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The Northern Ireland Question 1886-1986
Classic Pamphlet
The nature of the rights of majorities and minorities is one of the most intractable of the issues raised by the Northern Ireland question, especially since much depends on definitions. Ulster Protestants are a majority in that province but a minority in both Ireland and the United Kingdom, while Catholics,...
The Northern Ireland Question 1886-1986
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How did changing conceptions of place lead to conflict in the American West? Reflecting on revision methods for GCSE
Teaching History article
Mary Woolley decided to make four revision sheets for her lower-band Year 11 set. Each was to help them view their American West study through a different lens. She was rather uncertain, however (and so were the pupils) about her fourth sheet on places. Her reflections on the revision sheet...
How did changing conceptions of place lead to conflict in the American West? Reflecting on revision methods for GCSE
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Sense, relationship and power: uncommon views of place
Teaching History article
Liz Taylor invites history teachers to consider how diverse and uncommon the ‘common’ person’s experience of place might be. She draws upon cultural geography to show how words like ‘place’, ‘space’ and ‘landscape’ can be unpacked and questioned and so become better tools for pupils’ critical thinking in both geography...
Sense, relationship and power: uncommon views of place
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Using fictional characters to explore the relationship between historical interpretation and contemporary attitude
Teaching History article
Helping students to understand how and why people in the present interpret the past differently is a challenge. It is also vital if we are to develop an understanding of why the meanings we ascribe to the past are not fixed, but rather are subject to our own prejudices or...
Using fictional characters to explore the relationship between historical interpretation and contemporary attitude
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Significance
Key Concepts
Please note: these links were compiled in 2009. For a more recent resource, please see: What's the Wisdom on: Historical significance.
This selection of Teaching History articles on 'Significance' are highly recommended reading to anyone who wants to get to grips with this key concept. All Teaching History articles are free to HA Secondary Members...
Significance
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Chartism
Classic Pamphlet
It is not surprising that Chartism has attracted a great deal of interest from historians and students, for at no other period in British history, with the possible exception of the second and third decades of the twentieth century, has so much excitement and activity been aroused at the working-class...
Chartism
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School History Scene: the unique contribution of theatre to history teaching
Teaching History article
The study of history has to be vibrant. It is about real people, real dramas, real narrative, real human dilemmas. It is not surprising that, despite manifold structural pressures working against us, take-up for GCSE history is once again buoyant. There are all manner of reasons for this - is...
School History Scene: the unique contribution of theatre to history teaching
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What time does the tune start? From thinking about 'sense of period' to modelling history at Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
A ‘sense of period' is the contextual backdrop to the study of any aspect of history. As experienced historians, we tend to take for granted both our structural map of the past and our rich...
What time does the tune start? From thinking about 'sense of period' to modelling history at Key Stage 3
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Polychronicon 135: Post-modern Holocaust Historiography
Teaching History feature
The field of Holocaust studies has been hit by an intellectual earthquake whose precise magnitude and long-term consequences cannot be ascertained at this stage. In 2007 Saul Friedländer published The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews 1939-1945. The book has been rightly celebrated as the first victim-centred synthetic history...
Polychronicon 135: Post-modern Holocaust Historiography
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Circle Time in the secondary history classroom
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Circle Time is a commonly used technique in primary classrooms and is sometimes used in secondary personal and social education lessons. This open form of classroom organisation allows pupils to share opinions in a democratic...
Circle Time in the secondary history classroom
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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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Triumphs Show 135: how trainee teachers learned to put history back into GCSE
Teaching History feature
What do you know about how your local museums can help your GCSE planning and teaching? How can your new GCSE courses for September make use of the free resources, artefacts and images that our local and national museums house? That's just what the PGCE history group from Leeds Trinity...
Triumphs Show 135: how trainee teachers learned to put history back into GCSE
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International relations at GCSE... they just can't get enough of it
Teaching History article
There is no reason why pupils of so-called ‘average’ and ‘below-average ability’ cannot both understand and enjoy studying complicated international events. Indeed, in the interests of inclusion and raised standards, it is vital that they do. Our Letters Pages in the last two editions captured something of the history teaching...
