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How ‘good’ are Key Stage 3 textbooks in supporting the teaching of the Holocaust?
Teaching History article
Convinced of the value of a good textbook as a teaching and learning resource, Alex Diamond set out to understand teachers’ thinking about Holocaust textbooks and what it would be for a textbook to represent Holocaust history adequately. As Diamond’s discussion shows, this is a multi-faceted issue. Evaluating textbook representation involves reflecting...
How ‘good’ are Key Stage 3 textbooks in supporting the teaching of the Holocaust?
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... the impact of the English Reformation
Teaching History feature
Since the first stirrings of religious reform in the sixteenth century, people have been writing the history of the Reformation, debating what happened and why it happened. John Foxe arguably became the first historian of the English Reformation when he published Actes and Monuments in 1563. Better known as ‘The...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... the impact of the English Reformation
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Using the present to construct a meaningful picture of the medieval past
Teaching History article
In this article, Jessica Phillips returns to a theme explored in the Historical Association’s publication Exploring and Teaching Medieval History in Schools – the challenge of teaching about the medieval past in ways that acknowledge its vibrant complexity and create a genuine sense of resonance rather than condescension or blank...
Using the present to construct a meaningful picture of the medieval past
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Year 7 challenge stereotypes about the Mexica
Teaching History article
After discussing a new book about the Mexica (Aztecs) during a routine meeting with a trainee teacher, Niamh Jennings decided to construct a sequence of lessons around the history of the Mexica Empire. Struck by the vivid storytelling of historian Camilla Townsend in her book Fifth Sun, and fascinated by...
Year 7 challenge stereotypes about the Mexica
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Bringing Rwanda into the classroom
Teaching History article
A short 20 years: meeting the challenges facing teachers who bring Rwanda into the classroom
As the twentieth anniversary of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda approaches, Mark Gudgel argues that we should face the challenges posed by teaching about Rwanda. Drawing on his experience as a history teacher in the...
Bringing Rwanda into the classroom
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Building and assessing a frame of reference in the Netherlands
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Concerns about our ability to equip young people with a frame of reference that they can actually use to orient themselves in time are widespread. The challenges were extensively debated within the last issue of...
Building and assessing a frame of reference in the Netherlands
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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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Inventing race? Using primary sources to investigate the origins of racial thinking in the past
Teaching History article
Having been given some additional curriculum time, Kerry Apps and her department made decisions about what had been missing in the previous curriculum diet. Building on an existing enquiry (in TH 176), Apps decided to focus on how and when the idea of race in its modern sense developed in early modern...
Inventing race? Using primary sources to investigate the origins of racial thinking in the past
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In pursuit of shared histories: uncovering Islamic history in the secondary classroom
Teaching History article
In 2005, in a Teaching History article entitled, ‘A need to know’, Nicolas Kinloch built an argument for teaching the history of Islamic civilisations to all pupils. Afia Chaudhry returns to this theme, reflecting deeply on the needs of her own students – Muslim and non-Muslim alike – within a...
In pursuit of shared histories: uncovering Islamic history in the secondary classroom
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Knowledge and the Draft NC
Teaching History article
Silk purse from a sow's ear? Why knowledge matters and why the draft History NC will not improve it
Katie Hall and Christine Counsell attempt to construct a Key Stage 3 scheme of work out of the draft National Curriculum for history that was released for consultation in England in...
Knowledge and the Draft NC
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‘One big cake’: substantive knowledge of the mid-Tudor crisis in Year 7 students’ writing
Teaching History article
While looking to revamp his department’s Year 7 enquiry on the Tudors, Jack Mills turned to historiographical debates regarding the ‘mid-Tudor crisis’ to inform his curricular decision making. In doing so, Mills noted that the debate hinged on interpretations of substantive concepts such as ‘crisis’. He therefore also drew on previous...
‘One big cake’: substantive knowledge of the mid-Tudor crisis in Year 7 students’ writing
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Potential and pitfalls in teaching 'big pictures' of the past
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Jonathan Howson summarises findings from the recent ESRC funded research project - Usable Historical Pasts - and suggests how its insights might inform continuing professional debate and enquiry concerning both frameworks and ‘big pictures'.
In...
Potential and pitfalls in teaching 'big pictures' of the past
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Historical reasoning in the classroom
Teaching History article
Historical reasoning in the classroom: What does it look like and how can we enhance it?
