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Where are we? The place of women in history curricula
Teaching History article
Joanne Pearson reflects on her experiences as a history teacher and teacher educator, considering the ways in which she has seen women represented in the history curricula of different schools in England. She makes the case that greater attention needs to be paid by history teachers to the criteria against...
Where are we? The place of women in history curricula
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Teaching History 147: Curriculum Architecture
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
02 Editorial
03 HA Secondary News
04 HA Update
08 Beth Baker and Steven Mastin - Did Alexander really ask, ‘Do I appear to you to be a bastard?' Using ancient texts to improve pupils' critical thinking (Read article)
14 Cunning Plan: Getting students to use classical texts - Beth Baker...
Teaching History 147: Curriculum Architecture
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Time and chronology: conjoined twins or distant cousins?
Teaching History article
Weaknesses in pupils' grasp of historical chronology are a commonplace in popular discussion of the state of history education. However, as Blow, Lee and Shemilt argue, although undoubtedly necessary and fundamental, mastery of chronological conventions is not sufficient: the difficulties that pupils experience when learning history are conceptual, as much...
Time and chronology: conjoined twins or distant cousins?
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'Doing justice to history': the learning of African history in a North London secondary school
Teaching History article
‘Doing justice to history': the learning of African history in a North London secondary school and teacher development in the spirit of ubuntu
The medium is the message, Marshall McLuhan observed many years ago and the ‘form' of what we do carries ‘content' as Hayden White has argued. This article...
'Doing justice to history': the learning of African history in a North London secondary school
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Time and Place; Using a Local Historical Site with Key Stage 2 and 3
Time and Place
English Heritage and the Historical Association have teamed up to provide this great new CPD guide to getting the most out of local historical sites with your classes. This easy to follow unit provides the basis for an entire unit of local study using the built heritage around you. Examples...
Time and Place; Using a Local Historical Site with Key Stage 2 and 3
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Triumphs Show 146: putting an enquiry together
Teaching History feature: celebrating and sharing success
Department meetings have a range of purposes, and all teachers will be aware of some of the more tedious tasks that have to be completed at such meetings. The most exciting meetings for us are those where we can sit down as a history department and design a new enquiry....
Triumphs Show 146: putting an enquiry together
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Developing Year 8 students' conceptual thinking about diversity in Victorian society
Teaching History article
Developing Year 8 students' conceptual thinking about diversity in Victorian society
Elizabeth Carr writes here about a new scheme of work she developed to teach students about diversity in Victorian society. When dealing with a concept such as diversity, it can be easy for students to slip into stereotypes based...
Developing Year 8 students' conceptual thinking about diversity in Victorian society
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Community engagement in local history
Teaching History article
This article, by Lynda Abbott and Richard Grayson, offers a fascinating example of collaboration between school and university, focused on the development of a community archive.
The project - run as an extra-curricular activity - was originally inspired by a concern to preserve the personal stories of those whose lives...
Community engagement in local history
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Cunning Plan 144: promoting independent student enquiry
Teaching History feature
Getting students to generate their own questions can seem like a formidable challenge, even for experienced teachers with extensive subject knowledge developed over years of teaching. Imagine how much more alarming it appeared to a student-teacher being encouraged to take risks by handing more responsibility to the students. Could it...
Cunning Plan 144: promoting independent student enquiry
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Using ‘Assessment for Learning' to help students assume responsibility
Teaching History article
Robin Conway's interest in student led enquiry derived from a concern to encourage his students to take much more responsibility for their own learning. Here he explains how his department gradually learned to entrust students with defining the enquiry questions and planning the kinds of teaching and learning activities to be...
Using ‘Assessment for Learning' to help students assume responsibility
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Pupil-led historical enquiry: what might this actually be?
Teaching History article
The current National Curriculum for history requires pupils to ‘identify and investigate specific historical questions, making and testing hypotheses for themselves'.
While Kate Hammond relished the encouragement that this gave to her pupils to engage in the process of historical enquiry, she was keen to develop a much clearer sense...
Pupil-led historical enquiry: what might this actually be?
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Understanding 'change and continuity' through colours and timelines
Teaching History article
The small-scale research that Yosanne Vella reports in this article was driven by concern to help pupils develop ‘big picture' visions of the past and to engage effectively with the idea of change as a process rather than an event. The strategy that she adopts - asking groups of students...
Understanding 'change and continuity' through colours and timelines
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Seeing the historical world
Teaching History article
In this article, Lindsay Cassedy, Catherine Flaherty and Michael Fordham draw upon their empirical research to assess what understandings their students had of historical interpretations at the end of their compulsory education in history. They found that most students operated with an underlying epistemological model that did not reflect the...