International relations at GCSE... they just can't get enough of it
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Nutshell 135: The challenge of analysing 'difference'
Teaching History feature
Hello Nutshell. What's all this stuff in the NC Attainment Target about ‘nature', ‘extent' and ‘interplay' of diversity?
The trick is to look behind the word ‘diversity'. Then it all makes sense...
Nutshell 135: The challenge of analysing 'difference'
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Drilling down: how one history department is working towards progression in pupils' thinking about diversity across Years 7, 8 and 9
Teaching History article
Matthew Bradshaw shares the early, tentative efforts of his history department to shape a new Key Stage 3 workscheme in the light of the 2008 National Curriculum for England. While his department's scheme is designed to secure progression in all conceptual areas, he chooses to focus here on the concept...
Drilling down: how one history department is working towards progression in pupils' thinking about diversity across Years 7, 8 and 9
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Teaching History 135: To They or Not To They
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
02 Editorial
03 HA Secondary News
04 Drilling down: how one history department is working towards progression in pupils’ thinking about diversity across Years 7, 8 and 9 – Matthew Bradshaw (Read article)
13 Cunning Plan: The generalisation game - challenging generalisations (Read article)
16 Were industrial towns ‘death-traps’? Year...
Teaching History 135: To They or Not To They
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Triumphs Show 129: Holding a live debate around an historical theme
Teaching History feature
Beheading Headlines: Holding a live debate around an historical theme
Studying the events surrounding the execution of Charles I is exciting on many levels: the first English King to be executed by his ‘people', the gory public beheading and the controversy surrounding the trial and verdict... But studying the Civil...
Triumphs Show 129: Holding a live debate around an historical theme
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Seeing a different picture: exploring migration through the lens of history
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Rosie Sheldrake and Dale Banham here share the results of their desire to use the curriculum changes which are upon us to do something which they had intended for some time. Their modern world study...
Seeing a different picture: exploring migration through the lens of history
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Slaying dragons and sorcerers in Year 12: in search of historical argument
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Reflecting on his GCSE and post-16 students' essays, Michael Fordham began to wonder if there were something missing in the way he taught students to write. Work on structure that was designed to strengthen argument...
Slaying dragons and sorcerers in Year 12: in search of historical argument
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New alchemy or fatal attraction? History and citizenship
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
The citizenship curriculum at both Key Stages 3 and 4 is currently being redefined and much has been said recently about the contribution that history could or should make to citizenship agendas and to the...
New alchemy or fatal attraction? History and citizenship
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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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Big Stories and Big Pictures: Making Outlines and Overviews Interesting
Teaching History journal article
An examination, with practical strategies, of the teaching of 'outlines and overviews' by Michael Riley.
Why teach overviews?
One of the problems of the first phase of National Curriculum history was the percieved overload of content. Some teachers felt obliged to race through the Programme of Study, treating issues in...
Big Stories and Big Pictures: Making Outlines and Overviews Interesting
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You are members of a United Nations Commission...' Recent world crises simulations
Teaching History article
David Ghere presents a teaching and learning rationale for simulations where the location is not identified. This creates a deliberately artificial situation where the student can tackle the problems and carry out the decision-making and problem-solving exercise without preconceptions. The author does not recommend leaving the activity at this stage,...
You are members of a United Nations Commission...' Recent world crises simulations
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Dr Black Box or How I learned to stop worrying and love assessment
Teaching History article
Drawing upon experimental work in different history departments, Mark Cottingham explores ‘assessment for learning' principles in practice. He raises the problem of a clash between these approaches and the progression model inherent in the National Curriculum Attainment Target, and, crucially, the way in which history departments are expected to use...
Dr Black Box or How I learned to stop worrying and love assessment
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Rigorous, meaningful and robust: practical ways forward for assessment
Teaching History article
How do we know how good our students are at history? For that matter, how precisely do we really know what ‘good' at history even means? Even harder, how does our assessment of our students' attainment fit in with the National Curriculum Levels for Key Stage 3? Simon Harrison has...
Rigorous, meaningful and robust: practical ways forward for assessment