The history education community has long recognised that historical thinking depends on the interplay between substantive knowledge about the past and the procedural, or second-order, concepts that historians use to construct, shape and give...
Historical reasoning in the classroom
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Move Me On 181: navigating the challenges of learning to teach history with visual impairment
Teaching History feature
Fiona Tait, a trainee with visual impairment, was unsure how she would navigate the challenges of learning to teach history...
This feature of Teaching History 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...
Move Me On 181: navigating the challenges of learning to teach history with visual impairment
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‘What is history?’ Africa and the excitement of sources with Year 7
Teaching History article
Many history departments choose to begin their Year 7 curriculum with an introduction to the nature of history and the processes in which historians engage as they develop, refine and substantiate claims about the past. In this article, Adbul Mohamud and Robin Whitburn report on an such an introductory unit, designed with a specific focus on the history...
‘What is history?’ Africa and the excitement of sources with Year 7
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Building local history into the curriculum
Teaching History article
Neil Bates and Robert Bowry have chosen to tackle the issue of curriculum coherence by including local history, both as starting point for new students joining the school in Year 7 and as a golden thread running throughout their Key Stage 3 curriculum. In this article they explain the rationale...
Building local history into the curriculum
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What’s The Wisdom On... history assessment?
Teaching History feature
Between 1991 and 1995, secondary history teachers in England and Wales had something of a collective awakening about assessment. It followed a huge policy shift in history education: history’s first National Curriculum, rolled out in 1991.
What's the Wisdom On... is a short guide providing new history teachers with an overview...
What’s The Wisdom On... history assessment?
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Move Me On 167: Frames of reference
Teaching History feature
This feature is designed to build critical, informed debate about the character of teacher training, teacher education and professional development.
This issue’s problem: Eleanor Franks doesn’t really understand her students’ frames of reference and the difficulties that many of them have in making sense of the particular historical phenomena she is teaching them about.
Eleanor Franks,...
Move Me On 167: Frames of reference
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What’s The Wisdom On... Extended writing
Teaching History feature
Writing history is hard! But the things that make it challenging are the things that make it worth doing. They are also the key to enabling all students to write, to embrace the challenge and to enjoy its rewards enough to keep going. A big mistake is to kid ourselves...
What’s The Wisdom On... Extended writing
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Unnatural and essential: the nature of historical thinking
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Sam Wineburg's work, in particular his groundbreaking Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts (2001), has a great deal to teach us about the discipline of history, the nature of historical education, and the specific cognitive framework...
Unnatural and essential: the nature of historical thinking
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Unravelling the complexity of the causes of British abolition with Year 8
Teaching History article
Elizabeth Marsay wanted to ensure that her students were not hindered in their causal explanations of the abolition of slavery by being exposed to overly categorical, simplistic, and monocausal narratives in the classroom. By drawing on both English and Canadian theorisation about causation, Marsay outlines how her introduction of competing...
Unravelling the complexity of the causes of British abolition with Year 8
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What’s The Wisdom On... Extended Reading
Teaching History feature
Why, in a history lesson (or out of a history lesson; let’s say, for a homework perhaps) might we want pupils to read more than a paragraph, to stay with the text, to actually read? We don’t mean plucking facts from information boxes, nor ploughing through four comprehension questions. We...
What’s The Wisdom On... Extended Reading
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Diversifying the curriculum: one department’s holistic approach
Teaching History article
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,...
Diversifying the curriculum: one department’s holistic approach
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Historical and interdisciplinary enquiry into the sinking of the Mary Rose
Teaching History article
The raising of Henry VIII’s warship, the Mary Rose, from the sea bed set in train an extraordinary programme of interdisciplinary research, relentlessly pursuing the clues to Tudor life and death provided by the remains of the ship, its cargo and crew. In this article Clare Barnes offers fascinating insights...
Historical and interdisciplinary enquiry into the sinking of the Mary Rose
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Pedagogy, politics and the profession
Teaching History article
History curriculum reform proposals and debates are a persistent feature of the contemporary educational landscape in England and, very probably, a ‘sign of the times' that can reveal a great deal about contemporary predicaments and concerns. History curriculum controversy is also a global phenomenon and one that can fruitfully -and,...
Pedagogy, politics and the profession
