-
Bringing psychology into history: why do some stories disappear?
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
History is always a relationship between the present and the past and the meaning of the past shifts as values and events change in the present. In this article Anne Llewellyn and Helen Snelson use...
Bringing psychology into history: why do some stories disappear?
-
Move Me On 91: work with historical sources lacks focus
The problem page for history mentors
Problem: Mike Jones, student history teacher, is half-way through his PGCE year. He is making unusually good progress in his knowledge, understanding and practice with regard to the use of sources in history. He also appears to have no difficulty with classroom management and relationships with pupils. He easily creates...
Move Me On 91: work with historical sources lacks focus
-
Lengthening Year 9’s narrative of the American civil rights movement
Teaching History article
Inspired by reading the work of Stephen Tuck, Ellie Osborne set out to design a new sequence of lessons that would help her students adopt a longer lens on the American civil rights movement. At the same time, Osborne wanted to put more emphasis on the agency and campaigns of activists,...
Lengthening Year 9’s narrative of the American civil rights movement
-
Maybe they haven't decided yet what is right: English and Spanish perspectives on teaching historical significance
Teaching History article
Historians and history teachers understand well that students, when they ‘answer’ questions, are creating their own interpretation. We take account of this in our teaching too: we do not pretend that, beyond the level of the simplest closed questioning, there is ever a ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ answer approach to history....
Maybe they haven't decided yet what is right: English and Spanish perspectives on teaching historical significance
-
Cunning Plan 114: building overview understanding of 19th-century social history
Teaching History feature
This five-lesson sequence gradually builds overview understanding of aspects of 19th century social history through a depth study of the campaigner and reformer, Josephine Butler. Through the sequence, pupils build on earlier work on historical significance, first, by reviewing their understanding of the huge range of reasons why things get...
Cunning Plan 114: building overview understanding of 19th-century social history
-
Move Me On 105: Teaching historical interpretations
Teaching History feature
This Issue's Problem: Charles Marks, PGCE history student, is very confused about teaching historical interpretations.
Move Me On 105: Teaching historical interpretations
-
New, Novice or Nervous? 160: Progression in evidential understanding
Teaching History feature
You have a wealth of fascinating sources you would love to explore with students but despair at their seeming inability to connect ‘source work' with the construction of historical claims. Year 7 get stuck in the ‘it's biased so we can never know' trap again and again. Year 9 students...
New, Novice or Nervous? 160: Progression in evidential understanding
-
Triumphs Show 148.2: using pupil dialogue to encourage engagement with sources
Teaching History feature
Using pupil dialogue to encourage sophisticated engagement with source material - even at GCSE!
Frustrated by the mechanistic approach that their pupils were using when working with historical sources, Tim Jenner and Paul Nightingale sought to experiment with a method of teaching sources which eschewed practice source questions in favour...
Triumphs Show 148.2: using pupil dialogue to encourage engagement with sources
-
The particular and the general
Teaching History article
When your pupils use terms such as ‘king’ and ‘Parliament,’ what image do they have in their head? Do they know what they are talking about at all? Do they have a nuanced, period-specific vision of what these terms mean in the context of their current historical studies, and of...
The particular and the general
-
The knowledge illusion
Teaching History article
Focusing on students’ attempts to explain the relative significance of different factors in Hitler’s rise to power, Catherine McCrory explores the vexed question of why students who seem able to express necessary historical knowledge on one occasion cannot effectively reproduce it on another. Drawing on a detailed analysis of what...
The knowledge illusion
-
Polychronicon 135: Post-modern Holocaust Historiography
Teaching History feature
The field of Holocaust studies has been hit by an intellectual earthquake whose precise magnitude and long-term consequences cannot be ascertained at this stage. In 2007 Saul Friedländer published The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews 1939-1945. The book has been rightly celebrated as the first victim-centred synthetic history...
Polychronicon 135: Post-modern Holocaust Historiography
-
Learning and teaching about the history of Europe in the twentieth century
Teaching History article
In the first of our special, extra ‘Europages’, funded by the Council of Europe (CoE), Mark McLaughlin briefly outlines the purpose and outcomes of a CoE project on ‘learning and teaching about the history of Europe in the twentieth century’. His short article reminds all history teachers of the need...
Learning and teaching about the history of Europe in the twentieth century
-
Triumphs Show 138: a kinaesthetic interpretation of Dover castle
Teaching History feature
Licking the stones: a kinaesthetic interpretation of Dover castle in 360 degrees
This is the story of one history department that, in collaboration with a local historical site, embarked on a ‘curriculum co-development project' with the art department. The aim was to use learning experiences outside the classroom to bring...
Triumphs Show 138: a kinaesthetic interpretation of Dover castle
-
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... the impact of the British Empire on Britain?
