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Our commitment to diversity
History of all for all
In summer 2020 the Historical Association in partnership with the The Royal Historical Society, The Institute of Historical Research, Runnymede Trust and Schools History Project established a steering group to review content and approaches in GCSE and A-Level History examination specifications and in the history curriculum generally. This was in response to...
Our commitment to diversity
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Cunning Plan 162: Transferring knowledge from Key Stage 3 to 4
Teaching History feature
Planning to deliver the new GCSE specifications presents a challenge and an opportunity to any history department, whatever their previous specification. The sweep of history that students will now study at GCSE is much broader than ‘Modern World’ departments are used to; including a medieval or early modern depth study...
Cunning Plan 162: Transferring knowledge from Key Stage 3 to 4
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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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Podcast Series: Confronting Controversial History
Podcast Series
Controversial History formed the focus of the Historical Association’s report, Teaching Emotive and Controversial History 3-19 (TEACH). Published in 2007, it offered teachers invaluable guidance for teaching historical topics that can stir emotion and controversy. However, the authors noted how the nature of the sensitivity can be affected by ‘time, geography and...
Podcast Series: Confronting Controversial History
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Evidence: Theoretical
Links to HA resources for secondary teachers
Getting Year 10 beyond trivial judgements of ‘bias': towards victory in that battle ...
Let's play Supermarket ‘Evidential' Sweep: developing students' awareness of the need to select evidence
Assessment of students' uses of evidence: shifting the focus from processes to historical reasoning
How can students' use of historical evidence be...
Evidence: Theoretical
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Adventures in assessment
Teaching History article
In Teaching History 157, Assessment Edition, a number of different teachers shared the ways in which their departments were approaching the assessment and reporting of students’ progress in a ‘post-levels’ world. This article adds to those examples, first by illustrating how teachers from different schools in the Bristol area are...
Adventures in assessment
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New, Novice or Nervous? 161: Teaching substantive concepts
Teaching History feature
It’s worrying when pupils reach Year 9 or 10 unable to properly interpret or find fluency in major abstract nouns that crop up again and again in history. They should have bumped into ‘empire’, ‘republic’, ‘federation’, ‘peasantry’, ‘commons’ and ‘communism’, many times by Year 10, so why are many students...
New, Novice or Nervous? 161: Teaching substantive concepts
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Developing independent learning with Year 7
Teaching History article
Jaya Carrier’s decision to focus on developing a more independent approach to learning in history at Key Stage 3 was prompted by concerns about her A-level students. In seeking to establish secure foundations for students’ own historical research, Carrier first examined the assumptions of her colleagues and her students. She...
Developing independent learning with Year 7
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Using causation diagrams to help sixth-formers think about cause and effect
Teaching History article
Alex Alcoe was concerned that mastery of certain keywords and question formulae at GCSE perhaps obscured fundamental gaps in his students’ understanding of the nature of causation. These gaps were revealed when he invited Year 12 students to make explicit, by annotating a diagram, their understanding of the relationship between...
Using causation diagrams to help sixth-formers think about cause and effect
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Using Google Docs to develop Year 9 pupils’ essay-writing skills
Teaching History article
Lucy Moonen set out to explore whether collaborative writing in small groups, facilitated by the use of Google Docs, would help to sustain students’ focus on essay writing as the development of an historical argument.
She explains how she set up an essay on the League of Nationals as a...
Using Google Docs to develop Year 9 pupils’ essay-writing skills
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WWI and the flu pandemic
Historian article
In our continuing Aspects of War series Hugh Gault reveals that the flu pandemic, which began during the First World War, presented another danger that challenged people’s lives and relationships.
Wounded in the neck on the first day of the battle of the Somme, 1 July 1916, Arthur Conan Doyle’s son Kingsley...
WWI and the flu pandemic
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Earth in vision: Enviromental Broadcasting
Historian article
Joe Smith, Kim Hammond and George Revill share some of the findings of their work examining what digital broadcast archives are available and which could be made available in future.
The BBC’s archives hold over a million hours of programmes, dating back to the 1930s (radio) and 1940s (television). It...
