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An authentic voice: perspectives on the value of listening to survivors of genocide
Teaching History article
It is common practice to invite survivors of the Holocaust to speak about their experiences to pupils in schools and colleges. Systematic reflection on the value of working with survivors of the Holocaust and other genocides and on how to make the most of doing so is rarer, however. In...
An authentic voice: perspectives on the value of listening to survivors of genocide
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The Holocaust in history and history in the curriculum
Teaching History article
In this powerfully argued article Paul Salmons focuses directly on the distinctive contribution that a historical approach to the study of the Holocaust makes to young people's education. Not only does he question the adequacy of objectives focused on eliciting purely emotional responses; he issues a strong warning that turning...
The Holocaust in history and history in the curriculum
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Using eighteenth-century material culture to develop evidential thinking in Year 8
Teaching History article
It seems that teapots really can talk. Eleanor Dimond took her undergraduate experience of studying material culture into the classroom, with startling results. Historians of material culture have developed distinctive evidential methods which, in stark contrast to typical GCSE and A-Level approaches, see a strong interplay between analysis of the physical attributes...
Using eighteenth-century material culture to develop evidential thinking in Year 8
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Fifties Britain through the senses: ‘never had it so good’?
Teaching History article
Maya Stiasny was faced with difficulties familiar to many of us. Her new Year 12 students were struggling to get to grips with a new period of history. They were not interrogating primary sources with sufficient vigour. Her solution, detailed here, was novel. Working on the rich social history of post-war...
Fifties Britain through the senses: ‘never had it so good’?
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It’s just reading, right? Exploring how Year 12 students approach sources
Teaching History article
Frustrated by the generic statements that her Year 12 students were making about sources, Jacqueline Vyrnwy-Pierce resolved to undertake a research project into how her students were approaching sources about the French Revolution. Fascinated by the research of American educational psychologist Sam Wineburg, Vyrnwy-Pierce decided to use Wineburg’s methods to find...
It’s just reading, right? Exploring how Year 12 students approach sources
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... Histories of education – and society?
Teaching History feature
It is not emphasised enough that the progress of historiography often proceeds, not by historians arguing and then coming to some resolution, but simply by moving on. Historiography follows fashion, and subjects often exhaust themselves (for the time being)... A related issue is that of siloes. Historiography – academic writing generally...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... Histories of education – and society?
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Questions and answers about questions and answers
Teaching History article
Intrigued by the wide range of pupils’ responses to a sourcebased essay question, Jonathan Sellin decided to investigate why pupils were using sources in such different ways. Probing his own philosophical assumptions about history, and how they have changed over time, prompted Sellin to explore pupils’ assumptions about how historians use sources to make claims about the past. By asking pupils to...
Questions and answers about questions and answers
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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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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
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Inverting the telescope: investigating sources from a different perspective
Teaching History article
As historians, we are dependent on evidence, which comes in many varieties. Rosalind Stirzaker here introduces a project which she ran two years ago to encourage her students to think about artefacts in a different way. They have examined randomly preserved artefacts such as those of Pompeii, and sets of...
Inverting the telescope: investigating sources from a different perspective
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Cunning Plan 152.2: using Gillray’s cartoons with Year 8
Teaching History feature
The past 30 years have seen a general revival in scholarly activity relating to ‘all aspects of 18th-century British history'. However, this increase in academic study, which has broadly coincided with the introduction and development of the National Curriculum in England, has not resulted in the period being studied in great...
Cunning Plan 152.2: using Gillray’s cartoons with Year 8
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'Please send socks': How much can Reg Wilkes tell us about the Great War?
Teaching History article
This was an opportunity all good historians dream about. A large box crammed with artefacts about a soldier who fought in the First World War, just begging to be read, studied, sorted and organised. Being faced with such a wealth of uncatalogued primary evidence could have proved daunting enough without...
'Please send socks': How much can Reg Wilkes tell us about the Great War?
