In this article, Dan Lyndon-Cohen makes the case that history departments should move from diversifying the curriculum to decolonising it. After reflecting on some examples of how he made the content of his lessons more representative, he explores how the influence of writers such as Michel-Rolph Trouillot and Emma Dabiri...

Danielle Donaldson’s history department was already working within a professional culture that sought opportunities for making the history curriculum diverse and representative. Responding to wider debates within and beyond the history education community, however, the department began to ask fresh questions about what it meant to decolonise a curriculum. Donaldson...

History teachers have frequently made recourse to character cards as a device to help young people, each assigned specific roles, to understand how different kinds of people responded in different ways to particular situations in the past. Edward FitzGerald builds on this tradition, demonstrating the value of using rich historical...

The Association for Historical Dialogue and Research (AHDR) is a Cyprus-based organization that works to foster dialogue among history teachers and other educators across the divide in Cyprus. In one of their UN-funded projects, ADHR members worked with UK colleagues to shape a lesson sequence and resources on the Ottoman period...

Developing Year 8 students' conceptual thinking about diversity in Victorian society Elizabeth Carr writes here about a new scheme of work she developed to teach students about diversity in Victorian society. When dealing with a concept such as diversity, it can be easy for students to slip into stereotypes based...

Disabled people are part of the fabric of every society past and present, yet the stories, achievements and struggles of disabled people have often been hidden or marginalised by societies who refuse to adapt. Coping with disability, societal attitudes towards disability and the stories, voices and contributions of disabled people...

In this article, Theo Woods shares the experience of one history department as they embarked on a substantial process of curriculum review and development. The department sought to address concerns that the range of history taught in their school, across the full seven years of students’ secondary experience, was too ‘traditional,...

Categories Diversity: general | Race and ethnicity | Empire and decolonisation | Transatlantic slavery | Non-European | Migration and immigration | Women's history | Working-class history | LGBTQI+ | Disability & accessibility | Gypsy, Roma & Traveller history | Teaching controversial issues | Inclusion and SEND Please note that this is a...

Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people are the largest minority ethnic group in some communities (and therefore in some schools) in the UK.  Richard Kerridge and Helen Snelson have worked with the historian Professor Becky Taylor to produce a range of teaching resources for teaching the history of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller...

Do we need another hero? Year 8 get to grips with the heroic myth of the Defence of Rorke's Drift in 1879 Mike Murray shares a lesson sequence in which his students examined changing interpretations of the Battle of Rorke's Drift in 1879. Building on earlier work on teaching interpretations...

Matthew Bradshaw shares the early, tentative efforts of his history department to shape a new Key Stage 3 workscheme in the light of the 2008 National Curriculum for England. While his department's scheme is designed to secure progression in all conceptual areas, he chooses to focus here on the concept...

Richard Kerridge and Helen Snelson present a brief sequence of lessons using the life of the Gypsy woman Mary Squires as a way into the changes of industrialising Britain. More significantly, they also present a compelling rationale for why history teachers should be slotting in the stories of Gypsy, Roma...

Andrew Wrenn shows how a study of the life of Olaudah Equiano can support pupils’ historical learning in a number of ways. Not only is this a ‘little story’ that can help to illuminate or raise questions about the the ‘big picture’, it can also help pupils to reflect upon...

Wrestling with diversity: exploring pupils' difficulties when arguing about a diverse past How can we develop students' ability to argue about diversity? Sarah Black explores this question through classroom research that set out to help students think in complex ways about diversity, drawing on Burbules' work on conceptualising difference and...

Taking new historical research into the classroom: getting medieval (and global) at Key Stage 3 Although history teachers frequently work with academic historical writing, direct face-to-face encounters with academic historians are rare in secondary history classrooms. This article reports a collaboration between an academic historian and a history teacher that...

A host of histories: helping Year 9s explore multiple narratives through the history of a house Described by the author Monica Ali as a building that ‘sparks the imagination and sparks conversations', 19 Princelet Street, now a Museum of Diversity and Immigration, captivated the imagination of teacher David Waters. He...

A school-designed, post-14 course on multi-cultural Britain since 1945  Robin Whitburn and Sharon Yemoh describe the design of a school-generated GCSE course on the challenges that British people faced in forging a multicultural society in post-imperial Britain. Drawing on their own research into their students' experience, they build a discipline-based case...

Recognising the duty placed on all teachers by the 2010 Equality Act to nurture the development of a society in which equality and human rights are deeply rooted, Helen Snelson and Ruth Lingard were prompted to ask whether their history curricula really reflected the diverse pasts of all people in...

Here is a wonderful reminder of the richness of materials available to history teachers. With ever greater emphasis being placed on different learning styles, it is a good moment to remind ourselves that we can cater for virtually all of them in our classrooms. This includes a preference for learning...

How my interest in what I don't teach has informed my teaching and  enriched my students' learning Flora Wilson argues here for the importance of maintaining a fascination with history as an academic subject for experienced, practising history teachers. Just as medical professionals keep their knowledge up to date by...