Teaching History feature
The murder of George Floyd during the summer of 2020 and the ongoing ‘culture war’ in Britain over the legacy of the British Empire have reignited interest in imperial history. This focuses, in particular, on the question of the empire’s impact on Britain itself: on how the act of conquering...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... the impact of the British Empire on Britain?
-
The return of King John: using depth to strengthen overview in the teaching of political change
Teaching History article
Dale Banham's article in Teaching History 92, ‘Getting ready for the Grand Prix: learning to build a substantiated argument in Year 7' has influenced much debate about extended writing. It has been influential way beyond the history education community. It also raised new questions about the management of historical content....
The return of King John: using depth to strengthen overview in the teaching of political change
-
Seeing a different picture: exploring migration through the lens of history
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Rosie Sheldrake and Dale Banham here share the results of their desire to use the curriculum changes which are upon us to do something which they had intended for some time. Their modern world study...
Seeing a different picture: exploring migration through the lens of history
-
Looking through a Josephine-Butler shaped window: focusing pupils' thinking on historical significance
Teaching History article
Christine Counsell draws upon her recent work in developing definitions and practice concerning pupils' thinking about historical significance. Here she tries out those ideas in relation to the 19th century campaigner against the Contagious Diseases Acts, Josephine Butler. Counsell explains why she developed her own set of criteria for structuring...
Looking through a Josephine-Butler shaped window: focusing pupils' thinking on historical significance
-
What made your essay successful? I ‘T.A.C.K.L.E.D' the essay question!
Teaching History article
Teaching in Singapore, Tze Kwang Teo cannot conceive of a history teacher unfamiliar with the mnemonic ‘PEE' (or ‘PEEL') used to structure students' essays. Its ubiquity is testimony to its power, reminding students both to explain and to substantiate their claims. Yet, as Foster and Gadd have argued, its neat formulation can restrict and distort historical thinking. Building on their critique, Teo argues that the focus of PEE/L...
What made your essay successful? I ‘T.A.C.K.L.E.D' the essay question!
-
History and the perils of multiculturalism in 1990s Britain
Teaching History article
Ian Grosvenor's article points both to dangers and to positive potential in the National Curriculum for history. Critical of the published proposals for history in the current curriculum review, he points not only at the continuing narrowness of the perspectives enshrined by the proposed curriculum but at the reasons why...
History and the perils of multiculturalism in 1990s Britain
-
Triumphs Show 133: Getting more pupils choosing History at GCSE
Teaching History feature
It is often remarked that history is under pressure nationally at GCSE. Our history numbers have never been enormous, and we have recently gone down from 2 sets to one set. The crunch came in 2007 when we collapsed to a dismal 12 students. A variety of factors may have...
Triumphs Show 133: Getting more pupils choosing History at GCSE
-
Carr, Evans, Oakshott and Rudge: the benefits of AEA history
Teaching History article
Sometimes the only way to go beyond the exam is to take another, more difficult, test. For the top—the very top—A2 students, there is such a test available. The Advanced Extension Award [AEA] is a history paper which encourages students finishing their school careers to think about history in a...
Carr, Evans, Oakshott and Rudge: the benefits of AEA history
-
Why Gerry likes history now: the power of the word processor
Article
Ben Walsh argues that many teachers of history completely miss the point of the word processor. Criticising those who use it merely for 'typing up' he reminds us that the purpose of the word processor, as with any other resource, is to teach good history. He analyses the types of...
Why Gerry likes history now: the power of the word processor
-
When did humans take over the world?
Teaching History article
How can we bring climate change into our classrooms without making it ‘small’? Peter Langdon tackled this question by drawing on a ‘big history’ approach to design an enquiry that allowed his students to think about the relationship between humans and climate throughout the whole history of our species. Langdon’s...
When did humans take over the world?
-
Exploring diversity at GCSE
Teaching History article
Having already reflected on ways of improving their students' understanding of historical diversity at Key Stage 3, Joanne Philpott and Daniel Guiney set themselves the challenge of extending this to post-14 students by means of fieldwork activities at First World War battlefields sites. In addition, they wanted to link the study...
Exploring diversity at GCSE
-
"...someone might become involved in a fascist group or something...": pupils' perceptions of history at the end of Key Stages 2, 3 and 4
Teaching History article
In contrast with earlier studies which presented a bleak picture of the impact of history teaching, Paul Goalen presents a small-scale study that is optimistic. For pupils in three schools at least, the history teaching of the late 1990s seems to be winning through. Goalen argues that the National Curriculum...
"...someone might become involved in a fascist group or something...": pupils' perceptions of history at the end of Key Stages 2, 3 and 4
