This article reflects on the difficulty that many students have in appreciating that religions change over time. It describes an assignment that can be used to teach this important religious literacy skill. The assignment focuses on changing norms on courtship, marriage, and family formation in Jewish communities at two different times and two…

Courses: Rhetorical criticism, public address, persuasion, public memory theory, argumentation. Objectives: Through analysis of public controversies about Confederate monuments on college campuses, students will: (1) explore the concept of "public memory," how groups of people form shared interpretations of the past; (2) examine how…

Holly Hiscox was concerned that many of her A-level students -- asked to evaluate three different historical interpretations for their non-examined assessment task -- still tended to hold unhelpful misconceptions about the nature of interpretations. In this article she explains how she created an introductory scheme of work to help them understand…

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…

Jess Landy's desire to introduce her pupils to a more complex narrative of the American West led her to the life story and work of a remarkable individual, George Catlin. In this article she shows how she used this unusual micro-narrative in order to challenge pupils' ideas not just about the bigger narrative of which it is a part, but about the…

When Michael Fordham was introduced to Dr Seuss's "Butter Battle Book" he immediately recognised its potential value in the classroom as a popular interpretation of the Cold War. Wanting his Year 9 pupils to explain how and why the past has been interpreted in different ways he shows the potential pitfalls inherent in asking pupils to…

Secondary sources provide students valuable insight into historians' arguments, showing how they disagree, and how events of the present shape interpretation of the past.

Activities such as the Shays' Rebellion investigation outlined in this article enable students to develop inquiry and literacy practices as they integrate critical reading, historical thinking, and argument writing.

The story of Abraham Lincoln's reaction to meeting Harriet Beecher Stowe is well known. Supposedly, the president greeted the formidable author with, "So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!" Although the two did meet in November 1862, there is no evidence that Lincoln said anything of the kind.…

Paula Worth draws on three professional traditions in history education in order to build a lesson sequence on the Crusades for her Year 7s. First, she draws on the growing tradition of classroom practice using historical scholarship, not only to inform the teacher's knowledge but to deepen her pupils' direct acquaintance with scholarly work.…

History is a process. Just as science is the quest to discover and understand the truth about the world we live in, so history is the quest to discover and understand the truth about our world in the millennia that led up to this moment. These authors asked children who ranged in age from 6 to 12, first grade to sixth, how we know what happened in…

Mike Murray shares a lesson sequence in which his students examined changing interpretations of the Battle of Rorke's Drift in 1879. Building on earlier work on teaching interpretations across an extended chronological period and the work of Wheeley et al on Rorke's Drift in particular, Murray develops new emphases, fresh ways in to the puzzle and…

Historical structures have connected civilization across time as a representation of important events, famous people, or experiences of diverse cultures. The value systems of a society are reflected in these structures and convey political and historical information. Knowledge about historical structures provides understanding of cultures of…

"Never again" is the clarion call of much Holocaust and genocide education. There is a danger, however, that it can become an empty, if pious, wish. How can we help pupils reflect seriously on genocide prevention? Elisabeth Kellaway, Thomas Spillane and Terry Haydn report teaching strategies that focused students' attention on what came…

In the era of smartphones and 24-hour news networks, the State of the Union address is a major event. All national media outlets--in print, on television, on the Internet--report on the address, some almost exclusively in the days leading up to and after the speech. In this article, considering their experiences teaching about the address, and…