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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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The Great Debate: Advice for Students
The Great Debate
In this short film from 2015 Heather Scott (former Deputy President of the HA and compere of our Great Debate Finals) & Martin Spafford (Judge from our London Heats) provide advice for prospective students who might want to take part in the Great Debate. Martin and Heather also explain what...
The Great Debate: Advice for Students
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Building Key Stage 5 students’ analysis of interpretations
Article
Students of A-level history are required to analyse and evaluate historical interpretations. Samuel Head found limitations in his Year 13 students’ understanding of how and why historians arrive at differing interpretations, which impeded their ability to analyse them. He set about tackling this with carefully sequenced planning and a processual model...
Building Key Stage 5 students’ analysis of interpretations
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Writing the First World War - Podcasts
Writing the First World War
The Writing the First World War event in partnership with the English Association and the British Library took place at the British Library in London on April 14th.
Over 80 teachers attended a wonderful day of stimulating professional development which was kicked off by a thought provoking take on how...
Writing the First World War - Podcasts
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The Reformation: the view from the north
Annual Conference 2013 Podcast
Lecture from the Historical Association 2013 Annual Conference - Podcast
Professor Bill Sheils - University of York
The Reformation comprised a range of regional and local experiences, each with its own character and chronology. This talk will examine the broad characteristics of religious change in the north of England between...
The Reformation: the view from the north
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The International Journal Volume 11, Number 2
Journal
Content
Editorial
History teaching, pedagogy, curriculum and politics: dialogues and debates in regional, national, transnational, international and supranational settings Robert Guyver, University of St Mark & St John, Plymouth
Australia
Scarcely an Immaculate Conception: new professionalism encounters old politics in the formation of the Australian National History Curriculum
Tony...
The International Journal Volume 11, Number 2
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On-demand webinar: Mastering the memory challenge at GCSE
Webinar series: Making history accessible
Webinar series: Making history accessible
Session 2: Mastering the memory challenge: running successful interventions with students who are struggling to remember at GCSE
This webinar will explore a range of proven strategies for helping students remember more at GCSE. This includes:
How to avoid cognitive overload by maintaining an explicit...
On-demand webinar: Mastering the memory challenge at GCSE
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How can there be a true history?
Historian article
"How can there be a true history, when we see no man living is able to write truly the history of the last week?" (Thomas Shadwell)
Indeed! Once when I had to give a talk in Spain, I found this quotation by looking up ‘history' in the Oxford English Dictionary....
How can there be a true history?
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... the long-term impact of the Black Death on English towns
A Polychronicon of the Past
In the summer of 1348, the Chronicle of the Grey Friars at Lynn described how sailors had arrived in Melcombe (now Weymouth) bringing from Gascony ‘the seeds of the terrible pestilence’. The Black Death spread rapidly throughout England, killing approximately half the population. While the cause of the disease, the...
What Have Historians Been Arguing About... the long-term impact of the Black Death on English towns
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'Doing justice to history': the learning of African history in a North London secondary school
Teaching History article
‘Doing justice to history': the learning of African history in a North London secondary school and teacher development in the spirit of ubuntu
The medium is the message, Marshall McLuhan observed many years ago and the ‘form' of what we do carries ‘content' as Hayden White has argued. This article...
'Doing justice to history': the learning of African history in a North London secondary school
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Anatomy of enquiry: deconstructing an approach to history curriculum planning
Teaching History article
It is almost 20 years since Michael Riley first invited Key Stage 3 history teachers to ‘choose and plant’ their enquiry questions. Many members of the history education community have taken up that invitation, making use of overarching enquiry questions to structure students’ learning. But what is meant by enquiry...
Anatomy of enquiry: deconstructing an approach to history curriculum planning
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Why do we continue to study the Holocaust?
Teaching History article
Educators at Imperial War Museums (IWM) have been leading voices in Holocaust education since the Holocaust Exhibition opened at IWM London in June 2000. In this article, Clare Lawlor shares the design of IWM’s new Holocaust Learning Programme for schools, and the pedagogic research that underpinned the design process. The...
Why do we continue to study the Holocaust?
