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Delivering school-based CPD as a history subject leader
HA Primary Subject Leader Area
This guide provides primary history subject leaders with clear, practical support for planning and delivering effective school‑based CPD, offering strategies for securing time, engaging all staff, and building consistency across the curriculum. It includes ideas for training activities, guidance on strengthening progression and assessment, and advice for leading confident, purposeful...
Delivering school-based CPD as a history subject leader
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Cunning Plan 144: promoting independent student enquiry
Teaching History feature
Getting students to generate their own questions can seem like a formidable challenge, even for experienced teachers with extensive subject knowledge developed over years of teaching. Imagine how much more alarming it appeared to a student-teacher being encouraged to take risks by handing more responsibility to the students. Could it...
Cunning Plan 144: promoting independent student enquiry
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Volunteers’ Week 2024
3-9 June 2024
It is that time of year when we want to say a big thank-you to all our volunteers. Volunteers and volunteering are essential for making the HA work the way it does. From our governance to our output, we rely on the time, expertise and goodwill of individuals from across...
Volunteers’ Week 2024
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Primary History 55: Doing Local History
The primary education journal of the Historical Association
Editorial
05 In my view: 'Be bloody, bold and resolute'. Two possible interpretations of 'Local History' - Colin Richards (Read article)
06 In my view: Doing local history - John Fines (Read article)
08 In my view: Local history for children: Through the eyes of a B. Ed. Student -...
Primary History 55: Doing Local History
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The Reign of Edward VI: An Historiographical Survey
Article
The modern historiography of this critical and disturbed six year period begins with the work of W.K. Jordan. Jordan was already a well established authority on the history of English philanthropy in the sixteenth and early seventeenth century, when he turned his attention specifically to Edward VI in the mid-1960s.
The Reign of Edward VI: An Historiographical Survey
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On-demand webinar series: Developing students’ historical thinking at A-level
HA webinar series for subject leaders and teachers of history at KS5
What does this series cover?
This webinar series will help you to support your A-level students to gain detailed knowledge of particular periods and to engage in rigorous historical thinking. The topics covered will include building students’ knowledge, developing students’ disciplinary understanding in order to help them construct arguments in...
On-demand webinar series: Developing students’ historical thinking at A-level
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Inspiring History Teaching Awards
Historic Royal Palaces launches brand-new Inspiring History Teaching Awards in association with the Historical Association
Entries to this year's awards have now closed. National and regional winners will be announced on Wednesday 25 March 2026. The awards ceremony will be held on Saturday 20 June 2026 at the Tower of London, where the overall winner will be announced.
Historic Royal Palaces’ launched the inaugural Inspiring History...
Inspiring History Teaching Awards
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Rigorous, meaningful and robust: practical ways forward for assessment
Teaching History article
How do we know how good our students are at history? For that matter, how precisely do we really know what ‘good' at history even means? Even harder, how does our assessment of our students' attainment fit in with the National Curriculum Levels for Key Stage 3? Simon Harrison has...
Rigorous, meaningful and robust: practical ways forward for assessment
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Making pupils want to explain: using Movie Maker to foster thoroughness and self-monitoring
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Sally Burnham shares her practice and reflections on the value of the software, ‘Movie Maker', for developing particular aspects of historical thinking and learning. In Teaching History 130, in the context of her Key Stage...
Making pupils want to explain: using Movie Maker to foster thoroughness and self-monitoring
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Primary History 80: Out now
HA journal news
Access Primary History 80 (Free to HA Primary members)
The Historical Association would never pretend that it understands what is the best primary history practice. On the contrary it recognises that such practice probably does not exist. Even outstanding ideas can turn into something disastrous if the teacher does not make...
Primary History 80: Out now
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From strategic routes to economic lifelines: the historical and contemporary importance of La Pintada
Article
In his work on the local history of his hometown in Panama, Miguel Elias Escobar Cornejo highlights the importance of understanding the geography of the historical sites we study. Here, he explains how a defensive route from the coast to the rugged mountain interior developed into one of the most important...
From strategic routes to economic lifelines: the historical and contemporary importance of La Pintada
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Extending Primary Children's thinking through artefacts
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
A research project was carried out with Maltese primary school children at San Andrea Infant and Middle school to see if learning strategies could accelerate pupils' cognitive development. The research involved a range of historical sources:...