Seeing the historical world
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Assessment of students' uses of evidence
Teaching History article
Drawing on her research into students' evidential reasoning, Elisabeth Pickles explores the possibilities for how such reasoning might be assessed. Existing exam mark schemes focus too heavily on generic processes involved in the analysis of source material and insufficiently on the historical validity of reasoning and conclusions produced. Approaching the...
Assessment of students' uses of evidence
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Getting Year 7 to vocalise responses to the murder of Thomas Becket
Teaching History article
Mary Partridge wanted her pupils not only to become more aware of competing and contrasting voices in the past, but to understand how historians orchestrate those voices. Using Edward Grim's eye-witness account of Thomas Becket's murder, her Year 7 pupils explored nuances in the word ‘shocking' as a way of...
Getting Year 7 to vocalise responses to the murder of Thomas Becket
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Polychronicon 142: 'instructive reversals' - (re)interpreting the 1857 events in Northern India
Teaching History feature
The dramatic, chaotic and violent events that took place in Northern India in 1857/8 have been interpreted in many ways, as, for example, the ‘Indian Mutiny', the ‘Sepoy War' and the ‘First Indian War of Independence'. The tales that have been told about these events have been profoundly shaped, however,...
Polychronicon 142: 'instructive reversals' - (re)interpreting the 1857 events in Northern India
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Cunning Plan 142: Why do historical interpretations change over time?
Teaching History feature
History teachers have been talking about the need to teach broad narratives, overview and chronology for a long time. They have also recognised how essential it is for students to have an opportunity to study the ways in which the past has been interpreted, and the reasons why these interpretations...
Cunning Plan 142: Why do historical interpretations change over time?
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A local history toolkit
Toolkit
Produced by the Historical Association for the National Literacy Trust's "The Olden Times" newspaper resource, May 2011. For more recent resources on local history enquiries see:
Local significant individuals
Local history scheme of work: your local high street
Local history scheme of work: transport
Incorporating local history into a scheme...
A local history toolkit
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'Assessing Pupil Progress'
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
England's Qualification and Curriculum Development Authority (QCDA) has been working on a new way of trying to support teachers in handling interim assessment during Key Stage 3. It is called Assessing Pupil Progress (APP).
Jerome...
'Assessing Pupil Progress'
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Key Stage 2-3 History Transition Project Final Report
Final Report
The project was steered and edited on behalf of the Historical Association by Andrew Wrenn, General Adviser for History, Cambridgeshire Advisory Service.
It was funded by the Innovation Unit of the Department for Education and Skills.
Key Stage 2-3 History Transition Project Final Report
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Extended Writing in History
Transition Training Session 3
This is the third of 5 sessions arising from the 2005 KS2-KS3 History Transitions Project:
Transition training session 1: Historical Enquiries & Interpretations
Transition training session 2: Using ICT in the teaching of history
Transition training session 3: Extended writing in history
Transition training session 4: Joan of Arc - Saint, Witch...
Extended Writing in History
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Historical Enquiries and Interpretations
Transition Training Session 1
This is the first of 5 sessions arising from the 2005 KS2-KS3 History Transition Project:
Transition training session 1: Historical Enquiries & Interpretations
Transition training session 2: Using ICT in the teaching of history
Transition training session 3: Extended writing in history
Transition training session 4: Joan of Arc -...
Historical Enquiries and Interpretations
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Approaches to the History Curriculum: skills based curriculum
Briefing Pack
In 2010 many schools were adopting thematic or skills based curricula in England. This is one way of organising a curriculum. Some of the pros and cons of this approach are elaborated here.
There are an increasing number of schools now adopting a thematic or skills based curriculum for year...
Approaches to the History Curriculum: skills based curriculum
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Teaching about the climate emergency
Resources for teaching about climate change
The climate emergency is being talked about across the media. But how do we as educators talk with learners, and sort the truth from misinformation?
Here are some of Global Dimension's top picks of sites with high quality resources for tackling this most topical subject in your classroom:
Campaign Against Climate...
Teaching about the climate emergency
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Bob Dylan and the concept of evidence
Teaching History article
No edition of Teaching History devoted to creativity could be complete without returning to the riches that popular songs offer to historians and history teachers alike. The five Bob Dylan songs that Christopher Edwards explores here are chosen not merely for their ‘literary qualities' and ‘emotional charge'; they also provide...
Bob Dylan and the concept of evidence
