The focus of this section is the teaching and learning of substantive knowledge, sometimes referred to as ‘content’ or ‘historical content’. Material in this section addresses history teachers’ work of choosing and blending, as well as embedding and using, pupils’ substantive knowledge.  It is called ‘substantive knowledge’ in order to distinguish it from ‘second-order knowledge’ (or disciplinary thinking and processes).

The section organises material on substantive knowledge into four categories: In  Substantive concepts, you will find articles which, together, show the traditions of teaching pupils concepts such as ‘power’ and ‘authority’ and period-specific concepts such as ‘peasantry’, ‘parliament’ or ‘communism’.  In Chronology, you will find articles that focus on teaching pupils to understand, retain and use basic temporal structures, such as dates and periods, that give them their moorings in a temporal frame of reference. In Long-term knowledge plans, we include material on planning for knowledge to grow over time.  Long-term planning is an important part of this section because history teachers have thought hard about how one kind of knowledge strengthens another, across the early secondary years, so that the limited curriculum time available can be best used. Many have addressed the difficult challenge of building broad knowledge by the time pupils leave compulsory history at 13 or 14, or as a foundation for moving onto further historical study.  Finally, in Making knowledge secure you will find a guide to articles focusing on retention of knowledge over time.

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