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Interpretations of History: Issues for Teachers in the Development of Pupils' Understanding
Article
This article is based on collaborative work between staff at a University department of educational studies and a comprehensive school. Ian Davies and Rob Williams reviews the status and meaning of interpretations in history education and draws from work undertaken with students following an initial teacher education course in History,...
Interpretations of History: Issues for Teachers in the Development of Pupils' Understanding
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Triumphs Show 169: Using 360 VR Technology with the GCSE Historic Environment study
Teaching History feature: celebrating and sharing success
One of the biggest changes in the new GCSE specifications is the requirement for all students to undertake a study of the historic environment. Unsurprisingly the approach taken by the exam boards to this requirement varies widely. While some boards allow schools a free choice of site, others have decided...
Triumphs Show 169: Using 360 VR Technology with the GCSE Historic Environment study
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Looking through the keyhole at Birkenhead from 1900 to 1950 with Year 7
Journal article
Matt Jones wanted to harness the power of local history to help his students understand the profound social changes experienced across Britain in the first half of the twentieth century.
While he hoped that the personal stories of six families in Birkenhead would help to humanise abstract concepts such as...
Looking through the keyhole at Birkenhead from 1900 to 1950 with Year 7
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Hosting teacher development at historical sites: the benefits for classroom teaching
Journal article
Many previous contributors to Teaching History have demonstrated the power of site visits to stimulate young people’s engagement and enrich their understanding of history. It is usually assumed, however, that the young people themselves will have the opportunity to visit the site in question – an assumption that cannot always...
Hosting teacher development at historical sites: the benefits for classroom teaching
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Teaching History 104: Teaching the Holocaust
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
Special 64 page themed edition of Teaching History including: Uniqueness, redemption and the Shoah, Teaching pupils to reflect on significance, Teaching the Holocaust: the experience of Yad Vashem, Working as a team to teach the Holocaust: a langauge centred approach, Moral dilemmas, Challenging sterotypes and avoiding the superficial, Armenia and...
Teaching History 104: Teaching the Holocaust
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Move Me On 166: getting the right pitch for GCSE teaching
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: Bob Williams is struggling to get the pitch right in teaching topics at GCSE that the school previously taught to Year 7.
Bob Williams, now half way through his training year, is feeling very out...
Move Me On 166: getting the right pitch for GCSE teaching
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Cunning Plan 92: The Weimar Republic
Article
Teaching the Weimar Republic is rather like teaching the voyage of the Titanic. However much you stress the strengths of the Weimar vessel, they just can't wait to see it sink into the Nazi sea. I have found this problem to be so bad that many of them perceive the...
Cunning Plan 92: The Weimar Republic
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Cunning Plan 132: Year 7 and the new National Curriculum
Teaching History feature
How can we plan for a coherent Year 7 that makes the most of the new National Curriculum freedom and its almost limitless possible content? Answer: borders, boundaries (and books)
Please note: this article was published before the current 2014 National Curriculum.
Cunning Plan 132: Year 7 and the new National Curriculum
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Children's ideas about school history and why they matter
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Richard Harris and Terry Haydn recently carried out research funded by the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority into pupils' views and beliefs about history. Whilst the overall results were very encouraging (and more so than earlier,...
Children's ideas about school history and why they matter
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Triumphs Show 116: A practical way of teaching the complexities of ‘The Troubles’ at GCSE
Teaching History feature
Helping pupils to understand sectarian divisions in Northern Ireland is not easy. For pupils to comprehend the origins and complexities of ‘the Troubles’ they need a big picture. That big picture could be viewed as the interaction of three concepts: time, place and identity. If pupils can at least glimpse...
Triumphs Show 116: A practical way of teaching the complexities of ‘The Troubles’ at GCSE
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Shaping the debate: why historians matter more than ever at GCSE
Teaching History article
The question of how to prepare students to succeed in the examination while also ensuring that they are taught rigorous history remains as relevant as ever. Faced with preparing students to answer a question that seemingly precluded argument, Rachel Foster and Kath Goudie demonstrate how they used historical scholarship both to...
Shaping the debate: why historians matter more than ever at GCSE
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Polychronicon 115: historians and the Holocaust
Teaching History feature
Polychronicon was a fourteenth-century chronicle that brought together much of the knowledge of its own age. Our Polychronicon in Teaching History is a regular feature helping school history teachers to update their subject knowledge, with special emphasis on recent historiography and changing interpretation. This edition of 'Polychronicon' focuses on historians...
