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How my interest in what I don't teach has informed my teaching and enriched my students' learning
Teaching History article
How my interest in what I don't teach has informed my teaching and enriched my students' learning
Flora Wilson argues here for the importance of maintaining a fascination with history as an academic subject for experienced, practising history teachers. Just as medical professionals keep their knowledge up to date by...
How my interest in what I don't teach has informed my teaching and enriched my students' learning
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Polychronicon 146: Interpreting the history of 'big history'
Teaching History feature
In recent decades, a novel approach to history has emerged, called ‘big history', which provides an overview of all of human history, embedded within biological, geological and astronomical history covering the grandest sweep of time and space, from the beginning of the universe to life on Earth here and now....
Polychronicon 146: Interpreting the history of 'big history'
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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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Historical Causation: Is One Thing More Important Than Another?
Branch Lecture Podcast
WHAT COLOUR ARE THE UNICORNS?Professor Steve Rigby, recently retired from the University of Manchester, delivered ‘Historical Causation: Is One Thing More Important Than Another?' to the Bolton Branch of the Historical Association on 29th November 2010. His lecture gives a fascinating introduction to the philosophy of historical causation, looking at...
Historical Causation: Is One Thing More Important Than Another?
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From human-scale to abstract analysis: Year 7. Henry II & Becket
Teaching History article
Tim Jenner was working on a causation enquiry with his Year 7 students when he noticed that weak conceptions of change were limiting their ability to produce powerful and period-sensitive arguments. He therefore decided to digress into a temporary but explicit focus on analysing historical change. He created a deceptively...
From human-scale to abstract analysis: Year 7. Henry II & Becket
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Is any explanation better than none?
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
What do we know about progression in historical understanding? In Teaching History 113, Lee and Shemilt discussed what progression models can and cannot do to help us think about measuring and developing pupils' understanding and...
Is any explanation better than none?
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Significance
Key Concepts
Please note: these links were compiled in 2009. For a more recent resource, please see: What's the Wisdom on: Historical significance.
This selection of Teaching History articles on 'Significance' are highly recommended reading to anyone who wants to get to grips with this key concept. All Teaching History articles are free to HA Secondary Members...
Significance
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Move Me On 92: Having problems teaching causation
The problem page for history mentors
This Issue's Problem: Melville Miles, student history teacher, is in Term 3 of his PGCE year. Melville has taught a number of excellent lessons in which he enabled pupils to reach high levels of historical understanding. His diagnostic assessment of pupils' work is unusually sophisticated for a PGCE student. Melville's...
Move Me On 92: Having problems teaching causation
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Being ambitious with the causes of the First World War: interrogating inevitability
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated
Gary Howells asks hard questions about typical teaching and assessment of historical causation at Key Stage 3. Popular activities that may be helpful in addressing particular learning areas, or in teaching pupils to use the...
Being ambitious with the causes of the First World War: interrogating inevitability
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Emotional response or objective enquiry? Using shared stories and a sense of place in the study of interpretations for GCSE
Article
In this article, Andrew Wrenn explores some issues that teachers might consider when supporting 14 and 15 year olds in their study of war memorials as historical interpretations. Tony McAleavy has argued that ‘popular' and ‘personal' interpretations and representations are just as worthy of study at Key Stage 3 as...
Emotional response or objective enquiry? Using shared stories and a sense of place in the study of interpretations for GCSE
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Emotional response or objective enquiry? Using shared stories and a sense of place
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
In this article, Andrew Wrenn explores some issues that teachers might consider when supporting 14 and 15 year olds in their study of war memorials as historical interpretations. Tony McAleavy has argued that ‘popular' and...
Emotional response or objective enquiry? Using shared stories and a sense of place
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Polychronicon 127: The Crusades
Teaching History feature
Modern research on the crusades has concentrated on three basic questions. What were they? How were they justified? What motivated the crusaders? The first of these questions became controversial twenty-five years ago, when historians with a traditional approach to the subject, who took into consideration only those expeditions launched to...
Polychronicon 127: The Crusades
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Putting life into history: how pupils can use oral history to become critical historians
Teaching History article
However imaginative and enquiring classroom history may be, the history itself is usually constructed by a historian, a textbook author or a teacher. It is rare that pupils gain the opportunity to construct original histories of their own. Oral history can offer this opportunity. Yet as a methodology, oral history...
Putting life into history: how pupils can use oral history to become critical historians
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Does the linguistic release the conceptual? Helping Year 10 to improve their casual reasoning
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Does new vocabulary help students to express existing ideas for which they do not yet have words or does it actually give them new ideas which they did not previously hold? James Woodcock asks whether...
Does the linguistic release the conceptual? Helping Year 10 to improve their casual reasoning
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Camels, diamonds and counterfactuals: a model for teaching causal reasoning
Teaching History article
In the last edition of Teaching History, Arthur Chapman described how he uses ICT to develop sixth form students’ conceptual understanding of interpretations, significance and change. In this article, he turns his attention to causal reasoning and analysis. Drawing on the work of historians such as Evans and Carr, he...
Camels, diamonds and counterfactuals: a model for teaching causal reasoning
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Have we got the question right? Engaging future citizens in local history enquiry
Teaching History article
Gary Clemitshaw describes a five-lesson sequence integrating history, citizenship and ICT. He examines the varied rationales and problems underlying a citizenship-history link and then argues for the role of the local dimension in securing a connection that preserves the integrity of the discipline of history. He focuses upon causation as...
Have we got the question right? Engaging future citizens in local history enquiry
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Illuminating the shadow: making progress happen in casual thinking through speaking and listening
Teaching History article
Here is another breath of fresh air from the Thomas Tallis history department. In TH 103, Head of Department Tony Hier showed how he developed a rigorous framework for implementing government initiatives and improving departmental professional discourse at the same time. This time, from history teacher Vaughan Clark, we get...
Illuminating the shadow: making progress happen in casual thinking through speaking and listening
