Those of us in the U.K. know that many of our pupils finish their entire historical education without a satisfactory grasp of basic substantive concepts as they are used in history. Do all our low-attaining or ‘low ability’ 14-year-olds who are pressured to drop history at 14 really emerge with an adequate understanding of a term such as Church or Parliament, democracy or imperialism? I doubt it very much. Even where the teacher has made excellent use of the limited curriculum time available, exposing pupils to a good range of stories and events, it seems unlikely that many of our pupils are surfacing with a sufficiently sophisticated understanding of these words to be able to debate politics, read a newspaper critically or understand a literary use of an historical reference. In many schools, the majority - perhaps the most needy majority - will just slip through the net. (Indeed, even a few of that minority of students lucky enough to continue history to 16 or of the tiny minority of very successful students who continue it to 19 may still operate with weak, narrow or inflexible definitions that do not serve them well.) This is why the work of teacher-trainers Haenen, Schrijnemakers and Stufkens deserves serious consideration. Drawing upon their knowledge of problems that many pupils similarly experience in Dutch history classrooms, they have built models for teaching pupils concepts that start with prior knowledge and that require pupils to process, elaborate, reflect upon and contest meanings, rather than simply receiving’ them as immutable definitions to be poorly understood and swiftly forgotten. Crucially, they have carried out their work in the context of initial teacher-education courses. In this article they share their methods for helping trainee teachers to gain a deeper understanding of pupils’ difficulties with historical concepts. They also illustrate ways of blending theory and practice in building the practical skill of new history teachers.