-
Significance - Powerpoint Presentation - Changes in the KS3 Curriculum
Article
What is historical significance?The starting quote is taken from the address of Michael Spinney to the Independent Association of Prep Schools. His comments are typical of those that have been made in national political and education fora ever since the introduction of a history National Curriculum. At their heart is...
Significance - Powerpoint Presentation - Changes in the KS3 Curriculum
-
Films: Careers with history
Multipage Article
History can open the door to a wide variety of careers and not just the obvious ones. Apart from being very interesting, history is very practical and teaches you vital skills that employers value. You can find out more about how history can help your career here.
At the HA,...
Films: Careers with history
-
Riots, railways and a Hampshire hill fort: Exploiting local history for rigorous evidential enquiry
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Rigorous historical enquiry is integral to effective history teaching. The 2008 National Curriculum has recognised its importance by giving it a broader definition as a key process to include not only the use of historical...
Riots, railways and a Hampshire hill fort: Exploiting local history for rigorous evidential enquiry
-
Primary History regular features
Multipage Article
Primary History magazine runs a number of useful regular features for primary teachers and history coordinators, including Ideas for Assemblies, One of my Favourite History Places and pull-out posters for the primary classroom. You can access and download current and previous editions of these via the links below.
Primary History regular features
-
Filmed Lecture: Medlicott Lecture 2025 - Dr Christine Counsell
Dr Christine Counsell
The Historical Association's Medlicott Medal 2025 was awarded to Dr Christine Counsell. The award seeks to recognise individuals from a diversity of backgrounds in their service to history. Read more about Christine, her work and her award here.
As is the custom, Dr Christine Counsell received her award and presented her...
Filmed Lecture: Medlicott Lecture 2025 - Dr Christine Counsell
-
Teaching History regular features
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
Teaching History includes a number of regular features for secondary history teachers. On these pages you can access all recent and many older editions of each of these features:
What's the Wisdom On provides a short guide to an aspect of history teaching.
What have historians been arguing about... (formerly Polychronicon) aims to help...
Teaching History regular features
-
Film series: History and SEND
Multipage Article
Do you struggle to engage your lower attaining or EAL pupils in their history lessons? Are you finding it difficult to ensure and demonstrate progression in history with these pupils?
In this series of five short films Sue Temple, assistant programme lead (BA hons and early years) at the university...
Film series: History and SEND
-
Beyond 'I speak, you listen boy!' Exploring diversity of attitudes and experiences through speaking and listening
Teaching History article
What is historical rigour in a speaking and listening activity? How do we make sure that a direct focus on improving the quality of pupils’ classroom talk is, at the same time, a focus upon strengthening historical knowledge, skill and understanding? For while it is possible to make a very...
Beyond 'I speak, you listen boy!' Exploring diversity of attitudes and experiences through speaking and listening
-
The importance of history
Article
The importance of history: Powerpoint presentation from the Regional Subject CfBT/HA ConferencesStarting point. Creating a departmental vision.The construction of any curriculum begins with questions about the purpose and philosophy of the curriculum. The new orders for history offer departments a ready made statement of history's importance and purpose.
The importance of history
-
DfE clarifies reference to enquiry-based learning
8th August 2018
Following the Department of Education’s recent call for pilot schools to bid for Curriculum Development Funds, the Historical Association (HA) sought clarification specifically connected to disciplinary understanding. Within the guidance, the DfE sets out its criteria for programmes, one of which is that they should be structured on the basis of...
DfE clarifies reference to enquiry-based learning
-
AS & A2 History
Article
My complaints about the new AS/A2 specifications have been reported elsewhere,1 but below I outline my main concerns regarding the new examination system, which I see as a missed opportunity to introduce a 16-19 History curriculum that meets the needs of young people in the twenty-first century. The Curriculum 2000...
AS & A2 History
-
Literacy and Oracy in History
Multipage Article
Argument is at the heart of history. The historically literate student can argue. Historical speaking and writing is about presenting an evidence-based argument, even when producing a narrative. History students need to bring together knowledge of different kinds to form an argument. They need to know how to defend and...
Literacy and Oracy in History
-
Local history and a sense of identity
Article
The history co-ordinator often finds some real challenges as well as opportunities in addressing local history in primary schools. The advantages are well rehearsed – making history relevant to the lives of the children and giving them an improved sense of identity and place through engagement with the ‘real thing’....
