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Bringing school into the classroom
Teaching History article
The Secondary Education and Social Change (SESC) research project team at the University of Cambridge collaborated with four secondary school history teachers to produce resource packs for teaching Key Stage 3 pupils about post-war British social history through the history of secondary education.
In this article, Chris Jeppesen explains the...
Bringing school into the classroom
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Peterloo: HA interview with Mike Leigh and Jacqueline Riding
Article
The film Peterloo dramatises the people and events that led to the infamous ‘Peterloo’ massacre in August 1819. Respected film-maker Mike Leigh created the film using historical records and sources from the period, as he and historical adviser Jacqueline Riding explained to the HA in a recent interview, which you can watch below.
Peterloo: HA interview with Mike Leigh and Jacqueline Riding
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Teaching the history of women in Europe in the twentieth-century
Teaching History article
This article is based on Ruth Tudor’s book. The book is the collaborative result of a series of seminars and discussions which involved educators throughout Europe. Written with 14-19 year olds in mind, the approach explores how it is possible to investigate, to exploit to provide new insights and to...
Teaching the history of women in Europe in the twentieth-century
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... the impact of the British Empire on Britain?
Teaching History feature
The murder of George Floyd during the summer of 2020 and the ongoing ‘culture war’ in Britain over the legacy of the British Empire have reignited interest in imperial history. This focuses, in particular, on the question of the empire’s impact on Britain itself: on how the act of conquering...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... the impact of the British Empire on Britain?
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Helping Year 9s explore multiple narratives through the history of a house
Teaching History article
A host of histories: helping Year 9s explore multiple narratives through the history of a house
Described by the author Monica Ali as a building that ‘sparks the imagination and sparks conversations', 19 Princelet Street, now a Museum of Diversity and Immigration, captivated the imagination of teacher David Waters. He...
Helping Year 9s explore multiple narratives through the history of a house
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Medieval Britain 1066-1509
HA Resources
The development of Church, state and society in Medieval Britain 1066-1509While the 2014 Curriculum sets out the broad focus of each particular content area, considerable choice has been left to history departments in determining which particular events or developments to include and how they can best 'combine overview and depth...
Medieval Britain 1066-1509
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Cunning Plan 98: Britain 1750-1900
Teaching History feature
Isaac Newton: ‘For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction'. Learning that results from action and reaction deepens pupils' understanding of historical content and use of key study skills. It forces them to understand, to wrestle, to articulate, to challenge, to question. Getting pupils to act and react...
Cunning Plan 98: Britain 1750-1900
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Using sites for insights
Teaching History article
Working alongside local history teachers to prepare for the new GCSE specifications Steve Illingworth and Emma Manners were struck that many teachers were concerned about two issues in particular: the breadth and depth of knowledge demanded and new forms of assessment, especially the historic environment paper. In this article they...
Using sites for insights
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Mughal moments made memorable by Movie Maker
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Rosalind Stirzaker has introduced some fascinating topics at Key Stage 3. Her pupils, living in Dubai, have the opportunity to study the Islamic Empire, the Mughal Empire and Mespotamia as well as many of the...
Mughal moments made memorable by Movie Maker
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Using this map and all your knowledge, become Bismarck
Teaching History article
Understanding the past is not an abstract exercise. Historical questions revolve around decisions made by real people under real pressure. As historians, we factor psychological pressure into our analysis. How, though, are we to enable our students to do the same? To study why Bismarck began a programme of overseas...
Using this map and all your knowledge, become Bismarck
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Investigating ‘sense of place’ with Year 9 pupils
Teaching History article
Confined to his home during lockdown in 2020, teacher Josh Mellor became eager to explore the history of the physical environment on his doorstep. After reading about different approaches to using environmental history in the classroom, Mellor decided to design an enquiry to explore the changing landscape of the Fens in...
Investigating ‘sense of place’ with Year 9 pupils
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Film Series: Power and authority in Germany 1871-1991
HA Interpretations Film Series: Power and authority in Germany 1871-1991
Log in below to preview the introductory film - available to all registered users of the website.
This open access introductory film forms part of our nine-part filmed series on the development of power and authority in Germany 1871-1991 available through the Student Zone with corporate secondary membership.
In this introduction...
