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Beyond slavery
Teaching History article
Influenced by her own experiences, preliminary research, and recent political events, Teni Oladehin sought to thoroughly review how Black history was introduced to her students at Key Stage 3. In particular, she aimed to introduce Black history with an ‘authentic’ narrative which brought Black agency into the foreground. In this article, Oladehin shows how an enquiry on the significance of Mansa Musa both...
Beyond slavery
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What have historians been arguing about: African history in the precolonial period?
Teaching History article
The George Floyd killing and the Black Lives Matter movement in the UK have led to an upsurge in interest in African history: how (and whether) it is taught, where it is taught, and who teaches it. Although it is widely recognised that slavery must be taught, there is a desire for history...
What have historians been arguing about: African history in the precolonial period?
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Being an historian
Teaching History article
In this article, Robin Conway and Amy Scott show how they made use of online source archives to replicate the experience of an academic historian in the classroom. By changing the way that students approach sources, moving away from both ‘fun activities’ and formulaic exam preparation towards a more authentic experience, they show how students’ interpretation of sources can demonstratehigher-level thinking. Through the use...
Being an historian
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Why does anyone do anything? Attempts to improve agentive explanations with Year 12
Teaching History article
In this article Sophie Harley-McKeown identifies and addresses her Year 12 students’ blind spot over agentive explanation. Noticing that the examination board to which she teaches uses ‘motivations’ rather than ‘aims’ prompted her to consider whether her students really knew what that meant. Finding that her students’ causal explanations tended...
Why does anyone do anything? Attempts to improve agentive explanations with Year 12
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Move Me On 137: Regards PGCE assignments as unhelpful distractions
Teaching History feature
This issue's problem: Ellen Wilkinson regards her PGCE assignments as an unhelpful distraction from the real business of learning to teach.
Ellen has just had her first PGCE assignment returned to her by her tutor and is furious about the comments she has received and the indicative Masters level mark it...
Move Me On 137: Regards PGCE assignments as unhelpful distractions
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Triumphs Show 137: Assessing through reflection
Teaching History feature
Assessing through reflection:
How one history department has found a way to satisfy the Senior Leadership Team, parents and pupils through tightly focused self-assessment Teachers are caught between a rock and hard place when it comes to assessment. Senior leaders want to see evidence of regular ‘levelling' while (most) pupils...
Triumphs Show 137: Assessing through reflection
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Training for the marathon: history at Michaela
Teaching History article
Michael Taylor begins his piece by reminding us that writing great history essays is hard. He compares the process to running a marathon, and his central thesis is that, just as the best training for running a marathon is not running marathons, so the way to encourage students to produce...
Training for the marathon: history at Michaela
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Polychronicon 177: The New Deal in American history
Teaching History feature
Over 50 years ago I read my first serious book on American history. I can still remember the excitement of reading William E. Leuchtenburg’s Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal, 1932–1940. His description of FDR and American politics in the 1930s seemed so much more colourful and dramatic than...
Polychronicon 177: The New Deal in American history
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Move Me On 136: Struggling to teach elite politics/international relations
Teaching History feature
This issue's problem: Ernest Briggs, who wants pupils to engage with the real lives of ordinary people in the past, is struggling to learn to teach courses that he thinks are too narrowly focused on elite politics and international relations.
Ernest, initially one of the most animated and enthusiastic trainees on...
Move Me On 136: Struggling to teach elite politics/international relations
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New, Novice or Nervous? 174: Building students' historical talk
The quick guide to the ‘no-quick-fix'
How do we get our students to talk more in lessons? No, not like that! How have history teachers engaged with the issue of students’ historical – and general – oracy? Talking about history is not the same skill as writing about it. It is more immediate, and more easily...
New, Novice or Nervous? 174: Building students' historical talk
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‘I need to know…’: creating the conditions that make students want knowledge
Teaching History journal article
Chloe Bateman recognised the value to her Key Stage 3 pupils of developing rich subject knowledge, but wanted to find a way of encouraging them to value that knowledge for themselves. In this article she explains how she provided that inspiration by setting her Year 7 class the challenge of...
