Substantive concepts are those concerned with the subject matter of history – the substance about which students are learning. Some of these concepts (such as Calvinism or Menshivism) are highly specific to a particular period or place – and it is easy to recognise that their meaning needs to be explicitly taught. Other concepts (such as Puritanism or Bolshevism) that originated in specific contexts may come to be applied more widely, so that students’ more general awareness of their meaning can obscure a lack of precision in their historical knowledge. Others (such as ‘the Church’ or ‘revolution’) have a much wider application and are applied in many contexts other than history. In dealing with this final category, teachers need not only to ensure that students understand their meaning, rather than simply assuming that they do because they are works in common usage; they also need to plan for learning about how that meaning changes over time and in different contexts. The materials in this section are concerned with concepts operating at all these levels: some focus on the teaching of highly specific contextualised terms and others explore more general strategies for building and reinforcing knowledge of recurring concepts over time.

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You can find an introduction to key articles by history teachers  and educational researchers about teaching substantive concepts here...