Film Series: Power and authority in Germany 1871-1991
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A complex empire: National Archives Learning Curve takes on the British Empire
Teaching History article
Ben Walsh describes some of the rationale behind the construction of the new Learning Curve exhibition on the British Empire and, in so doing, makes a strong case for placing empire generally and the British Empire in particular at the heart of historical study for all teenagers. A complex and...
A complex empire: National Archives Learning Curve takes on the British Empire
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Year 7 use oral traditions to make claims about the rise and fall of the Inka empire
Teaching History article
As part of her department’s effort to diversify the history curriculum, Paula Worth began a quest to research and then shape a lesson sequence around the Inkas. Her article shows how she allowed the new topic and its historiography to challenge and extend her own use of sources, particularly oral tradition....
Year 7 use oral traditions to make claims about the rise and fall of the Inka empire
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Fifties Britain through the senses: ‘never had it so good’?
Teaching History article
Maya Stiasny was faced with difficulties familiar to many of us. Her new Year 12 students were struggling to get to grips with a new period of history. They were not interrogating primary sources with sufficient vigour. Her solution, detailed here, was novel. Working on the rich social history of post-war...
Fifties Britain through the senses: ‘never had it so good’?
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‘But they just sit there’: using objects as material culture with Year 8
Teaching History article
Having specialised in the history of material culture during her degree, Gabriella West was struck by the dismissive attitude of her pupils towards the study of material objects from the past. She therefore set out to find the perfect object through which to induct her Year 8 pupils into the history...
‘But they just sit there’: using objects as material culture with Year 8
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Podcast: End of the World Cults
Podcast
In this podcast Professor Penelope Corfield looks at the history of 'End of the World Cults'.
1. Why do people at times become urgently convinced that 'the End of the World is Nigh?'
HA Members can listen to the full podcast here
Short Reading list for End-of-the-World Cults:
Two wide-ranging introductions:...
Podcast: End of the World Cults
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Real Lives: A German captain’s perspective on the end of WWI
Historian feature
Our series ‘Real Lives’ seeks to put the story of the ordinary person into our great historical narrative. We are all part of the rich fabric of the communities in which we live and we are affected sto greater and lesser degrees by the big events that happen on a daily...
Real Lives: A German captain’s perspective on the end of WWI
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Understanding Slavery
Free Online Resource
Teaching the transatlantic slave trade and its abolition in British history is now a compulsory component of the revised KS3 History curriculum.
The Understanding Slavery Initiative (USI) is a national education project set up in 2003. The initiative has been developed in partnership with the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich,...
Understanding Slavery
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... schooling and the British Empire
Teaching History feature
The history of schooling and the British Empire encompasses a complex body of literature. Histories of formal education intersect with work on race, class and capitalism and link to adjacent fields such as histories of childhood. A basic contention shared throughout this field, however, is that there was a profound...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... schooling and the British Empire
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Film series: The African-American Civil Rights Movement
Film: An introduction to the African-American Civil Rights Movement
The US civil rights battles of the latter half of the twentieth century are a common part of popular culture - and yet the detail is often overlooked in favour of the headlines. It is a positive step that so many of us now know the names of Rosa Parks...
Film series: The African-American Civil Rights Movement
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Power, authority and geography
Teaching History article
Dissatisfied by her previous enquiries on medieval kingship and inspired by Helen Castor’s 'She-Wolves', Elizabeth Carr sought to incorporate the stories of powerful medieval women such as Empress Matilda and Eleanor of Aquitaine into her Key Stage 3 curriculum. Carr used these stories to highlight to her pupils the crucial...
Power, authority and geography
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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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'I feel if I say this in my essay it’s not going to be as strong’
Teaching History article
Jim Carroll was concerned that A-level textbooks failed to provide his students with a model of the multi-voicedness that characterises written history. In order to show his students that historians constantly engage in argument as they write, Carroll turned to academic scholarship for models of multi-voiced history. Carroll explains here...
'I feel if I say this in my essay it’s not going to be as strong’
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‘Compressing and rendering’: using biography to teach big stories
Teaching History article
In principle, Rachel Foster had long been aware of the value of creating an interplay between depth and overview across the history curriculum. But in practice, as she acknowledges here, she had tended to shy away from telling outline stories that encompassed a big chronological or geographical range. Recognising the...
‘Compressing and rendering’: using biography to teach big stories