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Podcast Series: Religion in the UK
Multipage Article
In Part 5 of our series on Social and Political Change in the UK 1800-present we look at religion in the U.K. This set of podcasts features Dr Janice Holmes of the Open University, Revd Dr Jeremy Morris, Dean, Fellow, and Director of Studies in Theology at King's College, Andrew Copson,...
Podcast Series: Religion in the UK
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Arnold Wilkins: Pioneer of British Radar
Historian article
Whenever British radar is discussed the name that usually comes to mind is that of Robert Watson Watt. Our history books and our dictionaries of biography consistently attribute the discovery of radar in Britain solely to Watson Watt, with little or no mention of the key role played by his...
Arnold Wilkins: Pioneer of British Radar
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Polychronicon 149: Interpreting the Persian Wars
Teaching History feature
Truth-loving Persians do not dwell upon The trivial skirmish fought near Marathon.
So begins Robert Graves' poem, The Persian Version. The conceit of the poem is to invert the standard narrative of the Persian war of the early fifth century BC - a narrative drawn from Greek sources such as...
Polychronicon 149: Interpreting the Persian Wars
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Cunning Plan 149.2: Exploring the Migration experience
Teaching History feature
Teaching a class of newly arrived immigrant teenagers from various backgrounds and ethnicities poses many interesting challenges: varied levels of schooling, varied levels of mastery in a new language, no common frame of reference, varied ways of understanding and making sense of the world and very varied ways of making...
Cunning Plan 149.2: Exploring the Migration experience
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Mudlarking in the Thames: evidence, ecology and enquiry
Teaching History article
Maryam Dorudi arrived at her second PGCE placement school to find many pupils receiving free school meals and speaking English as an additional language. Wanting her students to identify as Londoners and historians, she was drawn into the world of mudlarking and Lara Maiklem. Over the course of eight lessons, she...
Mudlarking in the Thames: evidence, ecology and enquiry
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What was Witchcraft in the Early Sixteenth Century?
Article
In this article, Dr Jonathan Durrant (Principal Lecturer in History, University of South Wales) argues that we know no more now than we did in the late 1980s about what witchcraft was as men and women of the early sixteenth century understood it. Dr Durrant looks at evidence from Henry VIII's Witchcraft Act of 1542 to explore British and European perceptions of witches...
What was Witchcraft in the Early Sixteenth Century?
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The Great Powers in the Pacific
Classic Pamphlet
This pamphlet covers a very large period of history in a very important region with great detail and focus. Themes that are covered include the transition of power and dominance in the pacific region, the conflicts that frequently arose in the struggle for pacific dominance throughout the centuries, as well...
The Great Powers in the Pacific
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Virtual Branch Recording: Vagabonds versus the Mendicity Society
Article
Red Lion Square was long one of London's most genteel addresses, home to nobles, scholars, and professionals. But on 25 March 1818, one house on the south side opened its doors to quite another class of person, as the Mendicity Society began its business. Set up to solve the growing...
Virtual Branch Recording: Vagabonds versus the Mendicity Society
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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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Lesson sequence: The First World War - taster lesson
Article
This enquiry explores the experience of Theo Reid, a soldier in the First World War. It uses his letters from across four years of service in multiple arenas to enable students to construct his perspective on the war, and to gain an insight into the nature of the conflict more...
Lesson sequence: The First World War - taster lesson
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Bringing the historian into your classroom
Bringing the historian into your classroom
In recent years history teachers have become very skilled at bringing historical sources into the classroom and teaching students how to undertake historical enquiries; but have we been as successful in getting our students to talk and write as historians do?
This eCPD course aims to help you to do...
Bringing the historian into your classroom
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Unsung Heroes: The British Merchant Navy WW2
Unsung Heroes
The British Merchant Navy was a term that applied to the employees of British shipping companies whose vessels ranged from the sleekest ocean liners to obsolete tramp steamers. Merchant seamen already included contingents of Black, Asian and Arab sailors and the British Merchant Fleet was swelled between 1939 and 1945...
Unsung Heroes: The British Merchant Navy WW2
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Having 'Great Expectations' of Year 9
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
What scope does studying a classic novel in both English and history provide for meaningful cross-curricular work and how might engaging with historical fiction help pupils engage more effectively with the realities of the past?...
Having 'Great Expectations' of Year 9