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Puritan attitudes towards plays and pleasure in the Age of Shakespeare
Presidential Lecture - Annual Conference 2014
In Twelfth Night Shakespeare gently mocked the Puritans, who objected to stage plays and other entertainments. Yet within four decades, the Puritans had closed the London theatres and were about to seize power from Charles I. Among their many reforms were the banning of Christmas celebrations and of Twelfth Night itself....
Puritan attitudes towards plays and pleasure in the Age of Shakespeare
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Experienced Teacher Programme (ETP)
Spring 2025 cohort, starts Wednesday 26 February
This six-week online course is designed to energise your teaching and help you engage with the history education community. In this programme you will access rich, subject-specific professional development designed specifically for experienced teachers: an antidote to one-size-fits-all training. We will explore of some of the biggest questions, the thorniest...
Experienced Teacher Programme (ETP)
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Mini Teacher Fellowship: Medieval Perceptions of Conquest
HA Mini Teacher Fellowship 2020–21
In the summer of 2020 a group of teachers took part in a mini teacher fellowship on medieval perceptions of conquest. Teachers took part in a two-day course led by academic historians Dr Emily Winkler of Oxford University and Dr Owain Jones of Bangor University. Sadly, due to the covid...
Mini Teacher Fellowship: Medieval Perceptions of Conquest
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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: Interpretations at GCSE
Film: Secondary History Workshop Annual Conference 2019
This secondary workshop took place at at the Historical Association Annual Conference, Chester, May 2019.
To teach successfully at GCSE, should you focus your work on practice exam questions? Is boosting grades about re-writing mark-schemes in pupil-friendly language and showing model answers? Success at GCSE involves teaching interpretations properly, not just...
Film: Interpretations at GCSE
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Chronology Project
E-CPD
Please note: this resource pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content and links may be outdated
What are we trying to achieve?
This is an excellent example of a small-scale co-operative project between several schools, each addressing the issue of Chronology in a way that is particularly pertinent to...
Chronology Project
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Triumphs Show 192: Balancing micro- and macronarratives of the Holocaust
Teaching History feature
Lien de Jong celebrates her 90th birthday in September 2023. In lots of ways, her biography is similar to many Europeans of her generation. She was born, grew up and went to school in The Hague during the 1930s. She trained to work in a nursery. In the 1950s, she...
Triumphs Show 192: Balancing micro- and macronarratives of the Holocaust
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Recorded Webinar: Teaching Jewish histories
Article
Where Jews appear on school curricula, they tend to appear as victims, particularly in the context of the Nazi genocide. The vibrant diversity of Jewish life in preceding centuries is underexplored, and students are given little context for understanding the growth of antisemitism.
This webinar delves into this vibrant richness...
Recorded Webinar: Teaching Jewish histories
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Recorded webinar: The People of 1381
Article
This lecture with Adrian Bell, Helen Lacey and Helen Killick introduces key findings of the AHRC-funded project The People of 1381. Which people and social groups were involved in England’s biggest pre-civil war revolt? How much can we find out about their lives: where did they come from, what actions...
Recorded webinar: The People of 1381
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Polychronicon 175: Paris 1919 – a century on
Teaching History feature
The Paris peace conference resulted in five major treaties, each with one of the defeated Central Powers. Of these the most consequential was the Treaty of Versailles with Germany, signed on 28 June 1919, which was denounced by the young economist John Maynard Keynes in his bestselling polemic The Economic...
Polychronicon 175: Paris 1919 – a century on
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Virtual Branch recording: Why has Monarchy survived in Europe?
Virtual Branch
In the lead-up to the Queen's Platinum Jubilee, Dr Bob Morris joined the HA Virtual Branch in March 2022 to consider why the monarchy has survived in Europe.
Dr R. M. (Bob) Morris is a Senior Honorary Research Associate at the Constitution Unit, University College London. He was formerly a...
Virtual Branch recording: Why has Monarchy survived in Europe?
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A Mid-Tudor Crisis?
Classic Pamphlet
This classic pamphlet takes you through the Mid-Tudor period focusing on foreign affairs and finance, the Dukes of Somerset and Northumberland, the risings of 1549, coups and commissions 1549-53, Edwardian Protestantism success and failure, Mary and the Catholic Restoration, the Marian Administration and the Spanish Marriage.
