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Emotional response or objective enquiry? Using shared stories and a sense of place
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
In this article, Andrew Wrenn explores some issues that teachers might consider when supporting 14 and 15 year olds in their study of war memorials as historical interpretations. Tony McAleavy has argued that ‘popular' and...
Emotional response or objective enquiry? Using shared stories and a sense of place
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Planning and teaching linear GCSE
Teaching History article
Planning and teaching linear GCSE: inspiring interest, maximising memory and practising productively
As proposed changes to the National Curriculum are furiously debated, and details of future changes to GCSE are anxiously awaited, history teachers in England are already wrestling with the implications of one change to the public examination system:...
Planning and teaching linear GCSE
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Move Me On 135: Not sure where to draw boundaries when handling sensitive issues
Teaching History feature
This Issue's Problem: Cathy Mompesson is uncertain where to draw the boundaries when teaching sensitive issues.
A recent Year 9 visit to the Imperial War Museum has left Cathy Mompesson confused about the relationship between moral and historical objectives in her teaching. Her placement school visits the museum every year,...
Move Me On 135: Not sure where to draw boundaries when handling sensitive issues
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Teaching History 29
Journal
Editorial, page 2
Notes on Contributors, page 3
The Assassination of John F. Kennedy - Keith Hodgkinson and Michael Long, page 3
Notes and news, page 7
Primary School Children's Preception of Authenticity and Time in Historical Narrative Pictures - John West, page 8
A Course in Local History Tonbridge...
Teaching History 29
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Vive la France! A comparison of French and British history teaching, with practical suggestions from across La Manche
Teaching History article
It is possible for teachers to learn a great deal within their own classrooms, departments and schools. However, stepping outside that daily experience, whether by reading a journal, contributing to a web debate or attending a conference, can always provide refreshing ideas. Evelyn Sweerts takes the concept of sharing good...
Vive la France! A comparison of French and British history teaching, with practical suggestions from across La Manche
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Gladstone spiritual or Gladstone material? A rationale for using documents at AS and A2
Teaching History article
Rather than taking a sledgehammer approach to planning for the new AS and A2 courses Gary Howells has used the opportunity to reflect on characteristics of students' historical learning in the post-16 phase. He argues for a much fuller rationale for using documents than mere preparation for exams or coursework....
Gladstone spiritual or Gladstone material? A rationale for using documents at AS and A2
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How visual evidence reflects change and continuity in attitudes to the police in the 19th and early 20th centuries
Teaching History article
While history teachers (and examiners) regularly invite students to consider what cartoons or paintings reveal about contemporary attitudes to particular social or political developments, such sources are often difficult to interpret and to use appropriately. Drawing on a wealth of detailed research and a passion to support teachers and students with...
How visual evidence reflects change and continuity in attitudes to the police in the 19th and early 20th centuries
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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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Build it in, don't bolt it on: history's opportunity to support critical citizenship
Teaching History article
Andrew Wrenn offers a wide range of practical examples of the way in which National Curriculum History (and the continuation of its principles at GCSE) supports citizenship education. He focuses chiefly upon Key Element 3, ‘Interpretations', but also Key Element 4 ‘Enquiry'. He illustrates history teachers' long-established concern for the...
Build it in, don't bolt it on: history's opportunity to support critical citizenship
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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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Three lessons about a funeral: Second World War cemeteries and twenty years of curriculum change
Article
Mike Murray analyses the way in which curriculum development has broadened and strengthened our conceptions of high standards in historical learning for school students. He pays tribute to ground-breaking new theoretical principles from the Schools History Project and from new emphases upon contextual knowledge and ‘interpretations' in the first National...
Three lessons about a funeral: Second World War cemeteries and twenty years of curriculum change
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Polychronicon 173: From American Indians to Native Americans
Teaching History journal feature
Few sub-fields of American history have undergone as many changes over time as the study of Native Americans/American Indians. While nineteenth- and early twentieth-century historians portrayed Native Americans as savage barbarians or ignored them entirely, late twentieth-century historians portrayed them as victims of circumstance and aggressive European conquest. Today, modern...
