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Deepening post-16 students' historical engagement with the Holocaust
Teaching History article
Peter Morgan represents what is best about the reflective practitioner - an experienced teacher of some 15 years' standing, he continues to challenge himself and to seek ways to improve and develop his classroom practice. Deeply influenced by the pedagogy and resources that he encountered on the CPD of the Institute...
Deepening post-16 students' historical engagement with the Holocaust
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Thinking about the ethical dimension
Teaching History article
Responding to concerns about Dutch students’ citizenship education, Tim Huijgen, Paul Holthuis, Roel Nijmeijer and Iris van den Brand set out to design online materials to help students understand the decisions and dilemmas faced by past actors. They focused on the life and actions of Rosie Glaser (1914–2000), a Dutch Holocaust survivor,...
Thinking about the ethical dimension
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Being historically rigorous with creativity
Teaching History article
After a Fellowship in Holocaust Education at the Imperial War Museum, Andy Lawrence decided that something was missing in normal approaches to teaching emotive and controversial issues such as genocide, a deficit demonstrated by recent research by the Holocaust Education Development Programme. As part of his fellowship, Lawrence created an...
Being historically rigorous with creativity
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Teaching Britain’s ‘civil rights’ history
Teaching History article
Hannah Elias and Martin Spafford begin this article by explaining why they believe it is essential for young people to learn about the ‘heterogeneous, rich and complex’ history of the struggle for civil rights in Britain. Drawing on their diverse experiences of researching, writing and teaching history at school and university...
Teaching Britain’s ‘civil rights’ history
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Developing multiperspectivity through cartoon analysis
Teaching History article
Studying cartoons can be an engaging experience for students but it can also present students with considerable difficulties. Cartoons are typically highly complex texts that are often very hard to interpret and students need to develop appropriate reading strategies to interpret cartoons effectively. In this article Ulrich Schnakenberg explores ways...
Developing multiperspectivity through cartoon analysis
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The Russian Constitutional Monarchy, 1907-17
Classic Pamphlet
The defeat of the revolution of 1905 afforded the absolutist Tsarist monarchy an opportunity to reform the administration and to seek a new basis of support in place of the declining gentry class. Historians have been divided ever since over the constitutional system's chances of success. Had Tsardom advanced far...
The Russian Constitutional Monarchy, 1907-17
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Why does anyone do anything? Attempts to improve agentive explanations with Year 12
Teaching History article
In this article Sophie Harley-McKeown identifies and addresses her Year 12 students’ blind spot over agentive explanation. Noticing that the examination board to which she teaches uses ‘motivations’ rather than ‘aims’ prompted her to consider whether her students really knew what that meant. Finding that her students’ causal explanations tended...
Why does anyone do anything? Attempts to improve agentive explanations with Year 12
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Fascism in Europe 1919-1945
Classic Pamphlet
The importance of fascism in 20th Century Europe is beyond question. But what was - or is - fascism?It is synonymous with authoritarian rule or the totalitarian state, or with both? In political terms, is fascism ‘right-wing' or ‘left-wing', revolutionary or reactionary? Why did it develop? Was it truly only...
Fascism in Europe 1919-1945
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Polychronicon 177: The New Deal in American history
Teaching History feature
Over 50 years ago I read my first serious book on American history. I can still remember the excitement of reading William E. Leuchtenburg’s Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1940. His description of FDR and American politics in the 1930s seemed so much more colourful and dramatic than...
Polychronicon 177: The New Deal in American history
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Cunning Plan 100: teaching the First World War in Year 9
Teaching History feature
History teacher and head of department stand outside noisy Year 9 class. Bombs (paper ones) fly everywhere; in corner of room mutiny is being discussed ... many pupils are refusing to follow their leader's last minute orders - they will not be opting for history! The war of attrition (excessive...
Cunning Plan 100: teaching the First World War in Year 9
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Inverting the telescope: investigating sources from a different perspective
Teaching History article
As historians, we are dependent on evidence, which comes in many varieties. Rosalind Stirzaker here introduces a project which she ran two years ago to encourage her students to think about artefacts in a different way. They have examined randomly preserved artefacts such as those of Pompeii, and sets of...
