This blogpost accompanies the launch of a new webpage on the HA website.

The ‘knowledge turn’ of recent years has been very welcome in many ways. There is inspiring work and success in evidence across the country in relation to developing coherent curricula. There are wonderful examples of historical enquiry and the use of historical narratives weaving disciplinary and substantive knowledge effectively. And yet, there are also worrying cases of the overuse of retrieval practice quizzes focused on factual recall, frequent exam question practice from Year 7, and formulaic lesson structures that do not start with the purpose of the historical learning and the pupils who are learning. Due to the pandemic, and a lack of rich subject specialist learning in some ITE routes, some colleagues may not know of the treasure trove of tried and tested active learning strategies that have been developed over many years. Strategies which have historical rigour at their heart, which seek to make hard thinking accessible to all, which focus on understanding the history and not just memorisation, and which require skilled, purposeful history teaching. If you are working in a school where you are encouraged and enabled to exercise your professional creativity for the benefit of your pupils and their learning of history, then why not try something new?

Ian Dawson, former Director of the Schools History Project and writer of many textbooks, is a leading advocate of such strategies. On the home page of his wonderful website of resources for teachers www.thinkinghistory.co.uk he says: “The common threads linking these resources and articles are curiosity about learning, creativity in seeking solutions and a belief in the importance of making the complex accessible and being constantly responsive to individual students’ needs. History teaching is in essence a problem-solving activity – the central problem being how to help students learn effectively.” The new HA webpage has short films which demo activities from Ian’s site.

Ian has developed many of these strategies himself. Thinkinghistory also hosts strategies developed by other colleagues, including Dale Banham, who presented a webinar for the HA on creative teaching recently, and Ian Luff, who wrote the article about Practical Demonstration in TH191. They, and other colleagues, advocate these strategies because they have seen the results for students of all abilities. They are engaging, they develop historical thinking, they unlock complex concepts, they make history more memorable, and nurture independent thought. To quote Richard Kerridge, they can enable ‘learning without limits‘.

So why not have a browse? The filmed examples presented by the HA model a variety of active teaching and learning strategies with carefully crafted teacher talk. The short films are divided into three overlapping categories: building a sense of place and space, cracking concepts, and deep disciplinary thinking.