-
Move Me On 95: Becoming frustrated with A level
Teaching History feature
This Issue's Problem: Mary nightingale, PGCE Student, is becoming frustrated with her 'A' Level Teaching
Problem:
Mary Nightingale is in the third term of her PGCE course. Although her work with classes at Key Stage 3 and 4 is very successful, she is becoming increasingly frustrated with her A level...
Move Me On 95: Becoming frustrated with A level
-
Teaching the Holocaust: the experience of Vad Vashem
Teaching History article
No institution is better known for its continuing work on the Holocaust than Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem. In this article Richelle Budd Caplan offers guidelines for teachers, based on its unrivalled experience. She demands that our teaching of this subject should aim to restore the identities of the victims. To do...
Teaching the Holocaust: the experience of Vad Vashem
-
The teaching and learning of history for 15-16 year olds: have the Japanese anything to learn from the English experience
Teaching History article
What would you expect the differences to be between Japan and England in how pupils learn history in the post-14 phase? Perhaps your guess would be: Japanese school students learn a lot of historical facts and focus upon their own identity and English school students talk a lot more in...
The teaching and learning of history for 15-16 year olds: have the Japanese anything to learn from the English experience
-
Teach First
Routes into teaching
Teach First’s vision is that no child’s educational success should be limited by their socio-economic background and it places highly motivated graduates in schools in areas of greatest need.
Teach First differs from other routes into teaching in a number of ways. It describes itself as a ‘two-year leadership development...
Teach First
-
Worlds in collision: university tutor and student perspectives on the transition to degree level history
Teaching History article
What does it mean to be good at history? At certain times during their formal education students seem to be required to adjust their understanding of what studying history entails. Alan Booth writes from the viewpoint of a university tutor. He has collated ‘student voice’ on the experience of studying...
Worlds in collision: university tutor and student perspectives on the transition to degree level history
-
Content restricted and maturation retarded? Problems with the post-16 history curriculum
Teaching History article
Mike Tillbrook examines the impact of the new AS and A2 courses, raising several serious concerns. He explores problems for effective and rigorous assessment as well as implications of the new course structure for the quality and range of historical learning. Critical of new restrictions in content, he suggests that...
Content restricted and maturation retarded? Problems with the post-16 history curriculum
-
History and Mathematics or History with Mathematics: does it add up?
Teaching History article
Ian Phillips expresses some frustration with the way the Numeracy across the Curriculum strand of England’s Key Stage 3 Strategy is sometimes presented. He argues that the acid test of cross-curricular numeracy is the value of mathematical understanding in aiding historical thinking and imagination. He criticises attempts to plant numeracy...
History and Mathematics or History with Mathematics: does it add up?
-
Reading and enquiring in Years 12 and 13
Teaching History article
Historical enquiry is blooming at Key Stage 3. Thanks to a rich array of source materials available on the web and in textbooks, superb history-specific training courses and genuinely innovative practice in schools, pupils can increasingly be found wrestling with demanding and often lengthy sources. They do this in order...
Reading and enquiring in Years 12 and 13
-
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... medieval science and medicine?
Teaching History feature
The phrase ‘medieval science’ may seem nonsensical. ‘How can... a synonym for “backward”,’ the editors of The Cambridge History of Science Volume 2 ask rhetorically, ‘modify a noun that signifies the best available knowledge from the natural world?’ To answer their question, we must rethink our assumptions, both about the...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... medieval science and medicine?
-
Film: Living with Violence at the End of the British Empire
Age of Emergency
In the 1950s, Britain fought a series of brutal wars against insurgents in the colonies of Malaya, Kenya, and Cyprus. How did people at home experience these wars? How did they learn about the use of torture and other unsettling tactics? And how did they respond to this knowledge?
In...
Film: Living with Violence at the End of the British Empire
-
Recorded webinar: Histories of Indigenous peoples of North America
Article
Any study of the intercultural relationships between the Indigenous peoples of North America and British settlers usually focuses on the differences that resulted in disputes and violence. However, on closer examination, the interaction also involved the exchange of ideas and the forging of alliances, which required diplomacy and respect for...
Recorded webinar: Histories of Indigenous peoples of North America
-
Cunning Plan… to teach about environmental history in the medieval period
Teaching History feature
As an undergraduate, following a traditional history course, I was surprised and intrigued, one sunny summer day, to find myself reading about sunspots and studying graphs of solar activity. My reading list for an essay on the social and economic history of the fourteenth century included the work of historians...
