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Why history is the future: the centrality of historical thinking in the AI age
Teaching History article
Many young people, aware of the rapid development and widespread use of generative forms of artificial intelligence, assume that the knowledge and skills they will need to navigate their future bear little relationship to those offered by the study of history. In response to these assumptions, Kieran Lavis and Katharine Burn...
Why history is the future: the centrality of historical thinking in the AI age
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... The role of digital archives
Teaching History feature
Archives and the use of primary sources sit at the heart of working or studying within the discipline of history. In the twentieth century, digital humanities, and more specifically digital history, emerged as a discipline or sub-discipline alongside the development of computerised library systems, though its roots lie in the...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... The role of digital archives
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What’s The Wisdom On… using material culture in the classroom?
Teaching History feature
How often do you refer to objects in the classroom? When did you last explore with your pupils the materiality of past lives? The ‘material turn’ in historical research and scholarship opens up different lines of enquiry and different kinds of history from those revealed by documentary evidence. It can...
What’s The Wisdom On… using material culture in the classroom?
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Look again: teaching about disability in history
Teaching History article
After listening to a talk by historian Phillipa Vincent-Connolly and following this up with reading about disability in history, Alex Fairlamb examined her own department’s teaching to consider how effectively it included narratives of disabled people. This was the beginning of a productive journey. She concluded that much more needed to be...
Look again: teaching about disability in history
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Triumphs Show: Seeing consequences in 3D
Teaching History feature
‘You think you’ve found a way to help our Year 7s explain historical consequence?’ My head of department sounded intrigued. ‘View them as shockwaves!’ I exclaimed. ‘Just like Boba Fett’s ship in Star Wars!’ My head of department raised an eyebrow.
It was September 2024, and I had just joined...
Triumphs Show: Seeing consequences in 3D
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Rethinking citizenship through the history classroom, a global perspective
Teaching History article
Teaching history and politics in an international school in Beijing, Andrew Carey found himself in a position to reflect on the teaching of citizenship in schools, particularly the concepts involved in global citizenship. He describes how global citizenship is integrated into schemes of work for a concept-based humanities course in...
Rethinking citizenship through the history classroom, a global perspective
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Move Me On: what adjustments are reasonable to accommodate a trainee’s neurodivergence?
Teaching History feature
Move Me On is designed to build critical, informed debate about the character of teacher training, teacher education and professional development. It is also designed to offer practical help to all involved in training new history teachers. Each issue presents a situation in initial teacher education/training with an emphasis upon...
Move Me On: what adjustments are reasonable to accommodate a trainee’s neurodivergence?
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Virtual Branch recording: The Maginot Line
Article
Why did the the Maginot Line – that marvel of 1930s engineering with its miles of fortifications and bunkers to deter German invasion – fail so spectacularly in 1940?
Its vast underground forts were designed to withstand artillery and chemical attack, yet France fell in just six weeks, leaving the Line as a symbol...
Virtual Branch recording: The Maginot Line
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Teaching History 203: Connecting Pieces
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
03 Editorial (Read article)
04 HA Secondary News
06 HA Update
08 Why history is the future: the centrality of historical thinking in the AI age – Kieran Lavis and Katharine Burn (Read article)
14 Using histories of Jewish–Muslim relations to challenge misconceptions and highlight hidden histories in the teaching...
Teaching History 203: Connecting Pieces
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Recorded webinar: What is digital literacy – and why history sits at the centre of it
Historical thinking in a digital world: how history builds digital and media literacy
Session 1: What is digital literacy – and why history sits at the centre of it
This session establishes a shared, research-informed definition of digital literacy and distinguishes related terms (media literacy, information literacy, critical digital literacy, data literacy). Drawing on frameworks including Eshet-Alkalai’s six-component model (photovisual, reproduction, information, branching, socio-emotional,...
Recorded webinar: What is digital literacy – and why history sits at the centre of it
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Recorded webinar: Holocaust Landscapes (Teach Environmental Histories Network)
Teach Environmental Histories Network meeting, January 2026
We all know that historical events take place somewhere, but how important is that somewhere - and especially its materiality - in enabling or hindering or shaping those events? That is a question that historian Tim Cole has been asking vis-a-vis the Holocaust.
In this meeting of the Teach Environmental...
Recorded webinar: Holocaust Landscapes (Teach Environmental Histories Network)
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Nurturing aspirations for Oxbridge
Teaching History article
An exploration of the impact of university preparation classes on sixth-form historians
Frustrated by the low numbers of students from her comprehensive state school who expressed any interest in applying to Oxford or Cambridge to study history, Lucy Hemsley set out to explore ways in which she might both inspire...
