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'Which was more important Sir, ordinary people getting electricity or the rise of Hitler?' Using Ethel and Ernest with Year 9
Teaching History article
Mike Murray offers further new perspectives on the relationship between overview and depth in pupils’ historical learning. In an account of his teaching with Raymond Briggs’ Ethel and Ernest to a ‘below-average ability’ class in Year 9, he constructs a rationale for using this moving strip cartoon to motivate, intrigue...
'Which was more important Sir, ordinary people getting electricity or the rise of Hitler?' Using Ethel and Ernest with Year 9
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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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Cunning Plan 191: diving deep into ‘history from below’ with Year 8
Article
Can the ‘subaltern’ speak, Year 8s?
When the Indian scholar and literary theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak asked this question in 1988, she wasn’t asking Year 8s on a Monday morning. What she wanted to explore was whether those marginalised people written out of the archive – ‘the subaltern’ – could...
Cunning Plan 191: diving deep into ‘history from below’ with Year 8
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Equiano - voice of silent slaves?
Teaching History article
Andrew Wrenn shows how a study of the life of Olaudah Equiano can support pupils’ historical learning in a number of ways. Not only is this a ‘little story’ that can help to illuminate or raise questions about the the ‘big picture’, it can also help pupils to reflect upon...
Equiano - voice of silent slaves?
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Developing KS3 students’ ability to challenge their history curriculum through an early introduction of significance
Teaching History article
Offered five weeks to teach ‘whatever he wanted’ to Year 7, Andrew Slater decided that he wished to tackle the concept of significance head-on early in his students’ time in his school. He chose the expectedly unfamiliar substantive content of the Khmer Empire, challenging his students to justify the significance of...
Developing KS3 students’ ability to challenge their history curriculum through an early introduction of significance
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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
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Using Lesson Study to make microimprovements in teaching Year 8 how to use sources
Teaching History article
A highly distinctive and structured approach to teacher development, Lesson Study emerged in Japan but has since been adopted much more widely and now sees growing interest in the UK. Tony McConnell, Davinia Daley, Rebecca Levy, Lisa Waddell and Richard Waddington describe the process by which their school first investigated...
Using Lesson Study to make microimprovements in teaching Year 8 how to use sources
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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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Using the present to construct a meaningful picture of the medieval past
Teaching History article
In this article, Jessica Phillips returns to a theme explored in the Historical Association’s publication Exploring and Teaching Medieval History in Schools – the challenge of teaching about the medieval past in ways that acknowledge its vibrant complexity and create a genuine sense of resonance rather than condescension or blank...
Using the present to construct a meaningful picture of the medieval past
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Making History
New Website
Making History
Making History, developed by the Institute of Historical Research, is dedicated to the history of the study and practice of history in Britain over the last hundred years and more, following the emergence of the professional discipline in the late 19th century.
Contents
This website contains cross-referenced entries...
Making History
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Navigating the ‘imperial history wars’
Teaching History article
Concerned by the growing tendency of politicians and press to revive the moral balance-sheet approach to British imperial history and by some evidence of its resurgence in schools, Alex Benger set about devising a framework which would keep pupils’ analysis rigorously historical, rather than moral and politicised. In this article,...
Navigating the ‘imperial history wars’
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Short cuts to deep knowledge
Teaching History article
Sam Pullan explains how a chance encounter has helped him to improve his introduction to the modern themes and founding documents of US politics. Working with a professional historian whom he met, by chance, over dinner, he was able to produce lessons at the cutting edge of subject knowledge to...
Short cuts to deep knowledge
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Learning from a pandemic
Teaching History article
In order to contextualise and make sense of the Covid-19 pandemic, Verity Morgan worked with her school’s long-standing partner school in Ghana to devise an innovative project combining history and science, past and present. In this article, Morgan sets out the rationale for the project, her detailed adaptation of a British Council...
Learning from a pandemic
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Triumphs Show: Diversifying the curriculum at A-level
Teaching History feature
There is a wealth of literature arguing for the importance of accommodating a wide range of perspectives and experiences in school history curricula. Many have contended that it is crucial to include the stories of those traditionally omitted from historical records in order to teach history well. Others have emphasised...
Triumphs Show: Diversifying the curriculum at A-level
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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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Martin Luther King - Judge for Yourself
Book Review
Judge For Yourself: Martin Luther King by Christine Hatt, pub 2009,Evans Publishing, p/b £9.99, ISBN: 978 0 237 53624 4
Reviewed by Alf Wilkinson
This is a re-issue of a book published in 2002, but now out in paperback for the first time. The first part of the book is...
Martin Luther King - Judge for Yourself
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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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Year 9 use sources to explore contemporary meanings and understandings of appeasement
Teaching History article
After reflecting on the difference between his study of source extracts at university and how he was using source extracts in the classroom, Jonathan Sellin went in search of a new way to help his pupils to situate sources in context. Finding inspiration in the work of intellectual historian Quentin...
Year 9 use sources to explore contemporary meanings and understandings of appeasement
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Historical and interdisciplinary enquiry into the sinking of the Mary Rose
Teaching History article
The raising of Henry VIII’s warship, the Mary Rose, from the sea bed set in train an extraordinary programme of interdisciplinary research, relentlessly pursuing the clues to Tudor life and death provided by the remains of the ship, its cargo and crew. In this article Clare Barnes offers fascinating insights...
Historical and interdisciplinary enquiry into the sinking of the Mary Rose
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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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Historical scholarship, archaeology and evidence in Year 7
Teaching History article
The stimulus for this article came from two developmental tasks that Barbara Trapani was set during the course of her initial teacher education programme: planning her first historical enquiry and bringing the work of an historian into the classroom. Trapani chose to tackle the two tasks together, using Susan Whitfield’s...
Historical scholarship, archaeology and evidence in Year 7
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Teaching Year 8 pupils to take seriously the ideas of ordinary people from the past
Teaching History article
Jacob Olivey wanted Year 8 to know that ordinary people in the nineteenth century constructed their own identities. In this reflection on how his practice developed in his training year, Olivey illustrates the importance of using historical scholarship in choosing foundational knowledge to teach. He shows how he used that...
Teaching Year 8 pupils to take seriously the ideas of ordinary people from the past
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Professional wrestling in the history department: a case study in planning the teaching of the British Empire at Key Stage 3
Article
Three years ago ( TH 99, Curriculum Planning Edition), Michael Riley illustrated ways in which history departments could exploit the increased flexibility of the revised National Curriculum.1 He showed that precisely-worded enquiry questions, positioned thoughtfully across the Key Stage, help to ensure progression, challenge and coherence. His picturesque image for...
Professional wrestling in the history department: a case study in planning the teaching of the British Empire at Key Stage 3
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The dialogic dimensions of knowing and understanding the Norman legacy in Chester
Teaching History article
Michael Bird and Thomas Wilson focus their attention directly on the voices of pupils, in dialogue with their teacher and with each other, as they draw inferences from differing sources about the Norman legacy in Chester. By carefully examining dialogue stimulated by these sources, Bird and Wilson demonstrate not only...
The dialogic dimensions of knowing and understanding the Norman legacy in Chester
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Using an anthology of substantial sources at GCSE
Teaching History article
Struck by his GCSE students’ bewildered expressions when studying source extracts, Liam McDonnell decided to adopt a new approach to source analysis. Inspired by the work of other history teachers, McDonnell decided to use an anthology of substantial sources when studying nineteenth-century Whitechapel in London. By revisiting the sources at...
Using an anthology of substantial sources at GCSE
