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From Norwich to Nara
Historian article
Simon Kaner explores the fascinating parallels revealed by the international research project From Nara to Norwich between life and religious belief at the ends of the Silk Roads.
Nara is the ancient capital region of Japan. The eighth century imperial treasury, the Shōsōin, with its treasures from China and central Asia, is...
From Norwich to Nara
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The year without a summer and other cautionary tales
Primary History article
Susie Townsend explores the story of the Tambora volcanic explosion of 1815 and the catastrophic effect that this had on climate around the world. She uses contemporary accounts and images to set the scene. She demonstrates how this one event far away in Indonesia affected climate across the whole world....
The year without a summer and other cautionary tales
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Rescuing assessment from ‘knowledge-rich gone wrong’
Teaching History article
Christine Counsell sets out her concerns about the effects on history teaching of recent trends in secondary assessment practice. Situating her analysis within a long-term story of interplay between government policy, classroom practice and school leadership responses to inspection, Counsell sees new distortions emerging in the name of knowledge. She argues...
Rescuing assessment from ‘knowledge-rich gone wrong’
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Maximising the power of storytelling in the history classroom
Teaching History article
James Hopkins’s Year 10 class had been excited by their course on medicine through time, but were less enthused about their new study of Norman England. They told him that the topic felt ‘distant’ and ‘not real’. Recalling his own experience as a student, Hopkins was interested in the ways...
Maximising the power of storytelling in the history classroom
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The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
Historian article
The Nazis came to power in 1933 with an openly racist and antisemitic set of policies. In the years leading up to the start of the Second World War, those policies were carried out through legislation and governmental actions, with the support of many members of German society. Once the war started,...
The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide
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Imagining cities: exploring historical sites as contested spaces
Teaching History article
Geraint Brown and Matt Stanford share the daunting challenge and intriguing opportunities that are presented by leading a school history trip to a site as complex as Berlin. That the city is a palimpsest, layered with stories and tissued with conflicting identities, experiences and meanings, makes planning a trip extremely...
Imagining cities: exploring historical sites as contested spaces
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Broadening horizons: using cross-curricular conversations to support historical understanding
Teaching History article
Bettney and Ridley focus on the context in which we teach and in which our students learn and on history in the context of the whole school curriculum and in relation to education about personal development. Taking the example of learning about parliament, they explore how the history curriculum and the...
Broadening horizons: using cross-curricular conversations to support historical understanding
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Arctic aspirations: Britain and Icelandic independence, 1917–18
Historian article
As it sought independence, Iceland gained a new significance for Britain during the latter stages of the First World War, writes Ben Markham.
At the turn of the twentieth century, Iceland was not an independent country. Isolated in the North Atlantic Ocean, it was nonetheless considered an integral part of...
Arctic aspirations: Britain and Icelandic independence, 1917–18
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Move Me On 191: using sources in lessons
Teaching History feature
Move Me On is designed to build critical, informed debate about the character of teacher training, teacher education and professional development. It is also designed to offer practical help to all involved in training new history teachers. Each issue presents a situation in initial teacher education/training with an emphasis upon...
Move Me On 191: using sources in lessons
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Primary History summer resource 2023: Early civilisations
Primary member resource
Our free summer resource for 2023 is intended to enhance your subject knowledge about ancient civilisations. We have selected two articles from the HA journal The Historian that provide you with an insight into current historical knowledge.
The first article includes Sumer, Indus, Shang and Egypt, early civilisations that are identified in...
Primary History summer resource 2023: Early civilisations
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What is so important about interpretations?
Primary History article
Tim Lomas explores one of the key disciplinary concepts that form part of school history – that of interpretations and representations. This has been a staple of the National Curriculum since its inception. While many schools have a successful approach to it, others struggle. In this article Tim Lomas discusses its...
What is so important about interpretations?
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Bringing historical method into the classroom
Teaching History article
Shortly before their final A-level examination, Peter Turner was alarmed to discover some fundamental weaknesses in his Year 13 students’ understanding of the nature of historical interpretations. Determined to address this concern at a much earlier point with his next cohort of students he developed a new six-lesson enquiry. His...
Bringing historical method into the classroom
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Exploring the relationship between historical significance and historical interpretation
Teaching History article
Jane Card’s previous work on the power of images in conveying particular interpretations and her advice about how to use visual material effectively in classrooms will be familiar to readers of Teaching History. In this article she focuses specifically on the capacity of visual representations to convey a compelling message about the...
