Diversity in the past

The materials in this section are all focused on the choices that teachers have to make about the substantive content of their curriculum. The diversity that all students encounter within the past – the range of specific individuals and groups of people about whom they learn – and the ways in which different topics are treated within the curriculum are known to impact on the extent to which young people engage with school history and on the connections that they see between past and present. The resources in this section illustrate different ways in which teachers have increased the diversity of their curriculum – paying more attention, for example, to women other than monarchs in the early modern period; examining the work of  Black British civil rights campaigners; or questioning the stereotype of the English ‘Tommy’ in examining who fought for Britain on the Western Front. Teachers will need to develop their own subject knowledge if they are to teach more diverse pasts and many of these resources help to provide some of that new knowledge or show where it can be found.

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  • Putting black into the Union Jack: weaving Black history into the Year 7 to 9 curriculum

    Article

    Making a passionate case for teaching Black British history in the secondary school curriculum, Hannah shares here the personal journey she has travelled in planning for Black British history in her curriculum. She cites her inspirations and offers striking examples to illustrate her rationale and approach to teaching this history....

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  • Reimagining the ‘Aba Riots’

    Article

    As an Early Career Teacher, Eleri Hedley-Carter set out to make the history she teaches in school more reflective of her undergraduate study of history – a discipline that strives to uncover a diverse past through various lenses and historical methods. In addition to expanding her school’s curriculum to include an...

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  • Representations of Empire: Learning through Objects

    Article

    Produced by the Northamptonshire Black History Association and originally published in 2008, this is one of a set of resources for schools offering a more inclusive map of the past that includes an appreciation of Black History within the local, national and global context. The resources provide a range of opportunities to promote diversity within the curriculum. Contents of...

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  • Seeing a different picture: exploring migration through the lens of 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...

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  • Sharing The Past: Northamptonshire's Black History

    Article

    Northamptonshire Black History Association Pub 2008; ISBN:978 0 9557139 1 0; £12.95 [+£2.30 p and p] from: NBHA, Doddridge Centre, 109 St James Road, Northampton, NN5 5LD. How fortunate Northamptonshire history teachers are! With the current emphasis on community cohesion and diversity in the New Secondary Curriculum, they are presented...

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  • Teaching Britain’s ‘civil rights’ history

    Article

    Hannah Elias and Martin Spafford begin this article by explaining why they believe it is essential for young people to learn about the ‘heterogeneous, rich and complex’ history of the struggle for civil rights in Britain. Drawing on their diverse experiences of researching, writing and teaching history at school and university...

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  • Teaching History 135: To They or Not To They

    Article

    02 Editorial 03 HA Secondary News 04 Drilling down: how one history department is working towards progression in pupils’ thinking about diversity across Years 7, 8 and 9 – Matthew Bradshaw (Read article) 13 Cunning Plan: The generalisation game - challenging generalisations (Read article) 16 Were industrial towns ‘death-traps’? Year...

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  • Teaching controversial issues...where controversial issues really matter

    Article

    This is the fourth in a series of Teaching History articles about teaching history in N orthern Ireland co-authored by Alan McCully. The first two articles (in editions 106 and 114) outlined teaching strategies to help pupils in N orthern Ireland understand and relate to complex and often controversial issues...

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  • Telling difficult stories about the creation of Bangladesh

    Article

    Nathanael Davies recognised that previous efforts to diversify the history taught at his school by weaving new stories into the curriculum had made little impression on his students’ assumptions about what really counted as history. Planning a new enquiry on the creation of Bangladesh was intended both to bridge a...

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  • The Hopi is different from the Pawnee: using a datafile to explore pattern and diversity

    Article

    Dave Martin identifies the factors which led to new knowledge and understanding in a mixed ability Year 7 class. Not only did these pupils acquire greater knowledge of the native peoples of North America, they also learned transferable techniques for identifying and analysing pattern and diversity. Clear learning objectives led...

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  • The T.E.A.C.H. Report

    Article

    The TEACH report outlines the sort of good practice in teaching sensitive topics which is available for teachers to share, not least through the Historical Association's programme of subject-specific training.

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  • Thinking beyond boundaries

    Article

    In October of last year, the Royal Historical Society (RHS) published an important report highlighting the racial and ethnic inequalities in the teaching and practice of history in the UK (RHS, 2018). Focused on history teaching at university, it nevertheless highlighted the need for thinking to occur at all levels...

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  • Thinking from the inside: je suis le roi

    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...

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  • Triumphs Show 148.1: collaborating to commemorate Olaudah Equiano

    Article

    How a drink in the bar at the SHP conference - and discovery of a shared interest in ICT - led to the campaign for a Blue Plaque for an eighteenth-century abolitionist. What do the 1970 Brazil World Cup-winning team, Charles Darwin and Vanilla Ice all have in common? This...

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  • Triumphs Show 156: Fresh perspectives on the First World War

    Article

    Year 9 think they know a lot about the First World War. After all, they read Michael Morpurgo's novel Private Peaceful in their English lessons all the way back in Year 7, they've seen Blackadder so many times they can recite it, and in the centenary year of the war's...

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  • Triumphs Show 167: Keeping the 1960s complicated

    Article

    During her PGCE year, it became evident to Rachel Coleman just how much pupils struggled with the complicated nature of history. They were troubled in particular by the lack of definitive answers, by the range of perspectives that might be held at the time of a particular event or development...

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  • Triumphs Show 170: making a place for fieldwork in history lessons

    Article

    Why ‘do’ local history? The new (grades 9–1) GCSE specifications place a lot of importance on the local environment. The rationale for this is to get students to situate a site in its historical context, and to examine the relationship between local and national developments. Initially this change was the...

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  • Triumphs Show 173: Teaching Black Tudors

    Article

    I am ashamed to admit that, until recently, my teaching of black history did not go beyond schemes of work on the transatlantic slave trade and the civil rights movement in the USA. This all changed in November 2017 when I heard Dr Miranda Kaufmann on the ‘BBC History Extra’...

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  • Triumphs Show: Diversifying the curriculum at A-level

    Article

    There is a wealth of literature arguing for the importance of accommodating a wide range of perspectives and experiences in school history curricula. Many have contended that it is crucial to include the stories of those traditionally omitted from historical records in order to teach history well. Others have emphasised...

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  • Triumphs Show: Recovering the queer history of Weimar Germany in GCSE history

    Article

    Berlin staged its first Christopher Street Day celebration in 1979. This queer pride event commemorated the Stonewall riots that took place a decade earlier in New York City, and it has continued to be a popular annual event in Germany. Its celebration of a landmark moment in American history, however,...

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