‘I need to know…’: creating the conditions that make students want knowledge
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The devil is the detail
Teaching History journal article
Like many history departments, Hugh Richards' department at Huntington School uses enquiry questions to structure their medium-term planning. Yet Richards noticed that his efforts to build knowledge across an enquiry by teaching macro-narratives as an unfolding story seemed to make it harder for some pupils to see and retain the...
The devil is the detail
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‘Man, people in the past were indeed stupid’
Teaching History journal article
In this article, which is based on Huijgen’s PhD dissertation Balancing between the past and the present, Tim Huijgen and Paul Holthuis present the results of an experimental method of teaching 14–16-year-old students to contextualise their historical studies in a different way. In the four lessons described, students’ initial reactions...
‘Man, people in the past were indeed stupid’
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Couching counterfactuals in knowledge when explaining the Salem witch trials with Year 13
Teaching History journal article
Puzzled by the shrugs and unimaginative responses of his students when asked certain counterfactual questions, James Edward Carroll set out to explore what types of counterfactual questions would elicit sophisticated causal explanations. During his pursuit of the ‘gold standard’ of counterfactual reasoning, Carroll drew upon theories of academic history in...
Couching counterfactuals in knowledge when explaining the Salem witch trials with Year 13
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Bringing psychology into history: why do some stories disappear?
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
History is always a relationship between the present and the past and the meaning of the past shifts as values and events change in the present. In this article Anne Llewellyn and Helen Snelson use...
Bringing psychology into history: why do some stories disappear?
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Conducting the orchestra to allow our students to hear the symphony
Journal article
Alex Ford and Richard Kennett both welcome the renewed emphasis on knowledge within recent curriculum reforms in England, but are concerned about some of the ways in which the principle of a ‘knowledge-rich’ curriculum has been interpreted and transformed into particular pedagogical prescriptions. In this article they explain their reasons...
Conducting the orchestra to allow our students to hear the symphony
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Seeing beyond the frame
Teaching History article
History teachers frequently show pupils visual images and often expect pupils to interrogate such images as evidence. But confusions arise and opportunities are missed when pupils do this without guidance on how to ‘read’ the image systematically and how to place it in context. Barbara Ormond gives a detailed account...
Seeing beyond the frame
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Cunning Plan 100: teaching the First World War in Year 9
Teaching History feature
History teacher and head of department stand outside noisy Year 9 class. Bombs (paper ones) fly everywhere; in corner of room mutiny is being discussed ... many pupils are refusing to follow their leader's last minute orders - they will not be opting for history! The war of attrition (excessive...
Cunning Plan 100: teaching the First World War in Year 9
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Polychronicon 170: The Becket Dispute
Journal article
‘The Becket Dispute’ (or ‘Controversy’) refers to the quarrel between Henry II and Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, which dominated English ecclesiastical politics in the 1160s. It was a conflict with multiple dimensions: a clash of Church and State; a prolonged struggle between two prominent individuals; a close friendship turned...
Polychronicon 170: The Becket Dispute
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Triumphs Show 170: making a place for fieldwork in history lessons
Journal article
Why ‘do’ local history? The new (grades 9–1) GCSE specifications place a lot of importance on the local environment. The rationale for this is to get students to situate a site in its historical context, and to examine the relationship between local and national developments. Initially this change was the...
Triumphs Show 170: making a place for fieldwork in history lessons
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Reading? What reading?
Journal article
Discussions with sixth-form students about reading led Carolyn Massey and Paul Wiggin to start a sixth-formreading group. They describe here the series of themed sessions that they planned, and the student discussion and reflections that resulted. Listening to their students discuss their reading led Massey and Wiggin to reflect on what is meant by ‘reading around’ the subject, and its role in students’ intellectual...
Reading? What reading?
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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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From temple to forum: teaching final-year history students to become critical museum visitors
Journal article
Across the globe, the centenary of World War I has prompted the creation of new exhibitions devoted to its commemoration. In New Zealand, Michael Harcourt wanted to explore whether teaching strategies intended to help students to engage critically with such exhibitions would have any lasting impact on the young people’s...
From temple to forum: teaching final-year history students to become critical museum visitors
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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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Learning without limits
Teaching History article
Richard Kerridge writes here about his efforts to help students to overcome an experience that was once his own: of being labelled low-ability, with all the attendant lowering of expectations that this entails. He recognises the merits of rigorously ensuring that all students should be able to access their entitlement...
Learning without limits