Local history and a sense of identity
-
Developing effective collaboration between schools and universities
Teaching History article
Sarah Longair launched a collaborative project between school history teachers and university historians in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic. In this article, Longair and her teacher colleagues, Kerry Milligan and Emma McKenna, share how they used online collaboration to develop a flexible and practical approach to school–university collaboration, and...
Developing effective collaboration between schools and universities
-
Using museum and heritage sites to promote higher-level learning at KS2
Primary History article
The Key Stage 2 Primary History Curriculum sets ambitious challenges for pupils: "…They should regularly address and sometimes devise historically valid questions about change, cause, similarity and difference, and significance. They should construct informed responses that involve thoughtful selection and organisation of relevant historical information. They should understand how our knowledge...
Using museum and heritage sites to promote higher-level learning at KS2
-
An attempt to make Year 9 Masters of Learning
Teaching History article
‘Much to learn you still have!' An attempt to make Year 9 Masters of Learning
How can history teachers structure learning pathways through historical content in ways that engage and challenge all pupils, that enable them to work at an appropriate pace and that also encourage pupils to self-assess and...
An attempt to make Year 9 Masters of Learning
-
On-demand webinar: Avoiding confusion with cause and consequence in primary history
Avoiding confusion and challenging misconceptions in primary history
Avoiding confusion and challenging misconceptions in primary history
Session 2: Avoiding confusion with cause and consequence in primary history
This practical webinar will identify what confuses pupils in the teaching of the disciplinary concept of cause and consequence and will show how such confusion and misconceptions can be avoided and...
On-demand webinar: Avoiding confusion with cause and consequence in primary history
-
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
-
Exploring murals and graffiti in modern Ukraine
Historian article
Kateryna Petrova explores the history and evolution of street art, especially graffiti and murals in Ukraine from the Soviet era to the present day. She traces the transformation of street art from a forbidden and persecuted activity to one coordinated with city authorities and embraced by the public. She also...
Exploring murals and graffiti in modern Ukraine
-
Adaptive teaching and scaffolding in history
On-demand course for secondary history teachers and subject leaders
This autumn, as part of our regular termly CPD offer, the Historical Association is proud to launch this five-part, pre-recorded webinar series. It will equip teachers to anticipate barriers that history students may face in reading, writing, processing explanations and vocabulary and then to address them by using subject-specific scaffolds,...
Adaptive teaching and scaffolding in history
-
The Historian 10
The magazine of the Historical Association
3 Feature: Henry Vll's Dynastic Hieroglyphs, Sydney Anglo
10 Local History: Industrial Archaeology, Marilyn Palmer
14 Westminster Diary: The Importance and Content of History Teaching, Ralph Dauis
15 Update: Chartism, Peter Searby
19 Report: History and Higher Education, Michael Biddiss
21 Personalia: Profile of Henry Loyn
31 Spotlight: Malmesbury, Nigel...
The Historian 10
-
Developing sixth-form students' thinking about historical interpretation
Teaching History article
Understanding historical interpretation involves understanding how historical knowledge is constructed. How do sixth formers model historical epistemology? In this article Arthur Chapman examines a small sample of data relating to sixth form students' ideas about why historians construct differing interpretations of the past. He argues that understanding interpretation requires students to...
Developing sixth-form students' thinking about historical interpretation
-
Chronology through ICT
Primary History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum.
Introduction: Research into chronological understanding
Chronological understanding is both one of history's most important disciplinary organising concepts (Lee and Shemilt: 2004) required for developing a full understanding of history, and certainly one of the most researched, though often with a broader remit...
Chronology through ICT
-
Teaching history as a non-specialist
An induction course providing essential support for non-specialists teaching Key Stage 3 and GCSE history
Are you teaching history without a history background? Whether you’re an RS, geography, or general humanities teacher picking up some Key Stage 3 history – or have found yourself unexpectedly teaching a bit of GCSE – this flexible, supportive induction course is designed just for you.
With a series of...
Teaching history as a non-specialist
-
Dealing with the consequences
Teaching History journal article
Do GCSE and A-level questions that purport to be about consequences actually reward reasoning about historical consequences at all? Molly-Ann Navey concluded that they do not and that they fail to encourage the kind of argument that academic historians engage in when reaching judgements about consequences. Navey decided that it...
Dealing with the consequences
