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Exploring the importance of local visits in developing wider narratives of change and continuity
Rethinking religious rollercoasters
The authors of this article take a well-known structural framework for students’ thinking about the Reformation and give it a twist. Their Tudor religious rollercoaster is informed by local visits in their setting in Guernsey – an area where the local picture was not quite the same as the national...
Exploring the importance of local visits in developing wider narratives of change and continuity
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Teaching History 174: Structure
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
02 Editorial (Read article)
03 HA Secondary news
04 HA update
08 Austin’s narrative: an exploratory case study, with Year 8, into what kinds of feedback help students produce better historical narratives of the interwar years – Alex Rodker (Read article)
16 Cunning Plan: Teaching Year 8 to create and...
Teaching History 174: Structure
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Questions to help you review your KS3 curriculum
Guidance for history teachers
This resource is free to everyone. For access to our library of high-quality secondary history materials along with free or discounted CPD and membership of a thriving community of history teachers and subject leaders, join the Historical Association today
With Ofsted incorporating curriculum into inspections from September 2019 and finally...
Questions to help you review your KS3 curriculum
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Hidden in plain sight: the history of people with disabilities
Teaching History journal article
Recognising the duty placed on all teachers by the 2010 Equality Act to nurture the development of a society in which equality and human rights are deeply rooted, Helen Snelson and Ruth Lingard were prompted to ask whether their history curricula really reflected the diverse pasts of all people in...
Hidden in plain sight: the history of people with disabilities
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Secondary Committee biographies
Information
Find out more about the HA's committees here
Sally Burnham (committee chair)
Sally is a history teacher in a school in Lincolnshire and also works one day a week at the University of Nottingham on the History PGCE. Sally has been a Head of Department and is now a Lead...
Secondary Committee biographies
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Webinar series: Making substantive and disciplinary knowledge work together in the secondary history curriculum
HA on-demand webinar series for secondary history teachers
The last few years have, rightly, seen a lot of discussion about 'what' we include in the history curriculum. This has meant that many schools now teach a wider-ranging and more inclusive form of history. As this work has an impact, it is important to continue to think about how...
Webinar series: Making substantive and disciplinary knowledge work together in the secondary history curriculum
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‘Its ultimate pattern was greater than its parts’
Teaching History journal article
Identifying the challenges his students faced both with recall and analysis of the content they had learned for their GCSE course, Ed Durbin devised a solution which focused not on exam skills and revision lessons, but on using Key Stage 3 to build the ‘hinterland’ of contextual knowledge and causal...
‘Its ultimate pattern was greater than its parts’
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Couching counterfactuals in knowledge when explaining the Salem witch trials with Year 13
Teaching History journal article
Puzzled by the shrugs and unimaginative responses of his students when asked certain counterfactual questions, James Edward Carroll set out to explore what types of counterfactual questions would elicit sophisticated causal explanations. During his pursuit of the ‘gold standard’ of counterfactual reasoning, Carroll drew upon theories of academic history in...
Couching counterfactuals in knowledge when explaining the Salem witch trials with Year 13
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Ralph Sadleir: Hackney's Local Hero or Villain: Examples of learning opportunities in museums and historic sites at Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
The benefits of learning in historical sites and museums are well documented. De Silva, Smith and Tranter wrote in Teaching History 102, Inspiration and Motivation Edition, about exploring identity through the biography of a house, suggesting the possibility of teaching from the local to capture the national picture. However, students...
Ralph Sadleir: Hackney's Local Hero or Villain: Examples of learning opportunities in museums and historic sites at Key Stage 3
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Recorded webinar series: Jane Austen and Georgian England
Multipage Article
New session announced for 22 September. Dr Anthony Delaney will be discussing his new book 'Queer Georgians', weaving together the stories of individuals who dared to defy societal norms, while delving into archives and court records to uncover the tragedies and triumphs of queer life three centuries ago.
Find out more...
Recorded webinar series: Jane Austen and Georgian England
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History Teacher Development Programme
Spring 2026 cohort
The History Teacher Development Programme is an online course aimed at history teachers who want to re-focus their attention on teaching ambitious and rigorous history.
Are you a relatively new teacher coming to the end of your ECT years?
Are you a more experienced teacher who wants to re-engage with...
History Teacher Development Programme
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History Teacher Development Programme
Autumn 2025 cohort
The History Teacher Development Programme is an online course aimed at history teachers who want to re-focus their attention on teaching ambitious and rigorous history.
Are you a relatively new teacher coming to the end of your ECT years?
Are you a more experienced teacher who wants to re-engage with...