Polychronicon 115: historians and the Holocaust
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Triumphs Show 112: William Bent and family: a personal timeline of the Plains Wars
Article
Using the experiences of William Bent and his family in the 1860s, this resource was designed to develop different kinds of historical thinking. For example, it highlights what a turning point the Sand Creek massacre proved to be.
Triumphs Show 112: William Bent and family: a personal timeline of the Plains Wars
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Triumphs Show 111: Recreating 1930s Europe with the help of Year 9
Teaching History feature
Sally Evans demonstrates how constructing a map of Europe can enhance pupils' understandings on the causations of World War Two.
Triumphs Show 111: Recreating 1930s Europe with the help of Year 9
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Teaching History 94: Raising the Standard
Journal
Raising the Standard of History education. WW2 cemetries and twenty years of curriculum change, Ordinary pupils, extraordinary results: a structured approach to raising attainment at GCSE, Talk to your inspector: making the most of your history inspection, Stretching the very able student in the mixed ability classroom, Year 11 and...
Teaching History 94: Raising the Standard
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Triumphs Show 109: strengthening the quality and popularity of post-16 history
Teaching History feature
Why is it, I wonder, that Rednock students enjoy their history so much and why have so many opted for the subject at ‘AS’ Level? This new course, designed to bridge the gap between GCSE and ‘A’ Level, has allowed a new calibre of student to enrol. The ability range,...
Triumphs Show 109: strengthening the quality and popularity of post-16 history
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Stepping into the past: using images to travel through time
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Pupils are eternally curious about their teachers. Do they really have lives outside the classroom? Could Miss Jones have once been a child? Does she have parents and grandparents and a past of her own?...
Stepping into the past: using images to travel through time
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Redrawing the Renaissance - non verbal assessment in Year 7
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Matt Stanford is not exactly fed up of marking essays, but he could do with a change. His pupils, he realises, could too. History assessments have often been based on words - either the written...
Redrawing the Renaissance - non verbal assessment in Year 7
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Using The Wipers Times to build an enquiry on the First World War
Teaching History article
Teaching ‘the lesson of satire': using The Wipers Times to build an enquiry on the First World War
‘Blackadder for real' is how the British journalist and broadcaster, Ian Hislop, characterised The Wipers Time, the newspaper published on the front line by members of the 12th Battalion Sherwood, and recently brought...
Using The Wipers Times to build an enquiry on the First World War
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Direct teaching of paragraph cohesion
Teaching History article
How do we help pupils to write better paragraphs without actually doing it for them? How do we break down the process of essay writing into smaller steps without taking away pupils’ sense of the essay as a whole? How do we give lower-attaining pupils models, structures and frames without...
Direct teaching of paragraph cohesion
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New, Novice or Nervous? 154: Using historical scholarship in the classroom
Teaching History feature
As another World Book Day goes past, you have been watching the English department wax lyrical about all of the wonderful books that pupils might read. You know that there is a wealth of well-written historical scholarship out there for pupils to dive into, yet you are not sure about...
New, Novice or Nervous? 154: Using historical scholarship in the classroom
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Move Me On 144: Defines GCSE teaching in terms of a diet of practice exam questions
Teaching History feature
This issue's problem: Roger Wendover has come to define GCSE teaching in terms of a diet of practice exam questions.
Roger is a few weeks into his second placement and his mentor, John, has been taken aback by the rigid approach that he has adopted in teaching Year 10. John was...
Move Me On 144: Defines GCSE teaching in terms of a diet of practice exam questions
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A search beyond the classroom: using a museum to support the renewal of a scheme of work
Teaching History Article
How many times have you been to a museum or a historical building or a significant place and thought that you want to capture some of its essence to bring back to your pupils? The challenges of geography, risk, expense and staffing can all act as limitations in the planning...
A search beyond the classroom: using a museum to support the renewal of a scheme of work
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Move Me On 125: Lack of conceptual clarity
Teaching History feature
This Issue's Problem: Steve Cloye is over half way through his first main teaching placement and has been struggling with the PGCE. His degree was in American Studies, and although this included American history he lacks confidence in his subject knowledge, and particularly in his understanding of the nature of the...
Move Me On 125: Lack of conceptual clarity
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History's future: facing the challenge
Teaching History article
Trevor Fisher argues that pressures on our subject are now so intense and multi-faceted that a wider coalition is necessary if history is to fight back. Our difficulties are compounded, he suggests, by a lack of consensus and by acute lack of knowledge about school history among those who produce...
History's future: facing the challenge