Cunning Plan… to teach about environmental history in the medieval period
-
Building historical thinking together: breathing new life into mini whiteboards
Teaching History article
Formative assessment, in particular Assessment for Learning, created waves in classrooms in the early 2000s. Mini whiteboards, with pen and cloth, became popular and remain part of the toolkit in some classrooms. Teachers work hard to assess the learning of all students in a class, rather than just those who...
Building historical thinking together: breathing new life into mini whiteboards
-
Virtual Branch recording: The Women's World Committee against War & Fascism
Connected and Competing Activisms
How did a group of women activists with varied ideological backgrounds construct several important campaigns against fascism in the interwar period? How did this Women's World Committee against War and Fascism (Comité Mondial des Femmes contre la Guerre et le Fascisme) undertake effective humanitarian and propaganda work and forge extensive...
Virtual Branch recording: The Women's World Committee against War & Fascism
-
Film: Ideas and Ideology
Film series: Power and authority in Germany, 1871-1991
Professor Matthew Stibbe assesses some of the contradictory factors at play in East Germany and how that related to the wider Soviet system. He contrasts this with the development of the capitalist system that was being developed in West Germany.
If you're unable to see the film below, please use...
Film: Ideas and Ideology
-
Triumphs Show: The BeBold Network
Teaching History feature
In April 2019, I was in a bit of a rut. My enquiry questions and lesson sequences seemed stale. I felt like I had been at my school for too long. To mix things up, I secured a new role for September at a start-up school.
Full of excitement, I...
Triumphs Show: The BeBold Network
-
Germany 1914-1929: Discussion
Film series: Power and authority in Germany, 1871-1991
Professors Tim Grady and Matthew Stibbe consider changing interpretations of Germany in 1914-1929, from a negative continuum of authoritarianism culminating in Hitler's regime to a modern approach of seeing the Weimar Republic through a sociocultural lens.
If you're unable to see the film below, please use the link for your Membership...
Germany 1914-1929: Discussion
-
Film: Key groups in the African-American Civil Rights Movement
Film series: The African-American Civil Rights Movement
In this film, Professor Brian Ward and Professor Joe Street of Northumbria University look at two of the key groups that played a significant role in the development of the Civil Rights Movement: the NAACP (The National Association for the Development of Coloured People) and the Black Panthers.
If you're unable...
Film: Key groups in the African-American Civil Rights Movement
-
‘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
-
Teacher Fellowship programme: The Caribbean, Monarchy and Legacies of Empire
Teacher Fellowship programme 2025
Although twelve Caribbean colonies gained independence during Elizabeth II's reign, only four opted to become republics (most recently Barbados, in 2021) and eight retain the British monarch as head of state to this day. Emphasising Caribbean sources and perspectives, this Teacher Fellowship programme examines the role of the British monarchy in the...
Teacher Fellowship programme: The Caribbean, Monarchy and Legacies of Empire
-
Film: The significance of advisers – discussion
Development of Tudor Royal Authority film series
In this film Professor Sue Doran, Jesus College, University of Oxford and Professor Steven Gunn, Merton College, University of Oxford examine the role and importance of royal advisers to the developement of Tudor Royal Authority.
If you're unable to see the film below, please use the link for your Membership type:Historian members |...
Film: The significance of advisers – discussion
-
Lesson sequence: Life in a Medieval Village - taster lesson
Article
This series of lessons has been designed to make gaining knowledge of medieval rural life engaging for students and to teach them how good historical fiction is constructed. Students learn how to write a story about life in the fourteenth-century Suffolk village of Walsham and to do so successfully they...
Lesson sequence: Life in a Medieval Village - taster lesson
-
Lesson sequence: Life in a Medieval Village
Article
The first lesson of this sequence is available free to all secondary members here.
This series of lessons has been designed to make gaining knowledge of medieval rural life engaging for students and to teach them how good historical fiction is constructed. Students learn how to write a story about life in...
Lesson sequence: Life in a Medieval Village
-
Teaching Year 8 pupils to take seriously the ideas of ordinary people from the past
Teaching History article
Jacob Olivey wanted Year 8 to know that ordinary people in the nineteenth century constructed their own identities. In this reflection on how his practice developed in his training year, Olivey illustrates the importance of using historical scholarship in choosing foundational knowledge to teach. He shows how he used that...
Teaching Year 8 pupils to take seriously the ideas of ordinary people from the past
-
Film: Religion and Tudor Royal Authority – discussion
Development of Tudor Royal Authority film series
In this film Professor Sue Doran, Jesus College, University of Oxford and Professor Steven Gunn, Merton College, University of Oxford, look at the role religion played in defining the reigns and authority of the Tudor monarchs.
If you're unable to see the film below, please use the link for your Membership type:Historian...
Film: Religion and Tudor Royal Authority – discussion