A Mid-Tudor Crisis?
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Interpretation and poor Victorian Children
Year 6 Scheme of Work
Please note: this resource pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum.
This unit centres on the portrayal of poor, Victorian children. While factual knowledge about conditions in workhouses is an essential component of the unit, the main focus is on contrasting portrayals of one fictional Victorian child, Charles Dicken's Oliver Twist. The...
Interpretation and poor Victorian Children
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Cunning Plan 135: challenging generalisations
Teaching History feature
Let's play ‘TOO SIMPLE!' (a.k.a. ‘the generalisation game').
Some years ago, in my own history classroom, in a not-very-inspired moment, I developed a straightforward, low-resource, low-preparation activity which turned out to have more power than I had anticipated in getting pupils to reflect on degree or type of similarity and...
Cunning Plan 135: challenging generalisations
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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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The People's Pensions
Recorded lecture
Why did the British get pensions when they did? What part did the great social surveys (Booth and Rowntree) play? Was there something rotten at the heart of Empire? What part did fears of a Red Peril play? Was Britain slow, with Bismarck and even the Tsar providing some measures of...
The People's Pensions
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Teaching History 134: Local Voices
The HA's journal for secondary history teachers
02 Editorial
03 HA Secondary News
04 Relevant, rigorous and revisited: using local history to make meaning of historical significance – Geraint Brown and James Woodcock (Read article)
12 Cunning Plan: Local history at KS3 – Dan Moorhouse (Read article)
15 Nutshell
16 Riots, railways and a Hampshire hill fort: exploiting local...
Teaching History 134: Local Voices
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Virtual Branch recording: Henry Christophe, the Haitian Revolution and the Caribbean's Forgotten Kingdom
The Black Crown
How did a man born enslaved on a plantation triumph over Napoleon's invading troops and become king of the first free black nation in the Americas? This is the forgotten, remarkable story of Henry Christophe. Christophe fought as a child soldier in the American War of Independence, before serving in...
Virtual Branch recording: Henry Christophe, the Haitian Revolution and the Caribbean's Forgotten Kingdom
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Historical anniversaries calendar
Article
Historical anniversaries can be a great way to get children and young people interested in a subject or to raise awareness about a particular issue.
This resource is free to everyone. For access to hundreds of other high-quality history and education resources along with free or discounted CPD and membership of a thriving community of...
Historical anniversaries calendar
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Do Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children see themselves in your history classroom?
Helen Snelson and Richard Kerridge; resources from HA conference session, Bristol, May 2022
Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people are the largest minority ethnic group in some communities (and therefore in some schools) in the UK.
Richard Kerridge and Helen Snelson have worked with the historian Professor Becky Taylor to produce a range of teaching resources for teaching the history of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller...
Do Gypsy, Roma and Traveller children see themselves in your history classroom?
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Film: The Making of Early England 500-1066
Virtual Branch Lecture Recording
In this Virtual Branch lecture Michael Wood returns to his popular territory of Early England 500-1066 using the lives of specific stories and individuals to cast light on the period. This lecture was recorded on the 9 July 2020 as part of the HA Virtual Branch and is available to all...
Film: The Making of Early England 500-1066
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Historical Interpretation: Why is it still such a major issue?
E-CPD
This E-CPD unit was produced for the previous National Curriculum, when Interpretations in History were still relatively new. In the current National Curriculum, Interpretations are still central to the skills necessary for success. Perhaps more so, as it is now a separate assessment objective [AO4] at GCSE, starting in 2016,...
Historical Interpretation: Why is it still such a major issue?
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Move Me On 137: Regards PGCE assignments as unhelpful distractions
Teaching History feature
This issue's problem: Ellen Wilkinson regards her PGCE assignments as an unhelpful distraction from the real business of learning to teach.
Ellen has just had her first PGCE assignment returned to her by her tutor and is furious about the comments she has received and the indicative Masters level mark it...
Move Me On 137: Regards PGCE assignments as unhelpful distractions
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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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A modest proposal for change in Canadian history education
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Peter Seixas recounts the development of a history education reform project in Canada. Like all good histories, it is a complex story and a matter of unanticipated consequences and ironic narrative twists.
Seixas' history is,...
A modest proposal for change in Canadian history education