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Teaching the very recent past
Teaching History article
‘Miriam's Vision' is an educational project developed by the Miriam Hyman Memorial Trust, an organisation set up in memory of Miriam Hyman, one of the 52 victims of the London bombings of 2005. The project has developed a number of subject-based modules, including history, which are provided free to schools...
Teaching the very recent past
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Berlin and the Holocaust: a sense of place?
Teaching History article
As more and more schools take students on visits to locations associated with the history of the Holocaust, history teachers have to find ways to make these places historically meaningful for their students. David Waters shows here how he introduced his students to the multiple narratives associated with the history...
Berlin and the Holocaust: a sense of place?
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Lengthening Year 9’s narrative of the American civil rights movement
Teaching History article
Inspired by reading the work of Stephen Tuck, Ellie Osborne set out to design a new sequence of lessons that would help her students adopt a longer lens on the American civil rights movement. At the same time, Osborne wanted to put more emphasis on the agency and campaigns of activists,...
Lengthening Year 9’s narrative of the American civil rights movement
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Triumphs Show: Recovering the queer history of Weimar Germany in GCSE history
Teaching History feature
Berlin staged its first Christopher Street Day celebration in 1979. This queer pride event commemorated the Stonewall riots that took place a decade earlier in New York City, and it has continued to be a popular annual event in Germany. Its celebration of a landmark moment in American history, however,...
Triumphs Show: Recovering the queer history of Weimar Germany in GCSE history
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Connecting past and present through the lens of enduring human issues: International Women’s Day protests
Teaching History article
While studying for his master’s degree in education, Arthur Casey became intrigued by research suggesting that analogies comparing past and present might improve students’ perceptions of the relevance of history. In this article he reports on the findings of his own small-scale research study, in which he used a present-day...
Connecting past and present through the lens of enduring human issues: International Women’s Day protests
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‘Miss, what’s the point of sources?’ Helping Year 11 to understand the discipline
Teaching History article
Clare Bartington noticed that her students’ focus on the specific kinds of question used in examinations appeared to have undermined their understanding of how historians actually use sources. Instead of approaching the traces or ‘leftovers’ of the past as potential sources of evidence in relation to a particular question, her students believed...
‘Miss, what’s the point of sources?’ Helping Year 11 to understand the discipline
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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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Triumphs Show 139: Whodunnit? The Felling mining disaster of 1812
Teaching History feature
Whodunnit? The Felling mining disaster, 1812
The room buzzes as pathologists swap stories about injuries on the latest bodies. Some have virtually all limbs missing, others have been crushed by rockfall. Others have been found seemingly asleep with not a mark on their bodies.
You have stepped into a Year...
Triumphs Show 139: Whodunnit? The Felling mining disaster of 1812
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History's secret weapon: the enquiry of a disciplined mind
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
As a local authority adviser, Andrew Wrenn's advice has often been sought by history departments, both those seeking to resist ill-conceived and potentially damaging cross-curricular initiatives and those keen to exploit new opportunities for meaningful...
History's secret weapon: the enquiry of a disciplined mind
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How ‘good’ are Key Stage 3 textbooks in supporting the teaching of the Holocaust?
Teaching History article
Convinced of the value of a good textbook as a teaching and learning resource, Alex Diamond set out to understand teachers’ thinking about Holocaust textbooks and what it would be for a textbook to represent Holocaust history adequately. As Diamond’s discussion shows, this is a multi-faceted issue. Evaluating textbook representation involves reflecting...
How ‘good’ are Key Stage 3 textbooks in supporting the teaching of the Holocaust?
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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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Year 7 challenge stereotypes about the Mexica
Teaching History article
After discussing a new book about the Mexica (Aztecs) during a routine meeting with a trainee teacher, Niamh Jennings decided to construct a sequence of lessons around the history of the Mexica Empire. Struck by the vivid storytelling of historian Camilla Townsend in her book Fifth Sun, and fascinated by...
Year 7 challenge stereotypes about the Mexica
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Bringing Rwanda into the classroom
Teaching History article
A short 20 years: meeting the challenges facing teachers who bring Rwanda into the classroom
As the twentieth anniversary of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda approaches, Mark Gudgel argues that we should face the challenges posed by teaching about Rwanda. Drawing on his experience as a history teacher in the...
