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Doing History at University 2025
Thinking of studying history at university?
Book Now
(Registration is via Cademy which opens in a new window. Please read the HA CPD terms and conditions before registering)
We are pleased to be hosting a Doing History at University event for students and teachers in partnership with the University of Sheffield. The aim of the event is to...
Doing History at University 2025
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Webinar series: Medieval political ideas and activity in global context
Funded webinar series for secondary teachers from the HA and the Noblesse Oblige research network
Medieval history is often a story of kings and their dates, primarily of England or, at best, western Europe. This funded webinar series aimed at secondary history teachers will introduce teachers to educational approaches to the Middle Ages that go beyond both kings and this narrow geographical range.
It takes...
Webinar series: Medieval political ideas and activity in global context
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Cunning Plan 137: making homework more exciting
Teaching History journal feature
Ever since I started teaching, homework has been something of a bugbear. Administration alone is a hassle: not only remembering when to set and collect it in, but keeping track of the various students who fail to deliver anything on time (except highly creative excuses) and of the follow-up action...
Cunning Plan 137: making homework more exciting
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Pedagogical framework for stimulating historical contextualisation
Teaching History article
'Why am I accused of being a heretic?' A pedagogical framework for stimulating historical contextualisation
One of the challenges facing students who want to make sense of a source or an interpretation of the past is the need to place it in its context. Various research studies have shown that students...
Pedagogical framework for stimulating historical contextualisation
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HA South West History Network
10 Minute Mini CPD
The HA South West Network are pleased to offer a new series of 10-minute Mini CPD sessions: bite-sized talks on what teachers in the South West are doing for everyone to enjoy. Details and booking links will be published on the Network's Twitter account @HASWNetwork.
Date
Presenter
Focus
Tuesday 29...
HA South West History Network
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Was the workhouse really so bad? An encounter with a cantekerous tramp
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Have you stuggled to find an invigorating, exciting local enquiry to motivate your Year 9 class ? How do you engage students in lively debate? This was the challenge for one Norfolk school who wanted...
Was the workhouse really so bad? An encounter with a cantekerous tramp
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Themes over Time
HA Resources
The study of an aspect or theme in British history that consolidates and extends pupils'chronological knowledge from before 1066While the 2014 Curriculum sets out the broad focus of each particular content area, considerable choice has been left to history departments in determining which particular events or developments to include and...
Themes over Time
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New Saxon, Viking and Medieval GCSE Content
GCSE Resources
As you will no doubt be aware, GCSEs are changing. New specifications (subject to accreditation) will require students to learn history from a range of different time periods. Different specifications will specify different content, but whichever specification you end up teaching, you are very likely to be teaching some medieval...
New Saxon, Viking and Medieval GCSE Content
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Education Objectives for the Study of History: A suggested framework
Classic Teaching History Pamphlets
Teachers of history in many parts of the country are now trying to formulate objectives for the study of their subject. This framework is put forward as a possible aid to them in a task which all admit to be a difficult one. Here, we try to spell out the...
Education Objectives for the Study of History: A suggested framework
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‘Man, people in the past were indeed stupid’
Teaching History journal article
In this article, which is based on Huijgen’s PhD dissertation Balancing between the past and the present, Tim Huijgen and Paul Holthuis present the results of an experimental method of teaching 14–16-year-old students to contextualise their historical studies in a different way. In the four lessons described, students’ initial reactions...
‘Man, people in the past were indeed stupid’
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Triumphs Show 129: Holding a live debate around an historical theme
Teaching History feature
Beheading Headlines: Holding a live debate around an historical theme
Studying the events surrounding the execution of Charles I is exciting on many levels: the first English King to be executed by his ‘people', the gory public beheading and the controversy surrounding the trial and verdict... But studying the Civil...
Triumphs Show 129: Holding a live debate around an historical theme
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Move Me On 170: adapting to a second school
The problem page for history mentors
This feature of Teaching History 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. Each issue presents a situation in initial teacher education/training with an...
Move Me On 170: adapting to a second school
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Triumphs Show 170: making a place for fieldwork in history lessons
Journal article
Why ‘do’ local history? The new (grades 9–1) GCSE specifications place a lot of importance on the local environment. The rationale for this is to get students to situate a site in its historical context, and to examine the relationship between local and national developments. Initially this change was the...