Nurturing aspirations for Oxbridge
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On-demand webinar: Supporting the whole pupil: building confidence and inclusion in GCSE history
Webinar series: Making GCSE history accessible: supporting all learners at Key Stage 4
Webinar series: Making GCSE history accessible: supporting all learners at Key Stage 4
Session 3: Supporting the whole pupil: building confidence and inclusion in GCSE history
Presenter: Gemma Hargraves
This session explores some of the hidden barriers faced by neurodivergent pupils in the history classroom, including anxiety and low self-confidence....
On-demand webinar: Supporting the whole pupil: building confidence and inclusion in GCSE history
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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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On-demand webinar: Making it stick: enhancing memory retention for pupils with SEND in GCSE history
Webinar series: Making GCSE history accessible: supporting all learners at Key Stage 4
Webinar series: Making GCSE history accessible: supporting all learners at Key Stage 4
Session 2: Making it stick: enhancing memory retention for pupils with SEND in GCSE history
Presenter: Dale Banham
This session explores how to help SEND learners retain historical knowledge by applying research-informed strategies that reduce cognitive overload...
On-demand webinar: Making it stick: enhancing memory retention for pupils with SEND in GCSE history
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On-demand webinar: Literacy for historical thinking: supporting reading and writing at GCSE history
Webinar series: Making GCSE history accessible: supporting all learners at Key Stage 4
Webinar series: Making GCSE history accessible: supporting all learners at Key Stage 4
Session 1: Literacy for historical thinking: supporting reading and writing at GCSE history
Presenter: Catherine Priggs
This session explores the essential literacy skills required to engage effectively with history at Key Stage 4. Participants will examine the unique...
On-demand webinar: Literacy for historical thinking: supporting reading and writing at GCSE history
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'Victims of history': Challenging students’ perceptions of women in history
Teaching History article
As postgraduate historians with teaching responsibilities at the University of York, Bridget Lockyer and Abigail Tazzyman were concerned to tackle some of the challenges reported by their students who had generally only encountered women’s history in a disconnected way through stand-alone topics or modules. Their response was to create a...
'Victims of history': Challenging students’ perceptions of women in history
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... the impact of the English Reformation
Teaching History feature
Since the first stirrings of religious reform in the sixteenth century, people have been writing the history of the Reformation, debating what happened and why it happened. John Foxe arguably became the first historian of the English Reformation when he published Actes and Monuments in 1563. Better known as ‘The...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... the impact of the English Reformation
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How foundational concepts, supporting concepts and concrete examples can help untangle the past at Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
A central organising principle of any curriculum is the substantive concepts that underpin it. They provide a secure structure and enable students to develop deep understanding through multiple encounters with essential abstract ideas that are given concrete form in different historical contexts. Identifying the different levels or tiers to which different...
How foundational concepts, supporting concepts and concrete examples can help untangle the past at Key Stage 3
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Making substantive concepts (do the) work
Teaching History article
Several years back, Alistair Dickins and Tommy-James Alexander realised they wanted to incorporate explicit consideration of substantive concepts into their Key Stage 3 teaching, to enable students to make sense of and order information about the past and to offer students a usable language that would support their historical reasoning. In reality,...
Making substantive concepts (do the) work
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Cunning Plan 202: interdisciplinary teaching of landscape through time
Teaching History feature
From a young age I have been fascinated by the history of the landscape. Family holidays in the Lake District offered early encounters with the past that did not come mediated through textbooks, but through place. Driving over Dunmail Raise, my father would point out that the ancient ruler, Dunmail...
Cunning Plan 202: interdisciplinary teaching of landscape through time
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Using turning points in anti-racist history to explore historical significance at Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
In this article, Joel Sharples explains the organising principles that underpinned his planning for a new enquiry sequence inspired by a local photography exhibition. The exhibition’s title ‘Brick Lane 1978: The Turning Point’ prompted him to think afresh about the idea of ‘a turning point’ – a concept that he...
Using turning points in anti-racist history to explore historical significance at Key Stage 3
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Exploring a logical conceptualisation of continuity with Year 9 pupils
Teaching History article
As a PGCE student, Miles Eades confronted the challenge of teaching about change and continuity. Reflecting on scientific, mathematical and sociological conceptualisations of change as a constantly occurring process led him to reconsider the common characterisation of continuity in history as the opposite of or absence of change. Eades set...
Exploring a logical conceptualisation of continuity with Year 9 pupils
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... piracy and empire in the early modern world
Teaching History feature
The topic of early modern global piracy has attracted increasing scholarly attention in recent decades, partly due to its own intrinsic interest and, it must be said, its entertainment value. However, historians have also explored its connections with broader themes such as empire and colonisation, social history, global economic networks,...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... piracy and empire in the early modern world
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Reshaping students’ understanding of empire
Teaching History article
In interviews with GCSE students across a range of school contexts, Abigail Branford found that many young people regarded Africa as an economic ‘dead zone’ prior to colonial intervention. This conception, as Branford briefly illustrates, is at profound odds with current historical scholarship; yet it persists. In seeking to support history...
Reshaping students’ understanding of empire
