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The role of takeaways in shaping a history curriculum
Teaching History article
Jonathan Grande explains how he and his department faced up to the paradox that teaching rich detail is vital for good historical learning and is vital for students to remember in the short term, but is not essential to remember for ever. This article sets out his exploration of why...
The role of takeaways in shaping a history curriculum
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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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Creating a progression model for teaching historical perspectives in Key Stage 3
Teaching History article
Jacob Olivey set out to design enquiries which would enable his pupils to reconstruct, using evidence, the perspectives of people in the past. In this article he shares in detail the planning and outcomes of two enquiries: one for Year 7 and one for Year 8. Olivey offers a example...
Creating a progression model for teaching historical perspectives in Key Stage 3
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Pupil-led historical enquiry: what might this actually be?
Teaching History article
The current National Curriculum for history requires pupils to ‘identify and investigate specific historical questions, making and testing hypotheses for themselves'.
While Kate Hammond relished the encouragement that this gave to her pupils to engage in the process of historical enquiry, she was keen to develop a much clearer sense...
Pupil-led historical enquiry: what might this actually be?
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Building and assessing historical knowledge on three scales
Teaching History article
The knowledge that ‘flavours' a claim: towards building and assessing historical knowledge on three scales
While marking some Year 11 essays, Kate Hammond found her interest caught by significant differences between one kind of strong analysis and another. Some scored high marks but were less convincing. The achievement in these...
Building and assessing historical knowledge on three scales
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Teaching History Curriculum Supplement 2014
Changes to the secondary history curriculum
Although modifications to the content of the National Curriculum for history have not been as dramatic as once feared, the effective revocation of the previous attainment target is radical indeed. When these changes are considered alongside the fact that more than half of maintained secondary schools (all academies and free...
Teaching History Curriculum Supplement 2014
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Are we creating a generation of 'historical tourists'?
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
A trip to the battlefields of the First World War throws into stark relief the challenges presented by work on interpretations related to historical sites. Andrew Wrenn first drew attention to the difficulties of promoting...
Are we creating a generation of 'historical tourists'?
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New, Novice or Nervous? 164: Constructing narrative
Teaching History feature: the quick guide to the no-quick-fix
Narrative is shedding its status as the ‘underrated skill’, re-emerging as a requirement of the new GCSE in England. As Counsell has argued, constructing a narrative is ‘no easy option’, however, and asking students to ‘Write an account…’ lacks the comfortable familiarity of ‘Explain why…’ or ‘How far…’. Fortunately, many...
New, Novice or Nervous? 164: Constructing narrative
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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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Assessment after levels
Free Teaching History article
Ten years ago, two heads of department in contrasting schools presented a powerfully-argued case for resisting the use of level descriptions within their assessment regimes. Influenced both by research into the nature of children's historical thinking and by principles of assessment for learning, Sally Burnham and Geraint Brown argued that...
Assessment after levels
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Building meaningful models of progression
Teaching History article
Setting us free? Building meaningful models of progression for a ‘post-levels' world
Alex Ford was thrilled by the prospect of freedom offered to history departments in England by the abolition of level descriptions within the National Curriculum.
After analysing the range of competing purposes that the level descriptions were previously...
Building meaningful models of progression
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New, Novice or Nervous? 160: Progression in evidential understanding
Teaching History feature
You have a wealth of fascinating sources you would love to explore with students but despair at their seeming inability to connect ‘source work' with the construction of historical claims. Year 7 get stuck in the ‘it's biased so we can never know' trap again and again. Year 9 students...
New, Novice or Nervous? 160: Progression in evidential understanding
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Nutshell 133
Article
Did we really need a new Attainment Target?
Yes. The first one, developed in 1995, was a best effort to craft the old 1991 ‘statements of attainment' into holistic, ‘best fit' Level Descriptions. Since then, the history education community has learned a lot and some of the goals for pupils'...
Nutshell 133
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Opportunities, challenges and questions: continual assessment in Year 9
Teaching History article
Our means of assessment might pose a problem. History teachers regularly set specific targets, with implicit or explicit reference to National Curriculum Levels, which are designed to move our pupils on and make them better historians. How, though, are we to prevent them from achieving their targets in a rather...
Opportunities, challenges and questions: continual assessment in Year 9
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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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What is APP?
Article
Assessing Pupils' Progress in History
APP is a tool to view pupil progress periodically by making use of collections of day to day learning in order to ‘make periodic judgements on pupils' progress using a wide range of evidence taken from a variety of classroom contexts.'[i] QCDA is currently working...
What is APP?
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Adventures in assessment
Teaching History article
In Teaching History 157, Assessment Edition, a number of different teachers shared the ways in which their departments were approaching the assessment and reporting of students’ progress in a ‘post-levels’ world. This article adds to those examples, first by illustrating how teachers from different schools in the Bristol area are...
Adventures in assessment
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New, Novice or Nervous? 152: Describing Progression
Teaching History feature
'New, Novice or Nervous?' 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...
New, Novice or Nervous? 152: Describing Progression
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Using timelines in assessment
Teaching History article
Bridging a twenty-year gap in their practice, Elizabeth Carr and Christine Counsell bring out the similarities in their use of timelines in their planning, teaching and assessment. What they also have in common is the fact that their experimentation with timelines as a way of strengthening cumulative knowledge emerged in...
Using timelines in assessment
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Move Me On 168: teaching exam classes
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.
This issue’s problem: Robert Nivelle is nearing the end of his first (relatively long)...
Move Me On 168: teaching exam classes
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'I just wish we could go back in the past and find out what really happened': progression in understanding about historical accounts
Teaching History article
This is the second in a series of articles for Teaching History in which Peter Lee and Denis Shemilt share the findings of Project Chata (Concepts of History and Teaching Approaches). In their first article (see Edition 113), they questioned the wisdom of using the National Curriculum attainment target as...
'I just wish we could go back in the past and find out what really happened': progression in understanding about historical accounts
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New, Novice or Nervous? 151: Getting beyond bad ‘source work'
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? 151: Getting beyond bad ‘source work'
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What is bias?
Article
There is a nice story about how Calvin Coolidge went to hear a clergyman preach on sin. 'What did he say?' he was asked. 'He said he was against it', Coolidge replied. The history teacher or student, well used by know to the normal form of questions at GCSE, might...
What is bias?
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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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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