Triumphs Show 170: making a place for fieldwork in history lessons
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Move Me On 126: Setting worthwhile homework
Teaching History feature
Val Messalina is a lively and engaging young student teacher who has come straight to the PGCE course after completing her history degree. She has made a positive start to teaching but is quite nervous and tends to look for very clear guidance and support. She is now half way...
Move Me On 126: Setting worthwhile homework
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‘Its ultimate pattern was greater than its parts’
Teaching History journal article
Identifying the challenges his students faced both with recall and analysis of the content they had learned for their GCSE course, Ed Durbin devised a solution which focused not on exam skills and revision lessons, but on using Key Stage 3 to build the ‘hinterland’ of contextual knowledge and causal...
‘Its ultimate pattern was greater than its parts’
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Film: Creating a more positive interpretation of the Middle Ages at Key Stage 3
Secondary History Workshop Annual Conference 2019
Popular perceptions of life, politics and morality in the Middle Ages are overwhelmingly negative, a far cry from images being developed by historians through their research. This workshop explores how to tweak and change familiar topics (including the reign of Richard III) to create a more historically accurate, positive and...
Film: Creating a more positive interpretation of the Middle Ages at Key Stage 3
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... migration and empire
A Polychronicon of the past
In autumn 2019, Kara Walker’s monumental sculpture, Fons Americanus, went on display in the Tate Modern, offering a poignant, troubling challenge to national commemoration. Walker depicts not the lingering vestiges of imperial glory, but sharks, tears, and haunted memories. She brings history into conversation with its contemporary legacies and engages...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... migration and empire
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History in Schools: What is the Future?
History Debate Podcast
The Future of history in our schools
Whether you have children or not, whether you're a teacher or not, if you have a love of History this debate matters to you.
History in Schools: What is the Future?
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Structuring learning for beginning teachers
Multipage Article
This section focuses on the topic of structuring learning for beginning history teachers. That is, organising training so that beginning teachers can make good progress in their professional development. Within the section, there is advice and guidance about working with adult learners (as opposed to children) and about building a...
Structuring learning for beginning teachers
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Film: Tackling superpower relations with lower-ability students
Secondary History Workshop Annual Conference 2019
This secondary workshop took place at at the Historical Association Annual Conference, Chester, May 2019.
It looked at ways of helping lower-ability students at GCSE access lesson and revision content based around superpower relations in the cold war, but is applicable to any subject area. Through a series of games and...
Film: Tackling superpower relations with lower-ability students
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Film: Making an effective History curriculum
Workshop Film: Yorkshire History Forum 2018
Richard Kennett is a senior leader, teacher, blogger, text-book author and member of HA secondary committee. In November 2018, Richard visited the Yorkshire History Forum to talk about his school’s experience of reviewing and re-planning their Key Stage 3 curriculum. This film is of Richard’s keynote speech at the Forum....
Film: Making an effective History curriculum
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Harold Son of Godwin
Classic Pamphlet
To lecture on Harold Godwinson, earl of Wessex, King Harold II of England, in the year 1966 at Hastings is a presumption. We appear to know much about him, and yet in fact there are many gaps in knowledge. Much information, so plausible at first sight, proves unreliable on closer...
Harold Son of Godwin
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Transforming Year 11's conceptual understanding of change
Teaching History article
For all that history teachers appreciate the need to build substantive knowledge and conceptual understanding systematically over time, they are also likely to have experienced that sickening moment when they realise that a Year 11 pupil has somehow missed something fundamental.
In Anna Fielding's case, her pupil's misconception was related to...
Transforming Year 11's conceptual understanding of change
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Community engagement in local history
Teaching History article
This article, by Lynda Abbott and Richard Grayson, offers a fascinating example of collaboration between school and university, focused on the development of a community archive.
The project - run as an extra-curricular activity - was originally inspired by a concern to preserve the personal stories of those whose lives...
Community engagement in local history
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Triumphs Show 144: Active learning to engage ‘challenging students'
Teaching History feature
Active learning to engage and challenge ‘challenging students'
Historical significance may have been the ‘forgotten element' in 2002 when Rob Phillips first offered us the acronym ‘GREAT', but it has been seized upon with enthusiasm by the history education community. Christine Counsell's now famous five ‘R's (remarkable, remembered, resonant, resulting...
Triumphs Show 144: Active learning to engage ‘challenging students'