Earth in vision: Enviromental Broadcasting
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Polychronicon 155: Interpreting the Origins of of the First World War
Teaching History feature
As I write this article I have before me my grandfather's Victory Medal from the First World War. It has inscribed on the reverse side, ‘The Great War for Civilisation 1914-1919'. The absolute certainty of such a justification for Britain's entry into the war seems somewhat hollow as we approach...
Polychronicon 155: Interpreting the Origins of of the First World War
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Women in British Coal Mining
Historian article
With the final closure of Britain’s deep coal mines, Chris Wrigley examines the long-standing involvement of women in and around this challenging and dangerous form of work.
With the closure in 2015 of Thoresby and Kellingley mines, the last two working deep coal mines in Britain, leaving only open-cast coal...
Women in British Coal Mining
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Podcast: Ancient Greece & Rome - Similarities and Differences
Ancient Greece & Rome
In this podcast Dr Ursula Rothe & Dr Colin Andrews of the Open University discuss how social, moral and religious life in Rome differed from that of ancient Greece.
Podcast: Ancient Greece & Rome - Similarities and Differences
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My journey to Bosnia: The Balkans Conflict 22 years on
A personal account of an educational visit to Sarajevo and Srebrenica
In these pages HA Education Manager Melanie Jones shares her own personal experiences and reflections from a recent educational visit to Bosnia, and looks at ways in which British schools might be able to explore aspects of the 1990s Balkans Conflict.
In September 2017 I was approached by a small charitable organisation Remembering...
My journey to Bosnia: The Balkans Conflict 22 years on
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Witchcraft, Werewolves and Magic in European History: on-demand short course
Online self-guided short course for lifelong learners
This self-guided short course provides an introduction to European witchcraft history from the fifteenth century to the present. Using a range of primary sources, the course explores important themes and questions relating to witchcraft history, examining how witchcraft has been imagined and understood at different times and in different places, and why...
Witchcraft, Werewolves and Magic in European History: on-demand short course
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Using Folktales, Myths and Legends
Global Learning
This resource was commissioned by the Historical Association to offer teachers an entry point into the new primary History curriculum using stories: folktales, myths and legends from the civilisations, communities and cultures of the statutory programmes of study.
In this resource, pupils are encouraged to recall and retell stories orally,...
Using Folktales, Myths and Legends
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Podcast Series: The Hundred Years War
The Hundred Years War
How can a war last 100 years? What did this mean for the peoples of England and France during the medieval period? How significant were the battles of Poitiers, Crecy and Agincourt?
In this podcast series the 100 Years War is explained, explored and brought to life. The lists of...
Podcast Series: The Hundred Years War
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The Normans
Links to Articles & Podcasts
Norman Conquest
The Origins of the Norman Conquest
The Norman Conquest: why did it matter? KeynoteSpeech from the Historical Association 2013 Annual Conference - Podcast
1066: The Limits of our Knowledge
Edward the Confessor and the Norman Conquest
The strange death of King Harold II: Propaganda and the problem of...
The Normans
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Welsh archers at Agincourt: myth and reality
Historian article
Adam Chapman debates the evidence for a Welsh presence among Henry V’s highly-successful force of archers at Agincourt in 1415.
Michael Drayton, in his poem of 1627, The Bataille of Agincourt, described the Welsh presence in Henry V's army: ‘who no lesse honour ow'd To their own king, nor yet...
Welsh archers at Agincourt: myth and reality
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New Treatments of Familiar Topics
National Curriculum 2016
Comparision of new GCSE Specifications Treatment of Familiar Topics If you, like many other departments are beginning to ask the questions that will determine which of the new history GCSE specifications your department will choose, one consideration may well be looking at the retention of familiar topics that you already...
New Treatments of Familiar Topics
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Podcast Series: Ancient Greek Myths and Legends
Multipage Article
In this podcast Dr Fiona Hobden of the University of Liverpool looks at what Greek myths and legends can tell us about how the early ancient Greeks saw their world.
Podcast Series: Ancient Greek Myths and Legends
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Elementary Education in the Nineteenth Century
Classic Pamphlet
All schemes for education involve some consideration of the surrounding society, its existing structure and how it will-and should-develop. Thus the interaction of educational provision and institutions with patterns of employment, social mobility and political behaviour are fascinatingly complex. The spate of valuable local studies emphasizes this complexity and makes...
Elementary Education in the Nineteenth Century
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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'
