In the 1950s, she...
Triumphs Show 192: Balancing micro- and macronarratives of the Holocaust
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... the history of Australia
Teaching History feature
In 1968, in his Boyer Lectures, the anthropologist W.E.H. Stanner argued that Australia’s sense of its past, its collective memory, had been built on a state of forgetting:
It is a structural matter, a view from a window which has been carefully placed to exclude a whole quadrant of the...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... the history of Australia
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Redesigning the curriculum: a short guide for the new, novice or nervous
Article
A short guide to making a start with redesigning the curriculum
We realise that the task of curriculum redesign is huge and these steps are to help you make a start.
It's also important to note that Heather Fearn, Ofsted Curriculum and Development lead, has said:
that Ofsted is NOT expecting...
Redesigning the curriculum: a short guide for the new, novice or nervous
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What kinds of feedback help students produce better historical narratives of the interwar years?
Teaching History article
Narrative has begun to take its place alongside the essay, for so long the stereotypical currency of the history teacher and student. In this work, based on his experiences as a PGCE student, Alex Rodker argues powerfully that it is time now to consider how to help students to produce...
What kinds of feedback help students produce better historical narratives of the interwar years?
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Disability history resources
Article
Disabled people are part of the fabric of every society past and present, yet the stories, achievements and struggles of disabled people have often been hidden or marginalised by societies who refuse to adapt. Coping with disability, societal attitudes towards disability and the stories, voices and contributions of disabled people...
Disability history resources
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Using diagrammatic representations of counterfactuals to develop causal reasoning
Teaching History article
Tom Bennett begins his article with a tale of a frustrating afternoon with Year 7. We’ve all been there. In his case, his frustration was caused by his finding a conceptual gap between how well his class wanted to do and the actual quality of their causal thinking. Bennett decided...
Using diagrammatic representations of counterfactuals to develop causal reasoning
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Film: Gorbachev - Interpretations
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the USSR
Mikhail Gorbachev’s leadership and period in office is remembered differently in different parts of the world. Professor Archie Brown discusses the different interpretations the have developed in the West and in Russia to Gorbachev and his legacy. He describes the impact and development of Post-Soviet Russia and how this has influenced...
Film: Gorbachev - Interpretations
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Film: Gorbachev - Downfall
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the USSR
Professor Archie Brown looks at the forces that led to Gorbachev's eventual downfall. He also examines the coup in 1991, the rise of Boris Yeltsin and the subsequent breakup of the Soviet Union.
This film is part of our film series that looks at Russian history through the lens of leadership from Alexander...
Film: Gorbachev - Downfall
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Films: Mikhail Gorbachev – Interpretations
Film series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
How much of what Russia is today, how its people behave, and how they are perceived is dependent on its history and those that have led it? Was it the first melting pot of the world? Do its broad range of cultural traditions and diversity play a part in its...
Films: Mikhail Gorbachev – Interpretations
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Film: Gorbachev - Foreign Relations
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the USSR
Professor Archie Brown discusses how Gorbachev fundamentally reformed Soviet foreign policy, redefined relations with the West, fostered closer personal relationships with former adversaries and how he transformed the Cold War world.
He examines Gorbachev's policy towards Eastern Europe and the fall of the Iron Curtain, and looks at how his new foreign...
Film: Gorbachev - Foreign Relations
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Film: Gorbachev - Domestic Reform
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the USSR
Emeritus Professor Archie Brown explains how Mikhail Gorbachev became the leader of the Soviet Union in 1985 and describes the domestic and international situation the USSR found itself in at this point of the Cold War.
He discusses Gorbachev's political and economic agenda and priorities, looks at the support and...
Film: Gorbachev - Domestic Reform
