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History teacher subject knowledge reading list
One Big History Department blog post
Subject knowledge updating is enjoyable and a huge challenge in a busy teacher's life.
There are fantastic initiatives which make this process more collegiate. And some historians are incredibly generous with their time and engage with history teachers on social media and at conferences. Nevertheless, there can’t be many of us who...
History teacher subject knowledge reading list
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Widening the early modern world to create a more connected KS3 curriculum
Teaching History article
Readers of this journal will be familiar with a number of ways of approaching the Tudors. Kerry Apps provides here an article detailing her concerns about the differences between what she had been delivering at Key Stage 3 and the broader, connected experience she had as an undergraduate historian. How...
Widening the early modern world to create a more connected KS3 curriculum
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Thinking beyond boundaries
HA Update
In October of last year, the Royal Historical Society (RHS) published an important report highlighting the racial and ethnic inequalities in the teaching and practice of history in the UK (RHS, 2018). Focused on history teaching at university, it nevertheless highlighted the need for thinking to occur at all levels...
Thinking beyond boundaries
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What’s the wisdom on… Evidence and sources
Teaching History feature
The year 1910 saw the publication of a remarkable book on history teaching by M.W.Keatinge.
The purpose of this guide. What's the Wisdom On... is a short guide providing new history teachers with an overview of the ‘story so far’ of practice-based professional thinking about a particular aspect of history teaching....
What’s the wisdom on… Evidence and sources
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New, Novice or Nervous? 172: Curriculum planning
Teaching History feature: the quick guide to the ‘no-quick-fix’
This page is for those new to the published writings of history teachers. Each problem you wrestle with, other teachers have wrestled with too. Quick fixes don’t exist. But in others’ writing, you’ll find something better: conversations in which history teachers have debated or tackled your problems – conversations which...
New, Novice or Nervous? 172: Curriculum planning
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Cunning Plan 167: teaching the industrial revolution
Teaching History article
‘Disastrous and terrible.’ For Arnold Toynbee, the historian who gave us the phrase ‘industrial revolution’, these three words sum up the period of dramatic technological change that took place in Britain across the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. We may not habitually use Toynbee’s description in the classroom, but it is...
Cunning Plan 167: teaching the industrial revolution
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Thinking makes it so: cognitive psychology and history teaching
Teaching History article
What, exactly, is learned knowledge - and why does it matter in history teaching?
Michael Fordham seeks to use the general tenets of cognitive psychology to inform the debate about how history teachers might get the best from their students, in particular in considering the role of memory. Fordham surveys the latest research concerning memory while also arguing that remembering does matter in history...
Thinking makes it so: cognitive psychology and history teaching
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Move Me On 162: Reading
Teaching History feature
This issue’s problem: James Connolly is finding it difficult to judge how much or what kind of reading he should expect of his students.
James Connolly, an eager and knowledgeable historian, has frequently struggled to pitch things appropriately for students. This applies particularly to his expectations of their reading, but also...
Move Me On 162: Reading
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Cunning Plan 162: Transferring knowledge from Key Stage 3 to 4
Teaching History feature
Planning to deliver the new GCSE specifications presents a challenge and an opportunity to any history department, whatever their previous specification. The sweep of history that students will now study at GCSE is much broader than ‘Modern World’ departments are used to; including a medieval or early modern depth study...
Cunning Plan 162: Transferring knowledge from Key Stage 3 to 4
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Polychronicon 161: John Lilburne
Teaching History feature
John Lilburne might have been destined for obscurity in less interesting times. He was the second son of a minor gentry family, apprenticed to a London woollen merchant in 1632. It was his master’s connections that drew him into religious opposition to Charles I and the illegal book trade, resulting...
Polychronicon 161: John Lilburne
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The knowledge illusion
Teaching History article
Focusing on students’ attempts to explain the relative significance of different factors in Hitler’s rise to power, Catherine McCrory explores the vexed question of why students who seem able to express necessary historical knowledge on one occasion cannot effectively reproduce it on another. Drawing on a detailed analysis of what...
The knowledge illusion
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Cunning Plan 161: Magna Carta's legacy
Teaching History feature
Both Dawson and Hayes have recently written Cunning Plans that show how exciting Magna Carta is.
So why not stop there? Bring the barons to life with a flare of Dawson and send Magna Carta flying across the continent with just a hint of Hayes. Hey, from the same edition,...
