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Triumphs Show 176: Using material culture as a means to generate an enquiry on the British Empire
Teaching History feature
Triumphs Show is a regular feature which offers a quick way for teachers to celebrate their successes and share inspirational ideas with one another. While the ideas are always explained in sufficient depth for others to be able to take them forward in their own practice, the simple format allows...
Triumphs Show 176: Using material culture as a means to generate an enquiry on the British Empire
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Asses, archers and assumptions: strategies for improving thinking skills in history in Years 9 to 13
Teaching History article
Thinking skills’ is a term that has been substantially over-used. It often seems to be rather a lazy shorthand for justifying the teaching of history by suddenly bolting on some ‘thinking’ - as if history is not all about thought in the first place. Arthur Chapman suggests using techniques from...
Asses, archers and assumptions: strategies for improving thinking skills in history in Years 9 to 13
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Revisiting chronological knowledge from before 1066
Article
Thinking about...the study of an aspect or theme in British history that revisits or extends pupils' chronological knowledge from before 1066Alf Wilkinson presents a personal exploration of how we might use this Key Stage 3 unit to help our students develop a coherent understanding of history.
Revisiting chronological knowledge from before 1066
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Virtual Branch Recording: The Fall of the English Republic
Article
Oliver Cromwell’s death in 1658 sparked a period of unrivalled turmoil and confusion in English history. In less than two years, there were close to ten changes of government; rival armies of Englishmen faced each other across the Scottish border; and the Long Parliament was finally dissolved after two decades.
Why...
Virtual Branch Recording: The Fall of the English Republic
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The Medieval Empire
Classic Pamphlet
The subject of this pamphlet is one that, by general consent, takes a central place in European history in the middle ages. The history of the Empire, it has often been said, is co-terminous with the history of western Christendom; and Lord Bryce long ago described it as a ‘universal...
The Medieval Empire
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War, Society and the State in Early Modern Europe
Podcast
Lecture from the 2012 HA Annual Conference
Frank Tallett: Fellow in History at the University of Reading and former Head of its School of Humanities
Until recently, military history has largely been concerned with ‘badges and buttons', an approach that stressed tactics, strategy and weapons. The so-called New Military History has sought...
War, Society and the State in Early Modern Europe
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Learning from the Aftermath of the Holocaust
Article
International Journal of Historical Learning, Teaching and Research [IJHLTR], Volume 14, Number 2 – Spring/Summer 2017
ISSN: 14472-9474
Abstract
In this article I seek to encourage those involved in Holocaust education in schools to engage not just with the Holocaust but also with its aftermath. I conceptualise the latter in terms of two...
Learning from the Aftermath of the Holocaust
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'Didn't we do that in Year 7?' Planning for progress in evidential understanding
Teaching History article
Christine Counsell describes a lively activity, ideal for Year 9, in which pupils compare and interrelate a collection of sources. The activity leads pupils into thinking about the sources as a collection, and about the enquiry as an evidential problem. Or at least it can do. The article discusses the...
'Didn't we do that in Year 7?' Planning for progress in evidential understanding
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Inventing race? Using primary sources to investigate the origins of racial thinking in the past
Teaching History article
Having been given some additional curriculum time, Kerry Apps and her department made decisions about what had been missing in the previous curriculum diet. Building on an existing enquiry (in TH 176), Apps decided to focus on how and when the idea of race in its modern sense developed in early modern...
Inventing race? Using primary sources to investigate the origins of racial thinking in the past
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New, Novice or Nervous? 152: Describing Progression
Teaching History feature
'New, Novice or Nervous?' is for those new to the published writings of history teachers. Every problem you wrestle with, other teachers have wrestled with too. Quick fixes don't exist. But if you discover others' writing, you'll soon find - and want to join - something better: an international conversation...
New, Novice or Nervous? 152: Describing Progression
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Working with sources: scepticism or cynicism? Putting the story back together again
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Many history teachers will remember the feature on Jamie Byrom's teaching in Times Educational Supplement of July 1996 where he attacked the recent fashion of history textbooks for encouraging only short (and usually formulaic) responses...