Bringing Rwanda into the classroom
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Building and assessing a frame of reference in the Netherlands
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Concerns about our ability to equip young people with a frame of reference that they can actually use to orient themselves in time are widespread. The challenges were extensively debated within the last issue of...
Building and assessing a frame of reference in the Netherlands
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Bringing historical method into the classroom
Teaching History article
Shortly before their final A-level examination, Peter Turner was alarmed to discover some fundamental weaknesses in his Year 13 students’ understanding of the nature of historical interpretations. Determined to address this concern at a much earlier point with his next cohort of students he developed a new six-lesson enquiry. His...
Bringing historical method into the classroom
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Inventing race? Using primary sources to investigate the origins of racial thinking in the past
Teaching History article
Having been given some additional curriculum time, Kerry Apps and her department made decisions about what had been missing in the previous curriculum diet. Building on an existing enquiry (in TH 176), Apps decided to focus on how and when the idea of race in its modern sense developed in early modern...
Inventing race? Using primary sources to investigate the origins of racial thinking in the past
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In pursuit of shared histories: uncovering Islamic history in the secondary classroom
Teaching History article
In 2005, in a Teaching History article entitled, ‘A need to know’, Nicolas Kinloch built an argument for teaching the history of Islamic civilisations to all pupils. Afia Chaudhry returns to this theme, reflecting deeply on the needs of her own students – Muslim and non-Muslim alike – within a...
In pursuit of shared histories: uncovering Islamic history in the secondary classroom
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Knowledge and the Draft NC
Teaching History article
Silk purse from a sow's ear? Why knowledge matters and why the draft History NC will not improve it
Katie Hall and Christine Counsell attempt to construct a Key Stage 3 scheme of work out of the draft National Curriculum for history that was released for consultation in England in...
Knowledge and the Draft NC
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‘One big cake’: substantive knowledge of the mid-Tudor crisis in Year 7 students’ writing
Teaching History article
While looking to revamp his department’s Year 7 enquiry on the Tudors, Jack Mills turned to historiographical debates regarding the ‘mid-Tudor crisis’ to inform his curricular decision making. In doing so, Mills noted that the debate hinged on interpretations of substantive concepts such as ‘crisis’. He therefore also drew on previous...
‘One big cake’: substantive knowledge of the mid-Tudor crisis in Year 7 students’ writing
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Potential and pitfalls in teaching 'big pictures' of the past
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Jonathan Howson summarises findings from the recent ESRC funded research project - Usable Historical Pasts - and suggests how its insights might inform continuing professional debate and enquiry concerning both frameworks and ‘big pictures'.
In...
Potential and pitfalls in teaching 'big pictures' of the past
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Historical reasoning in the classroom
Teaching History article
Historical reasoning in the classroom: What does it look like and how can we enhance it?
The history education community has long recognised that historical thinking depends on the interplay between substantive knowledge about the past and the procedural, or second-order, concepts that historians use to construct, shape and give...
Historical reasoning in the classroom
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‘What is history?’ Africa and the excitement of sources with Year 7
Teaching History article
Many history departments choose to begin their Year 7 curriculum with an introduction to the nature of history and the processes in which historians engage as they develop, refine and substantiate claims about the past. In this article, Adbul Mohamud and Robin Whitburn report on an such an introductory unit, designed with a specific focus on the history...
‘What is history?’ Africa and the excitement of sources with Year 7
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Building local history into the curriculum
Teaching History article
Neil Bates and Robert Bowry have chosen to tackle the issue of curriculum coherence by including local history, both as starting point for new students joining the school in Year 7 and as a golden thread running throughout their Key Stage 3 curriculum. In this article they explain the rationale...
Building local history into the curriculum
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Move Me On 167: Frames of reference
Teaching History feature
This feature is designed to build critical, informed debate about the character of teacher training, teacher education and professional development.
This issue’s problem: Eleanor Franks doesn’t really understand her students’ frames of reference and the difficulties that many of them have in making sense of the particular historical phenomena she is teaching them about.
Eleanor Franks,...
Move Me On 167: Frames of reference
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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?
