One year of embedding climate and sustainability education in our History PGCE

Thanks to Will Bailey-Watson, leader of the Secondary PGCE programme at the University of Reading and member of Secondary Committee for this blogpost. This year will see a lot of developments in thinking about the role of history education for a sustainable future. Will kicks this off by sharing what Reading colleages have learnt so far. Have you seen the climate stripes somewhere? If you … Continue reading One year of embedding climate and sustainability education in our History PGCE

Unsilencing Welsh History in Schools

This blogpost shares with OBHD readers a short article published in Public History Weekly on 8 June 2023 by Rhonwen Bruce-Roberts. Our students in our history lessons are living in the UK. Rhonwen suggests that ‘anglocentrism poses a risk of denying separate histories and separate identities that are a part of its story’. She challenges us to ‘tease out forgotten narratives through ‘multiperspectival history’’. Abstract: … Continue reading Unsilencing Welsh History in Schools

New Podcast Series: Confronting Controversial History

Thanks to Jason Todd, Oxford University and HA Trustee, for this blogpost. Jason worked with Natasha Robinson and a team of contributers to create the podcast series ‘Confronting Controversial History’. Here, Jason explains the context to these podcasts and that they are intended to enable teachers to confidently engage with the topics and with further conversations about controversial histories. In October 2019 we organised a … Continue reading New Podcast Series: Confronting Controversial History

Saints and lice- unravelling the medieval past

Jessie Phillips, History Teacher at Sawston Village College, shares work that relates to cultural history/perspective but with a particular focus on the medieval. Her overarching ideas are based on Wineburg’s conception of finding the ‘familiar within the strange’ and the ‘strange within the familiar’ and using this approach she unravels the attitudes, ideas and values of people in the past. She also explores (very carefully) … Continue reading Saints and lice- unravelling the medieval past

A Ukrainian perspective on history teaching about Ukraine in the UK

This document contains the final draft of the conclusions made for a research project undertaken by our Ukrainian friend and history teaching colleague, Irina Kostyuk. She has been part of a project with other Ukrainian history teaching colleagues looking at how history textbooks in Germany, France, UK, Poland and Russia present the Ukrainian past. This detailed work was nearing completion and they hoped to put … Continue reading A Ukrainian perspective on history teaching about Ukraine in the UK

1381 HATF: calling time on classroom myths and misconceptions!

The Historical Association’s People of 1381 Teacher Fellowship programme is underway. It began with a residential at Mansfield College, Oxford last week. The team of fellowship teachers spent an intense and enjoyable two days working with the People of 1381 academic project team to understand what their research is revealing. It is now our task to bring this new research to teachers and pupils. This … Continue reading 1381 HATF: calling time on classroom myths and misconceptions!

Decolonising Source Analysis and Introducing Sikh Female History to Year 9

Many thanks to Dr Danielle Donaldson, Head of Department, Concord College, Shrewsbury for this blogpost sharing her department’s work to extend the range of sources used in class and to teach the history of Sikh women. The curriculum intent & context We have been working on decolonising and integrating more representative history in our schemes of work at Concord College. Our enquiries are aimed to … Continue reading Decolonising Source Analysis and Introducing Sikh Female History to Year 9

Better history by working together!

Thanks to Martyn Bajowski and Hugh Richards for this blogpost. In it they share the process they went through to create resources … and share them! This story starts with Martyn Recently I posted the story of Sophia Duleep Singh on Twitter which I produced as a team effort with Hugh Richards. Hugh and I both thought it would be worthwhile going through the process … Continue reading Better history by working together!

Empire blogpost 3: the thorny issue of literacy when teaching the British Empire

Thanks to Richard Kennett for continuing his series of blogposts about teaching the British Empire… The difficulty of literacy and the teaching of the British Empire Teaching any historical topic is hard as it requires a lot of disciplinary vocabulary. Those pesky words that enlighten a subject, bring it to life and really allow you to get your teeth in. Revolution, peasant, autocratic, industrial, agricultural, … Continue reading Empire blogpost 3: the thorny issue of literacy when teaching the British Empire

Developing substantive thinking: a project to create connections through a KS3 curriculum

Thank you to Sarah Jackson, Head of History at Sawston Village College in Cambridgeshire, for this blogpost sharing some more of the work of the department… As a department we have often talked about the huge impact that cultural literacy has on the achievement of our pupils. Students who don’t have ‘pictures of the past’ find it hard to understand new content as it doesn’t … Continue reading Developing substantive thinking: a project to create connections through a KS3 curriculum