Cunning Plan 161: Magna Carta's legacy
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Understanding Key Concepts: Diversity
Article
Please note: this resource pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum. For more recent resources, see How diverse is your history curriculum? and Diversity links and resources for Secondary history.
This material enables history teachers to explore the concept of diversity.
Section 1 discusses the concept of diversity and its importance in the...
Understanding Key Concepts: Diversity
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New, Novice or Nervous? 155: Similarity & Difference
Teaching History feature
This page is for those new to the published writings of history teachers. Every problem you wrestle with, other teachers have wrestled with too. Quick fixes don't exist. But if you discover others' writing, you'll soon find - and want to join - something better: an international conversation in which...
New, Novice or Nervous? 155: Similarity & Difference
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Move Me On 198: trainee finds it difficult to explain substantive concepts effectively
Teaching History feature
Move Me On is designed to build critical, informed debate about the character of teacher training, teacher education and professional development. It is also designed to offer practical help to all involved in training new history teachers. Each issue presents a situation in initial teacher education/training with an emphasis upon...
Move Me On 198: trainee finds it difficult to explain substantive concepts effectively
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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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Historical consciousness in sixth-form students
Teaching History article
Moving forwards while looking back: historical consciousness in sixth-form students
A key concern driving debates about curriculum reform in England is anxiety that young people's knowledge of the past is too episodic - that they lack a coherent ‘narrative' or ‘map' of the past. While recent debate focused on what...
Historical consciousness in sixth-form students
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A need to know: Islamic history and the school curriculum
Teaching History article
In this article, Nicolas Kinloch questions some of the principal justifications often advanced for teaching Islamic history in schools. In particular, he wants to move us beyond our concern with current events in the Middle East. He suggests that there are dangers in looking at Islamic history if it is...
A need to know: Islamic history and the school curriculum
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Music, blood and terror: making emotive and controversial history matter
Teaching History article
Lomas and Wrenn, co-authors and compilers of the Historical Association’s DfES-funded T.E.A.C.H 3-19 Report (Teaching Emotive and Controversial History), explore further ideas and examples of good practice from issues arising out of the report’s conclusions. Lomas and Wrenn propose five distinct categories of emotive and controversial history that further develop...
Music, blood and terror: making emotive and controversial history matter
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What’s The Wisdom On... history assessment?
Teaching History feature
Between 1991 and 1995, secondary history teachers in England and Wales had something of a collective awakening about assessment. It followed a huge policy shift in history education: history’s first National Curriculum, rolled out in 1991.
What's the Wisdom On... is a short guide providing new history teachers with an overview...
What’s The Wisdom On... history assessment?
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Hidden histories and heroism: post-14 course on multi-cultural Britain since 1945
Teaching History Article
A school-designed, post-14 course on multi-cultural Britain since 1945
Robin Whitburn and Sharon Yemoh describe the design of a school-generated GCSE course on the challenges that British people faced in forging a multicultural society in post-imperial Britain. Drawing on their own research into their students' experience, they build a discipline-based case...
Hidden histories and heroism: post-14 course on multi-cultural Britain since 1945
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Using ancient texts to improve pupils' critical thinking
Teaching History article
Did Alexander really ask, ‘Do I appear to you to be a bastard?' Using ancient texts to improve pupils' critical thinking
Beth Baker and Steven Mastin make the case for teaching ancient history in the post-14 curriculum. Pointing out the damaging messages that could be conveyed by assuming that ancient...
Using ancient texts to improve pupils' critical thinking
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Politics, history and stories about the Cold War
Article
Interpretation of the Cold War is a fascinating area. Many students begin to study it certain pre-formed ideas – gleaned from their parents, perhaps, or from films or computer games. Historians have interpreted it in different ways – and those who believe in the ‘twenty-year rule’ that historical judgment is...
Politics, history and stories about the Cold War
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Year 12 write Zambia's history for Zambian students
Teaching History article
Peter Gray explains how his Year 12 students came to research and write a resource on the history of Zambia, for history teachers in Zambia. The construction of the resource stretched the Year 12 students in new ways: the Internet was useless and there were no easy digests in A-Level...
Year 12 write Zambia's history for Zambian students
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Using family history to provoke rigorous enquiry
Teaching History article
The idea of using ‘little stories' to illuminate the ‘big pictures' of the past was creatively explored in Teaching History 107, which offered teachers a wealth of detailed vignettes with which to kindle young people's interest and illuminate major historical events. Paul Barrett builds on the ideas explored in that...
Using family history to provoke rigorous enquiry
