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Move Me On 92: Having problems teaching causation
The problem page for history mentors
This Issue's Problem: Melville Miles, student history teacher, is in Term 3 of his PGCE year. Melville has taught a number of excellent lessons in which he enabled pupils to reach high levels of historical understanding. His diagnostic assessment of pupils' work is unusually sophisticated for a PGCE student. Melville's...
Move Me On 92: Having problems teaching causation
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Modelling the discipline
Teaching History article
David Hibbert and Zaiba Patel decided to work together after becoming concerned that school history curricula might not enable students to interrogate popular British mythologising about World War II. Building on these pre-existing concerns, their collaboration with the historian Yasmin Khan yielded an Interpretations enquiry which asked students to consider...
Modelling the discipline
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My essays could go on forever: using Key Stage 3 to improve performance at GCSE
Teaching History article
History teachers are waking up to the fact that you cannot raise standards in GCSE by very much if you leave this work until Year 10. To leave it that late is to resort to surface, tactical moves rather than to address the deep reasons why so many pupils find...
My essays could go on forever: using Key Stage 3 to improve performance at GCSE
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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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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... migration and empire
A Polychronicon of the past
In autumn 2019, Kara Walker’s monumental sculpture, Fons Americanus, went on display in the Tate Modern, offering a poignant, troubling challenge to national commemoration. Walker depicts not the lingering vestiges of imperial glory, but sharks, tears, and haunted memories. She brings history into conversation with its contemporary legacies and engages...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... migration and empire
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Cunning Plan 175: Using the England's Immigrants database
Teaching History feature
Ever wondered if there is a streak of masochism in those designing A-level history syllabi? The absence of the Spanish Armada from the current Edexcel breadth study in favour of (among other delights) ‘the new draperies’ prompts this question. But the challenge of enthusing modern teenagers with woollen cloth can...
Cunning Plan 175: Using the England's Immigrants database
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The devil is the detail
Teaching History journal article
Like many history departments, Hugh Richards' department at Huntington School uses enquiry questions to structure their medium-term planning. Yet Richards noticed that his efforts to build knowledge across an enquiry by teaching macro-narratives as an unfolding story seemed to make it harder for some pupils to see and retain the...
The devil is the detail
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Helping Year 9 explore the cultural legacies of WW1
Teaching History article
A world turned molten: helping Year 9 to explore the cultural legacies of the First World War
Rachel Foster shows how her own study of cultural history led to a new dimension in her planning. She wanted to show her students not only that historians are interested in many different...
Helping Year 9 explore the cultural legacies of WW1
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New, Novice or Nervous? 155: Similarity & Difference
Teaching History feature
This page is for those new to the published writings of history teachers. Every problem you wrestle with, other teachers have wrestled with too. Quick fixes don't exist. But if you discover others' writing, you'll soon find - and want to join - something better: an international conversation in which...
New, Novice or Nervous? 155: Similarity & Difference
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A comparative revolution?
Teaching History Article
Although the curriculum changes of 2008 brought with them new GCSE specifications, Jonathan White was disappointed by the dated feel of some ‘Modern World' options, particularly the depth studies on offer. Drawing on his experience of teaching comparative history within the International Baccalaureate, and building on previous arguments in Teaching History...
A comparative revolution?
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Unravelling the complexity of the causes of British abolition with Year 8
Teaching History article
Elizabeth Marsay wanted to ensure that her students were not hindered in their causal explanations of the abolition of slavery by being exposed to overly categorical, simplistic, and monocausal narratives in the classroom. By drawing on both English and Canadian theorisation about causation, Marsay outlines how her introduction of competing...
Unravelling the complexity of the causes of British abolition with Year 8
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Northamptonshire in a Global Context
Key Stages 2 and 3
Produced by the Northamptonshire Black History Association and originally published in 2008, this is one of a set of resources for schools offering a more inclusive map of the past that includes an appreciation of Black History within the local, national and global context. The resources provide a range of opportunities to promote diversity within the curriculum....
Northamptonshire in a Global Context
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Frameworks for linking pupils' evidential understanding with growing skill in structured, written argument: the 'evidence sandwich'
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
History teachers are increasingly good at designing exercises which develop skill in evidence analysis. The ubiquitous ‘source' is invariably analysed for utility and reliability. But how do pupils integrate such understandings with extended written work?...