Extending Primary Children's thinking through artefacts
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... schooling and the British Empire
Teaching History feature
The history of schooling and the British Empire encompasses a complex body of literature. Histories of formal education intersect with work on race, class and capitalism and link to adjacent fields such as histories of childhood. A basic contention shared throughout this field, however, is that there was a profound...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... schooling and the British Empire
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Out and About: Newcastle’s 1650 Witch Trial
Historian feature
A.D. Bergin’s research for a work of historical fiction led him to Newcastle, where one of the largest witch trials in English history took place in 1650. Despite the scale of the proceedings, the event remains much less well known than the infamous Pendle trials or Matthew Hopkins’ East Anglian witch hunts.
Out and About: Newcastle’s 1650 Witch Trial
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Disembarking the religious rollercoaster
Teaching History article
Sarah Jackson-Buckley and Jessie Phillips found themselves perennially dissatisfied with the outcomes of their teaching of the Protestant Reformation. Determined that students should take away a sense of the momentous political and social consequences of the Reformation, they turned to historical scholarship, and to the work of other history teachers on...
Disembarking the religious rollercoaster
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Film: Yeltsin - Early Life
Film Series: Power and authority in Russia and the Soviet Union
In this film, Dr Edwin Bacon (University of Lincoln) introduces us to the young Boris Yeltsin, a true product of the Stalinist years. He explores how a young Yeltsin caught the eye of the Communist officials, allowing him to work his way up from a civil engineer to the politburo. Dr...
Film: Yeltsin - Early Life
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Gift Membership
Historical Association Membership – the gift that lasts all year
Historical Association membership is the perfect gift for anybody who studies, teaches or simply has a love of history.
HA membership is not only a unique and personal gift but also helps to support the HA's work as a charity.
Call us on 0300 100 0223 to set up gift membership...
Gift Membership
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Windrush 75
6th June 2023
The ship the HMT Empire Windrush arrived into the UK on 22 June 1948. It carried 592 passengers from the Caribbean who were answering the UK Government’s call to fill jobs in Britain’s post-war economy. Between 1948–1971 many more Empire and Commonwealth citizens from the Caribbean islands would arrive in...
Windrush 75
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Broadening horizons: using cross-curricular conversations to support historical understanding
Teaching History article
Bettney and Ridley focus on the context in which we teach and in which our students learn and on history in the context of the whole school curriculum and in relation to education about personal development. Taking the example of learning about parliament, they explore how the history curriculum and the...
Broadening horizons: using cross-curricular conversations to support historical understanding
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Contribute an article to Teaching History
Contribute to our journals
Do you have an idea that you'd like to share with the Teaching History community? It's through member contributions that the HA maintains such a rich subject community – we'd love to hear from you!
Please don’t worry about being tentative, and please don’t worry if you have never written before! We really...
Contribute an article to Teaching History
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The Tudor Monarchy in crisis: using a historian's account to stretch the most able students in Year 8
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Contributors to this journal have long recognised that success in public examinations is at least partly achieved by carefully teaching in Key Stage 3. A critical component of A-Level is that students who wish to...
The Tudor Monarchy in crisis: using a historian's account to stretch the most able students in Year 8
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Meeting the historian through the text
Teaching History article
Edna Shoham and Neomi Shiloah describe a process by which they taught their 15-year-old students to read historians’ accounts for sub-text, meaning and assumptions. In its emphasis on ‘meeting the historian’, their work overlaps with much of the thinking about teaching pupils about historical ‘interpretations’ as specifically required by the...
Meeting the historian through the text
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Drop the dead dictator: a Year 9 newsroom simulation
Teaching History article
Rosalind Stirzaker has big ambitions for her students. She wants them to do more than make a simple list of the key causes of the Second World War. Yes, she wants them to complete a piece of written work, but she wants – and gets – a great deal more...
Drop the dead dictator: a Year 9 newsroom simulation
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Thinking from the inside: je suis le roi
Teaching History article
Dale Banham and Ian Dawson show how active learning deepens students’ understanding of attitudes and reactions to the Norman Conquest. At the same time they build a bold argument for active learning, including a direct strike at the two most common objections to it. Many teachers still see it as...
Thinking from the inside: je suis le roi
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An Investigation into Finding Effective Ways of Presenting a Written Source to Students
IJHLTR Article
International Journal of Historical Learning, Teaching and Research [IJHLTR], Volume 15, Number 1 – Autumn/Winter 2017ISSN: 14472-9474
Abstract
Written historical sources can be quite challenging for students to analyse in secondary school. They are sometimes long and tedious to read as well as containing difficult and awkward text. The presentation of...
An Investigation into Finding Effective Ways of Presenting a Written Source to Students