Working with sources: scepticism or cynicism? Putting the story back together again
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Cunning Plan 165: Helping lower-attaining students
Teaching History feature
My GCSE students were about to embark on their controlled assessment, which asked them to weigh up conflicting views on the British military’s contribution to the D-Day landings. Students were asked to engage with a range of historians’ views and textbooks as well as some contemporary source material to assess...
Cunning Plan 165: Helping lower-attaining students
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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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Polychronicon 160: Interpreting 'The Birth of a Nation'
Teaching History feature
Controversial from the first year of its release in 1915, 'The Birth of a Nation' has been hailed as both the greatest film ever made and the most racist. On 8 February 1915, it premiered in Los Angeles as 'The Clansman', the name of the novel and play upon which...
Polychronicon 160: Interpreting 'The Birth of a Nation'
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Substantial sculptures or sad little plaques? Making 'interpretations' matter to Year 9
Teaching History article
Andrew Wrenn builds upon current, popular and practical work on ‘interpretations of history' analysed in recent editions. Using the public's responses to the temporary exhibition on the slave trade housed at Bristol City Museum, he offers a range of fascinating practical activities for Year 9 pupils. Many of these could...
Substantial sculptures or sad little plaques? Making 'interpretations' matter to Year 9
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... Royal Studies
Teaching History feature
‘Royal Studies’ is much more than the study of kings and queens as individuals. It draws in their families, the institution of monarchy and monarchical government, court studies, relationships with the church, artistic and literary patronage, and more. While history ‘from below’ and studies of non-elite figures have enriched the...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... Royal Studies
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Making rigour a departmental reality
Teaching History article
Faced with the introduction of a two-year key stage and a new whole-school assessment policy, Rachel Arscott and Tom Hinks decided to make a virtue out of necessity and reconsider their whole approach to planning, teaching and assessment at Key Stage 3. In this article they give an account of...
Making rigour a departmental reality
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Communicating about the past: Resource G
Article
James Woodcock, 'Does the linguistic release the conceptual? Helping Year 10 to improve their causal reasoning' in Teaching History 119: Language issue (June, 2005)
In this subtle article, James Woodcock experiments with introducing new vocabulary to a mixed-ability year 10 class working towards the enquiry question '"Hitler was not to...
Communicating about the past: Resource G
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A need to know: Islamic history and the school curriculum
Teaching History article
In this article, Nicolas Kinloch questions some of the principal justifications often advanced for teaching Islamic history in schools. In particular, he wants to move us beyond our concern with current events in the Middle East. He suggests that there are dangers in looking at Islamic history if it is...
A need to know: Islamic history and the school curriculum
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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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Filmed Lecture: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution
A Fistful of Shells
In this Virtual Branch webinar we were joined in conversation with Dr Toby Green on his acclaimed book 'A Fistful of Shells'. Shortlisted for the 2020 Wolfson Prize and winner of the 2019 Nayef Al-Rodhan Prize for Global Cultural Understanding, the book explores West Africa from the Rise of the...
Filmed Lecture: West Africa from the Rise of the Slave Trade to the Age of Revolution
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Developing transferable knowledge at A-level
Teaching History article
From a compartmentalised to a complicated past: developing transferable knowledge at A-level
Students find it difficult to join up the different things they study into a complex account of the past. Examination specifications do not necessarily help with this because of the way in which history is divided up into...
Developing transferable knowledge at A-level
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Recorded webinar: Queer beyond London
Article
London has tended to dominate accounts of LGBTQ Britain… but how did local contexts beyond the capital affect queer identities and communities? This talk by Professor Matt Cook looks at Brighton, Plymouth, Manchester and Leeds to illustrate the difference locality makes to queer lives.
* Please note: while this webinar...
Recorded webinar: Queer beyond London
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... youth culture?
Teaching History feature
For such a boldly iconoclastic work, the Key Stage 3 textbook A New Focus on ... British Social History, c.1920–2000 (2023) provides a disarmingly conventional account of youth in the 1960s as ‘mostly better educated and informed than their parents had been at their age [and able] … to find...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... youth culture?
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Teaching the iGeneration
Teaching History article
Teaching the iGeneration: what possibilities exist in and beyond the history classroom?
The development of communications technology in recent years has not only changed the ways in which students can access their world: it also changes the way they think about it. Sheldrake and Watkin draw here upon work that...
Teaching the iGeneration