Frameworks for linking pupils' evidential understanding with growing skill in structured, written argument: the 'evidence sandwich'
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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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Taking control of assessment
Teaching History article
Ian Luff recognised that in a post-levels world efforts to devise new assessment systems risked replicating old problems or creating new ones. Drawing on his many years’ experience of teaching and school leadership Luff argues that for assessment in history to be truly useful to teachers and pupils it needs...
Taking control of assessment
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Assessment Without Levels
FAQs and Do's and Don'ts
The removal of level descriptions has generated some head-scratching, questions and conflict - especially when the adoption of a new whole school model does not seem to fit with recognised good practice for assessment and progression in history. Our FAQs guide will help to answer many of those frequently asked...
Assessment Without Levels
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Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime: using external support, local history and a group project to challenge the most able
Teaching History article
The most able can be challenged in a variety of ways and at a number of levels, from the extension question for the individual child to the extended enquiry for the most able class. In a Leading Edge History project, Guy Woolnough and his colleagues took the concept of challenge...
Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime: using external support, local history and a group project to challenge the most able
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Evidential understanding, period knowledge and the development of literacy: a practical approach to 'layers of inference' for Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
Claire Riley explains how she developed and improved the ‘layers of inference' diagram-already a popular device since Hilary Cooper's work-as a way of getting pupils fascinated by challenging texts and pictures. Working with the whole ability range in Year 9 she analyses her successes and failures, offering many practical suggestions...
Evidential understanding, period knowledge and the development of literacy: a practical approach to 'layers of inference' for Key Stage 3
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'I just wish we could go back in the past and find out what really happened': progression in understanding about historical accounts
Teaching History article
This is the second in a series of articles for Teaching History in which Peter Lee and Denis Shemilt share the findings of Project Chata (Concepts of History and Teaching Approaches). In their first article (see Edition 113), they questioned the wisdom of using the National Curriculum attainment target as...
'I just wish we could go back in the past and find out what really happened': progression in understanding about historical accounts
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Do's and Dont's in developing assessment practice
Article
Principles and practices to take forwardIn light of our experience since drafting our original plea for ‘Assessment without levels' and in the spirit of the new freedoms offered by the abolition of levels, we offer the series of principles and warnings set out in Figure 3. We hope that they...
Do's and Dont's in developing assessment practice
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Using timelines in assessment
Teaching History article
Bridging a twenty-year gap in their practice, Elizabeth Carr and Christine Counsell bring out the similarities in their use of timelines in their planning, teaching and assessment. What they also have in common is the fact that their experimentation with timelines as a way of strengthening cumulative knowledge emerged in...
Using timelines in assessment
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Helping students put shape on the past; systematic use of analogies to accelerate understanding
Teaching History article
One of the challenges facing pupils in the history classroom is conceptual understanding. Pupils also find it difficult to recognise themes or patterns across different parts of time and space. Ian Myson has recognised the importance of analogy as a way to facilitate pupils’ understanding. He is quick to recognise,...
Helping students put shape on the past; systematic use of analogies to accelerate understanding
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Agincourt 600
2016 Teacher Fellowship Programme
Course lead: Ian DawsonAcademic support: Prof Anne Curry, Prof Michael Hicks, Dr Dan Spencer
The inaugural Teacher Fellowship Programme was launched through funding provided by Agincourt 600 with the aim of providing rigorous, subject knowledge-focused professional development for teachers. It was led by Ian Dawson with a focus on the fifteenth...
Agincourt 600
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Building St James's spire: Louth's guilds and popular piety in the later middle ages
Virtual Branch Lecture Recording
Medieval historian Dr Claire Kennan continued our Virtual Branch series with a local history talk on the building of St James's spire, Louth.
In her talk Kennan traces the important role that Louth's major guilds of the Blessed Virgin Mary and Holy Trinity played in the building of the St James’s spire. Throughout the...
Building St James's spire: Louth's guilds and popular piety in the later middle ages
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Move Me On 168: teaching exam classes
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.
This issue’s problem: Robert Nivelle is nearing the end of his first (relatively long)...
Move Me On 168: teaching exam classes
