In this article, Andy Lawrence returns to arguments made in "Teaching History 153" about the importance of teaching young people about other modern genocides in addition to the Holocaust. Building on those arguments with his own rationale, Lawrence also acknowledges the constraints on curriculum time that compel all departments to make…

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 in this context is sometimes…

In this article, Jacob Olivey describes his department's efforts to both diversify their Key Stage 3 curriculum and secure greater curricular coherence. Building on a large body of research and practice, Olivey sought new forms of curricular coherence through the selection and sequencing of substantive content across the curriculum. He reflects on…

Is it structure or the selection of knowledge that makes writing historical narrative so difficult? Where does a conceptual focus on change, or causation, come in? James Ellis set out to explore the challenges his Year 9 pupils faced in writing historical narratives about change. Inspired by the work of Orlando Figes, he put together a scheme of…

In this article, Dan Lyndon-Cohen makes the case that history departments should move from diversifying the curriculum to decolonising it. After reflecting on some examples of how he made the content of his lessons more representative, he explores how the influence of writers such as Michel-Rolph Trouillot and Emma Dabiri inspired him to find…

Tom Bennett begins his article with a tale of a frustrating afternoon with Year 7. We've all been there. In his case, his frustration was caused by his finding a conceptual gap between how well his class wanted to do and the actual quality of their causal thinking. Bennett decided to use counterfactuals to improve their thinking. This article…

Bjorn Wansink and his co-authors have aligned their teaching of a recent and controversial historical issue--the Cold War--in the light of a contemporary incident. This article demonstrates a means of ensuring that students understand that different cultures' views of their shared past are nuanced, rather than monolithic--a different concept in…

In this article Kerry Apps introduces students to the significance of the witch-hunts in the modern era, at the time when they occurred, and in the middle of the eighteenth century. She presents her rationale for choosing the witch-hunts as a focus for the study of significance, and shows how her thinking about her teaching has evolved through her…

When planning a GCSE period study on the American West, Alex Ford wrestled with reconciling the content demands of the examination specifications with the need to provide his students with a memorable narrative. In this article, Ford shows how he drew on the latest academic scholarship to construct a rigorous, coherent narrative outlining the…

Sometimes, things don't go to plan. Current events come into the classroom, especially the history classroom. How should students' responses to current affairs be dealt with there? How should students' desire to voice their opinions be handled if their opinion is unpopular. What if the student is simply wrong? How far can moral relativism be…

Faced with the introduction of a two-year key stage and a new whole-school assessment policy, Rachel Arscott and Tom Hinks decided to make a virtue out of necessity and reconsider their whole approach to planning, teaching and assessment at Key Stage 3. In this article they give an account of the process of reflection and revision they undertook…

It has become a truism that Britain is a multi-cultural society yet, as Mohamud and Whitburn argue, there is still a great deal of thinking to be done by history teachers in accounting for this diversity in the classroom. Mohamud and Whitburn consider approaches to both curriculum and pedagogy when it comes to teaching about the Somali community…

The overwhelming response of history teachers to the final version of the National Curriculum (2014) was one of relief that their insistent, penetrating critique of the first draft had been heeded. Jamie Byrom shares that profound sense of relief and celebrates the achievement of the history education community in making its voice heard. However,…

Teaching her Key Stage 3 students in Essex, Catherine McCrory was struck by the stark contrast between their enthusiasm for studying diverse histories of Africa and the Americas and their reluctance to engage with certain groups deemed different within England. Inspired by the resources in the local Record Office and keen to implement the part of…

Alison Stephen, who has wrestled for many years with the challenges of teaching emotional and controversial history within a multiethnic school setting, relished the opportunity to link her school's teaching of the Holocaust with a comparative study of other genocides. As she reports, her aim was to not create a hierarchy of suffering or…