History Teacher Development Programme
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History-specific support – for every career stage
Information
Register for the HA's SLT newsletter for more
Our biannual SLT newsletter will give you up-to-date information and support on managing history including updates on current issues, priorities and policy issues. Register here
Subject-specific support is an essential investment in your teaching staff, equipping them with the knowledge and...
History-specific support – for every career stage
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Popular revolt and the rise of early modern states
Historian article
In the 1960s and 1970s, historians and sociologists who were not specialists in the Middle Ages constructed models of pre-industrial crowds and revolt to understand the distinctiveness of modern, post-French Revolutionary, Europe. Foremost among these scholars were George Rudé, a historian of eighteenth century England and France, and Charles Tilly,...
Popular revolt and the rise of early modern states
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Corporate secondary membership: a view from SLT
By Simon Harrison, Headteacher
From history teacher to Headteacher, in over 25 years of teaching I have filled most school roles; history teacher, in the ‘middle’ as a subject leader, an Advanced Skills Teacher, senior leader and eventually Headteacher. I have learned a lot about leadership in Secondary Schools along the way, and becoming...
Corporate secondary membership: a view from SLT
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Looking through the keyhole at Birkenhead from 1900 to 1950 with Year 7
Journal article
Matt Jones wanted to harness the power of local history to help his students understand the profound social changes experienced across Britain in the first half of the twentieth century.
While he hoped that the personal stories of six families in Birkenhead would help to humanise abstract concepts such as...
Looking through the keyhole at Birkenhead from 1900 to 1950 with Year 7
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Defying the ‘constrictive grip of typologies’
Journal article
History teachers have frequently made recourse to character cards as a device to help young people, each assigned specific roles, to understand how different kinds of people responded in different ways to particular situations in the past.
Edward FitzGerald builds on this tradition, demonstrating the value of using rich historical...
Defying the ‘constrictive grip of typologies’
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“They Ought to Know the Achievements of the Ancient Greeks”
IJHLTR Article
International Journal of Historical Learning, Teaching and Research [IJHLTR], Volume 15, Number 1 – Autumn/Winter 2017ISSN: 14472-9474
Abstract
This paper focus on the role of archaeology and material culture in supporting national narratives for younger generations, examining the ideas and perceptions of prospective teachers of Greek Primary Education. Firstly, the contribution...
“They Ought to Know the Achievements of the Ancient Greeks”
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The Past, the Present and the Future of the Economic Crisis, through Greek Students’ Accounts of their History
IJHLTR Article
International Journal of Historical Learning, Teaching and Research [IJHLTR], Volume 15, Number 1 – Autumn/Winter 2017ISSN: 14472-9474
Abstract
This is an analysis of 97 written questionnaires given to university students’, prospective teachers’. Students were asked first to narrate the Greek state’s history, second to make predictions about the future. It took...
The Past, the Present and the Future of the Economic Crisis, through Greek Students’ Accounts of their History
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HA Blog Watch
Selected history education blogs
We've collated some of the best history education blogs here. The list isn't exhaustive so if there is a great history education blog out there that is not on this list – let us know!
One Big History Department
HA Secondary Committee blog
One Big History Department (OBHD) has been...
HA Blog Watch
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Using sites for insights
Teaching History article
Working alongside local history teachers to prepare for the new GCSE specifications Steve Illingworth and Emma Manners were struck that many teachers were concerned about two issues in particular: the breadth and depth of knowledge demanded and new forms of assessment, especially the historic environment paper. In this article they...
Using sites for insights
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History Teacher Development Programme
Spring 2025 cohort
The History Teacher Development Programme is an online course aimed at history teachers who want to re-focus their attention on teaching ambitious and rigorous history.
Are you a relatively new teacher coming to the end of your ECT years?
Are you a more experienced teacher who wants to re-engage with...
History Teacher Development Programme
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Guidance Pack: Building a Local Teacher Network
Information
We know that it is difficult for teachers to get to events too far from school. As a national charity, the HA recognises the importance and need to build strong regional networks for the history teaching community. Many of these are already existing or organically growing across the country at...
Guidance Pack: Building a Local Teacher Network
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Polychronicon 167: The strange career of Richard Nixon
Teaching History feature
If you know just one thing about the career of the 37th President of the United States, it is likely to be this: Watergate. Nixon’s resignation in August 1974 was caused by his decision to cover up a burglary at the Democratic Party’s campaign headquarters for the 1972 election, which...
Polychronicon 167: The strange career of Richard Nixon
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Cunning Plan 167: teaching the industrial revolution
Teaching History article
‘Disastrous and terrible.’ For Arnold Toynbee, the historian who gave us the phrase ‘industrial revolution’, these three words sum up the period of dramatic technological change that took place in Britain across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We may not habitually use Toynbee’s description in the classroom, but it is...
Cunning Plan 167: teaching the industrial revolution