Exploring the relationship between historical significance and historical interpretation
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Move Me On 190: taking questions about historical significance
Teaching History feature
Move Me On is designed to build critical, informed debate about the character of teacher training, teacher education and professional development. It is also designed to offer practical help to all involved in training new history teachers. Each issue presents a situation in initial teacher education/training with an emphasis upon...
Move Me On 190: taking questions about historical significance
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Pull-out posters: Primary History 93
Coronations
Poster 1: What continuities and change can you see in coronations from the distant to recent past?
Poster 2: Some objects used or presented at a coronation
Pull-out posters: Primary History 93
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Baghdad: what were its connections across the medieval world?
Primary History article
Baghdad of the Abbasid Caliphate was an architectural marvel, a round city protected by huge walls and surrounded by an intricate canal system. At the centre lay the caliph’s palace with a cupola of green, and the Great Mosque. The city was a series of concentric circles. The surrounding walls were over 240...
Baghdad: what were its connections across the medieval world?
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Significance
Primary History article
What makes a person or event significant? When looking at the past, some people or events stand out in our minds. Individuals such as Florence Nightingale or Walter Tull at Key Stage 1 or events such as the Blitz at Key Stage 2 may have particular resonance. However, if we...
Significance
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Triumphs Show: ‘The Strands of Memory’
Teaching History feature
In 2014, a group of French pupils from Lycée Léopold Sédar Senghor in Évreux was due to meet a British Second World War veteran, Eric Rackham, to hear him talk about his war experiences. Sadly, he passed away before the planned meeting. Paradoxically, this failed meeting led to the development...
Triumphs Show: ‘The Strands of Memory’
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Communities of inquiry: creating the conditions for meaningful collaboration
Teaching History article
When Will Bailey-Watson (a history ITE tutor) and Charlie Crouch (a history PhD student) worked together to improve a history undergraduate course at their university, they realised that the benefits of collaboration between teachers and historians can flow both ways. In this article they offer an account of how they sought...
Communities of inquiry: creating the conditions for meaningful collaboration
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Triumphs Show: The BeBold Network
Teaching History feature
In April 2019, I was in a bit of a rut. My enquiry questions and lesson sequences seemed stale. I felt like I had been at my school for too long. To mix things up, I secured a new role for September at a start-up school.
Full of excitement, I...
Triumphs Show: The BeBold Network
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Using metaphor to highlight causal processes with Year 13
Article
Alarmed by his students’ random use of causal language in their essays, James Edward Carroll resolved to help his students improve their understanding of causal processes. Carroll decided to introduce his students to the metaphors that historians use to describe causation in the historiography of the Salem witch trials. By modelling...
Using metaphor to highlight causal processes with Year 13
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How museum collections make ancient Egypt, and the people who lived there, real
Primary History article
It’s a safe bet that ancient Egypt is one of the most exciting topics on the primary history curriculum. But that can come with misunderstandings of a complex 3,000-year-long history and an accomplished group of people, embedded by the sensationalised, gory, and othering approach often shown when ancient Egypt features...
How museum collections make ancient Egypt, and the people who lived there, real
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Historical learning using concept cartoons
Teaching History article
Although perhaps unfamiliar to the majority of our readers, concept cartoons are not a new educational tool. Christoph Kühberger here lays out his rationale for using this technique, borrowed from science education, in history teaching. Concept cartoons provide a means for pupils to express such difficult historical concepts as the...
Historical learning using concept cartoons
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Year 7 use oral traditions to make claims about the rise and fall of the Inka empire
Teaching History article
As part of her department’s effort to diversify the history curriculum, Paula Worth began a quest to research and then shape a lesson sequence around the Inkas. Her article shows how she allowed the new topic and its historiography to challenge and extend her own use of sources, particularly oral tradition....
Year 7 use oral traditions to make claims about the rise and fall of the Inka empire
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Ancient Athenian inscriptions in public and private UK collections
Historian article
Peter Liddel introduces us to a rich source of historical information and encourages us to make some purposeful visits to museums.
From the seventeenth to the mid nineteenth century, travellers from the UK explored the Mediterranean lands of ancient civilisations in search of trophies that demonstrated the achievements of the classical world. Highly...
Ancient Athenian inscriptions in public and private UK collections