Inverting the telescope: investigating sources from a different perspective
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Cunning Plan 97: A-Level: International Relations 1890-1914
Teaching History feature
'No war is inevitable until it starts.' Good quote. Not mine, but A.J.P. Taylor's. The outbreak of the First World War is a good way to test it! Did the statesmen of the day know the First World War was coming? Put another way, why was there no general European...
Cunning Plan 97: A-Level: International Relations 1890-1914
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British Defence and Appeasement Between the Wars 1919-1939
Classic Pamphlet
Armed forces never exist in isolation, but always operate against a background of political, economic, social, cultural, intellectual and ideological conditions and attitudes, as well as in relation to diplomatic and strategic factors. Some governments regards their military forces especially their armies, more as instruments for maintaining internal order than...
British Defence and Appeasement Between the Wars 1919-1939
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Polychronicon 163: Europe: the longest debate
Teaching History feature
On 23 June, electors in the United Kingdom will vote on whether they wish to remain part of the European Union. The passionate debate around the question has seen the spectre of Hitler and the example of Churchill invoked, with varying plausibility, by both sides. It has also drawn on the...
Polychronicon 163: Europe: the longest debate
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Does the grammatical ‘release the conceptual’?
Teaching History article
Jim Carroll noticed basic literacy errors in his Year 13s’ writing, but on closer examination decided that these were not best addressed purely as literacy issues. Through an intervention based on clauses, Carroll managed to enable his students to write better, but he did this by teasing out principles of...
Does the grammatical ‘release the conceptual’?
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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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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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'But why then?' Chronological context and historical interpretations
Teaching History article
When Michael Fordham was introduced to Dr Seuss's Butter Battle Book he immediately recognised its potential value in the classroom as a popular interpretation of the Cold War.
Wanting his Year 9 pupils to explain how and why the past has been interpreted in different ways he shows the potential pitfalls...
'But why then?' Chronological context and historical interpretations
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Local Authority Housing
Classic Pamphlet
Local authority housing has been a distinctive feature of the British housing system throughout the twentieth century. This pamphlet outlines the development of local authority housing in Britain from its origins in the late nineteenth century to the present day, focusing on the ways in which policy changes have affected...
Local Authority Housing
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Bringing Rwanda into the classroom
Teaching History article
A short 20 years: meeting the challenges facing teachers who bring Rwanda into the classroom
As the twentieth anniversary of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda approaches, Mark Gudgel argues that we should face the challenges posed by teaching about Rwanda. Drawing on his experience as a history teacher in the...
Bringing Rwanda into the classroom
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Learning lessons from genocides
Teaching History article
‘Never again'? Helping Year 9 think about what happened after the Holocaust and learning lessons from genocides
‘Never again' is the clarion call of much Holocaust and genocide education. There is a danger, however, that it can become an empty, if pious, wish. How can we help pupils reflect seriously on...
Learning lessons from genocides
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Cunning Plan 152.1: visual sources
Teaching History feature
The principles outlined here were developed in response to three key concerns. The first was consideration of the needs of students learning English as an additional language who face particular challenges with reading and writing.
Images could perhaps offer them more direct, less abstract, ways into an understanding of challenging...
Cunning Plan 152.1: visual sources
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The National Insurance Act 1911: three perspectives, one policy
Historian article
Sandwiched between the Parliament Act and the Home Rule Act, the National Insurance Act 1911 is easily overlooked and often forgotten. Yet, as Gilbert has pointed out, it was critical both of itself and as the foundation for social legislation up to current times. It came into force on 15...
The National Insurance Act 1911: three perspectives, one policy
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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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Polychronicon 143: the Balfour Declaration
Teaching History feature
In a letter from the British Foreign Secretary, A.J. Balfour, to Lord Rothschild, the Anglo-Jewish leader, on 2 November 1917, the British Government declared its intention to ‘facilitate' the ‘establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people'. The Balfour Declaration, as it became known, was endorsed by...
Polychronicon 143: the Balfour Declaration
