Historical significance is a historical thinking concept. Being able to identify historical significance is viewed as important for understanding change and continuity in the past, and for understanding the way 'history' is constructed by present society. This article discusses how Swedish students in Grade 5 (age 11 years) perceive and understand…

The study presented in this article examines the internal consistency of the formal Swedish history curriculum for the upper-secondary school. The research question addresses the extent to which disciplinary aspects--also referred to as vertical knowledge discourses--are transferred from fields of knowledge production to the Swedish formal history…

History teachers frequently show pupils visual images and often expect pupils to interrogate such images as evidence. But confusions arise and opportunities are missed when pupils do this without guidance on how to 'read' the image systematically and how to place it in context. Barbara Ormond gives a detailed account of how to make the most of…

The new national core curriculum has been put into operation in Finland. Teaching and learning is intended to focus on historical literacy. In this paper, we study how it can be assessed with a pen-and-paper test, and what that reveals in regards to the mastering of historical literacy among elementary pupils. To study this, we designed a test…

Katie Hall and Christine Counsell attempt to construct a Key Stage 3 scheme of work out of the draft National Curriculum for history that was released for consultation in England in February 2013. They explain the process by which they attempted to convert the programme of study into a coherent, workable plan that would fulfil the stated aims.…

Focusing on students' attempts to explain the relative significance of different factors in Hitler's rise to power, Catherine McCrory explores the vexed question of why students who seem able to express necessary historical knowledge on one occasion cannot effectively reproduce it on another. Drawing on a detailed analysis of what it actually…

First order knowledge and understanding, relating to the "stuff" of history, is, of course, absolutely fundamental to the development of children's historical knowledge and understanding. However, as Frances Blow shows, in a contribution to a series of articles exploring second order concepts in history published in Teaching History by…