-
Unnatural and essential: the nature of historical thinking
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Sam Wineburg's work, in particular his groundbreaking Historical Thinking and Other Unnatural Acts (2001), has a great deal to teach us about the discipline of history, the nature of historical education, and the specific cognitive framework...
Unnatural and essential: the nature of historical thinking
-
How can students' use of historical evidence be enhanced?
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
What role does knowledge play in the interpretation of documentary materials? How do history students use what they know? What kind of knowledge really ‘makes the difference' and which ways of using knowledge make the...
How can students' use of historical evidence be enhanced?
-
Cunning Plan… for teaching medieval Muslim Spain
Teaching History feature
Good morning Year 7. Once upon a time in the mid-eighth century, a young prince was forced to abandon his home. His home was in Damascus, and there, one night, his family had been taken by surprise. The young prince belonged to a family called the Ummayads. The Ummayads had...
Cunning Plan… for teaching medieval Muslim Spain
-
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?
-
Triumphs Show 123: Making sources fun
Teaching History feature
One of the biggest challenges which any history teacher faces is how to make sources fun! Source work does struggles in terms of pupil excitement, understanding and motivation when pitted against the roleplays, dramas and debates. As a history teacher, I am constantly looking for fresh and novel ways to...
Triumphs Show 123: Making sources fun
-
Polychronicon 165: The 1917 revolutions in 2017: 100 years on
Teaching History feature
The interpretive and empirical frameworks utilised by scholars in their quest to understand the Russian revolutions have evolved and transformed over 100 years. The opening of archives after the collapse of the Soviet Union enabled access to a swathe of new primary sources, some of which have had a transformative...
Polychronicon 165: The 1917 revolutions in 2017: 100 years on
-
Polychronicon 140: Why did the Cold War End?
Teaching History feature
The end of the Cold War is a controversial subject. Contemporary analysts did not see it coming. Any explanation of its ending which seeks to build up a network of causation will therefore be forced to make arguments based on events whose significance was not necessarily seen at the time....
Polychronicon 140: Why did the Cold War End?
-
Bridging the gap: supporting early career teachers’ professional development as history teachers
Teaching History article
Kate Hawkey and Helen Snelson, who have both worked for many years in initial teacher education, wanted to find ways of supporting recently qualified teachers in continuing to develop their practice. Working in two different parts of the country, they established different kinds of informal, but well-focused history-specific, support groups....
Bridging the gap: supporting early career teachers’ professional development as history teachers
-
Developing meaningful cross-curricular approaches
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Some history departments find themselves under pressure to incorporate skills and competences from alternative curricula. Others find that with the pressure to ease transition issues in Year 7, history can almost disappear into an amalgam...
Developing meaningful cross-curricular approaches
-
'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
-
Taking control of assessment
Teaching History article
Ian Luff recognised that in a post-levels world efforts to devise new assessment systems risked replicating old problems or creating new ones. Drawing on his many years’ experience of teaching and school leadership Luff argues that for assessment in history to be truly useful to teachers and pupils it needs...
Taking control of assessment
-
History's secret weapon: the enquiry of a disciplined mind
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
As a local authority adviser, Andrew Wrenn's advice has often been sought by history departments, both those seeking to resist ill-conceived and potentially damaging cross-curricular initiatives and those keen to exploit new opportunities for meaningful...
History's secret weapon: the enquiry of a disciplined mind
-
Making cross-curricular links in history
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Alf Wilkinson has been working as ‘National Subject Lead' for History, co-ordinating a programme of support for schools, funded by the DCSF and delivered in partnership with the Historical Association and the CfBT.
Here he...
Making cross-curricular links in history
-
Polychronicon 144: Interpreting the 1930s in Britain
Teaching History feature
For students of my generation (born in 1954) the 1930s had a very clear identity; so, when the far-left Socialist Workers Party launched a campaign against unemployment, in 1975, with the slogan: ‘No Return to the Thirties', we all knew what they meant: unemployment, economic deprivation and the political betrayal...
Polychronicon 144: Interpreting the 1930s in Britain
-
Promoting rigorous historical scholarship
Teaching History article
The history department at Cottenham Village College has one more member than you might expect. Ruth Brown is a teaching assistant (TA) and one of the longest-standing members of the department, and this article is about how her work has an impact on specific pupils, whole classes and teachers. The key...
Promoting rigorous historical scholarship
-
Unravelling the complexity of the causes of British abolition with Year 8
Teaching History article
Elizabeth Marsay wanted to ensure that her students were not hindered in their causal explanations of the abolition of slavery by being exposed to overly categorical, simplistic, and monocausal narratives in the classroom. By drawing on both English and Canadian theorisation about causation, Marsay outlines how her introduction of competing...
Unravelling the complexity of the causes of British abolition with Year 8
-
Polychronicon 142: 'instructive reversals' - (re)interpreting the 1857 events in Northern India
Teaching History feature
The dramatic, chaotic and violent events that took place in Northern India in 1857/8 have been interpreted in many ways, as, for example, the ‘Indian Mutiny', the ‘Sepoy War' and the ‘First Indian War of Independence'. The tales that have been told about these events have been profoundly shaped, however,...
Polychronicon 142: 'instructive reversals' - (re)interpreting the 1857 events in Northern India
-
Potential and pitfalls in teaching 'big pictures' of the past
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
Jonathan Howson summarises findings from the recent ESRC funded research project - Usable Historical Pasts - and suggests how its insights might inform continuing professional debate and enquiry concerning both frameworks and ‘big pictures'.
In...
Potential and pitfalls in teaching 'big pictures' of the past
-
What’s The Wisdom On... Extended Reading
Teaching History feature
Why, in a history lesson (or out of a history lesson; let’s say, for a homework perhaps) might we want pupils to read more than a paragraph, to stay with the text, to actually read? We don’t mean plucking facts from information boxes, nor ploughing through four comprehension questions. We...
What’s The Wisdom On... Extended Reading
-
Interdisciplinary forays within the history classroom
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
How might history and art mutually enrich each other and enhance pupil experience? The short answer, and there is much more to be said as Liz Dawes Duraisingh and Veronica Boix Mansilla show, is by...
Interdisciplinary forays within the history classroom
-
Learning from a pandemic
Teaching History article
In order to contextualise and make sense of the Covid-19 pandemic, Verity Morgan worked with her school’s long-standing partner school in Ghana to devise an innovative project combining history and science, past and present. In this article, Morgan sets out the rationale for the project, her detailed adaptation of a British Council...
Learning from a pandemic
-
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
-
Dr Black Box or How I learned to stop worrying and love assessment
Teaching History article
Drawing upon experimental work in different history departments, Mark Cottingham explores ‘assessment for learning' principles in practice. He raises the problem of a clash between these approaches and the progression model inherent in the National Curriculum Attainment Target, and, crucially, the way in which history departments are expected to use...
Dr Black Box or How I learned to stop worrying and love assessment
-
Move Me On 134: Getting enough A-level experience
Teaching History feature
Problem for the history mentor: Tom Clarkson is worried that he will not have enough A level teaching experience to teach Year 12 effectively next year.
Tom Clarkson is well into his second teaching placement and fears that the outline plans on his timetable for working with Year 12 will...
Move Me On 134: Getting enough A-level experience
-
Distant voices, familiar echoes: exploiting the resources to which we all have access
Teaching History article
Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated.
As an Advanced Skills Teacher, Denise Thompson has often been at the forefront of experimental developments. Five years ago, she reported on trials of an online discussion forum used to sharpen A level students' historical...
Distant voices, familiar echoes: exploiting the resources to which we all have access