Polychronicon 173: From American Indians to Native Americans
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Distant voices, familiar echoes: exploiting the resources to which we all have access
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
As an Advanced Skills Teacher, Denise Thompson has often been at the forefront of experimental developments. Five years ago, she reported on trials of an online discussion forum used to sharpen A level students' historical...
Distant voices, familiar echoes: exploiting the resources to which we all have access
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Is it time to forget Remembrance?
Teaching History article
Remembering those who have fallen in active service is an annual event in most schools and communities; the collective memory and respect that Remembrance engenders can enhance a sense of identity and belonging. Acts of Remembrance can be seen as an aspect of citizenship, but how often are they viewed...
Is it time to forget Remembrance?
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Using databases to explore the real depth in the data
Teaching History article
Is it a good thing to have a lot of evidence? Surely the historian would answer that yes, it is: the more evidence that can be used, the better. The problem with this approach, though, is that too much data can be overwhelming for the history student - and, in...
Using databases to explore the real depth in the data
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Teaching History 39
Journal
Editorial, page 2
A Small Local Investigation - David Wright, page 3
A Journey Back into the Past - Rebecca Bell, page 5
History Workshop Centre (Report), page 7
History of Education in Schools - Richard Aldrich, page 8
Christmas Holiday Lecture Quiz Prizewinner, page 11
Recreating a Trip to...
Teaching History 39
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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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Content restricted and maturation retarded? Problems with the post-16 history curriculum
Teaching History article
Mike Tillbrook examines the impact of the new AS and A2 courses, raising several serious concerns. He explores problems for effective and rigorous assessment as well as implications of the new course structure for the quality and range of historical learning. Critical of new restrictions in content, he suggests that...
Content restricted and maturation retarded? Problems with the post-16 history curriculum
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Unpicking the threads of interpretations
Teaching History article
Determined to do justice to the complexity of the seventeenth century, as a messy but crucial period in British history, and to develop their pupils’ disciplinary understanding of how and why interpretations of the past are constructed, Dan Keates and his department set out to exploit the rich seam of...
Unpicking the threads of interpretations
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Moral dilemmas: history teaching and the Holocaust
Teaching History article
The new Holocaust Exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in London has been very favourably received by the general public, and by teachers and their students. Initially controversial - was a war museum the ideal site for such an exhibition, for example? - it has since been widely praised for...
Moral dilemmas: history teaching and the Holocaust
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Teaching History 31
Journal
Editorial, page 2
List of Historical Association Area Education Advisers, page 3
The 'Records Road Show' or Documents in Essex Classrooms - Ian Mason, page 4
Schooling the Local Historian - Gareth Elwyn Jones, page 7
Local History Teaching and the Ordinary Child - R. D. Woodall, page 10
Lincolnshire...
Teaching History 31
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Modelling the discipline
Teaching History article
David Hibbert and Zaiba Patel decided to work together after becoming concerned that school history curricula might not enable students to interrogate popular British mythologising about World War II. Building on these pre-existing concerns, their collaboration with the historian Yasmin Khan yielded an Interpretations enquiry which asked students to consider...
Modelling the discipline
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Move Me On 92: Having problems teaching causation
The problem page for history mentors
This Issue's Problem: Melville Miles, student history teacher, is in Term 3 of his PGCE year. Melville has taught a number of excellent lessons in which he enabled pupils to reach high levels of historical understanding. His diagnostic assessment of pupils' work is unusually sophisticated for a PGCE student. Melville's...
Move Me On 92: Having problems teaching causation
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Developing multiperspectivity through cartoon analysis
Teaching History article
Studying cartoons can be an engaging experience for students but it can also present students with considerable difficulties. Cartoons are typically highly complex texts that are often very hard to interpret and students need to develop appropriate reading strategies to interpret cartoons effectively. In this article Ulrich Schnakenberg explores ways...
Developing multiperspectivity through cartoon analysis
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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
