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…

How can history teachers structure learning pathways through historical content in ways that engage and challenge all pupils, that enable them to work at an appropriate pace and that also encourage pupils to self-assess and monitor their own progress? Stainer reports and reflects on classroom experiments in "Mastery Learning" that aimed to achieve…

The history education community has long recognised that historical thinking depends on the interplay between substantive knowledge about the past and the procedural, or second-order, concepts that historians use to construct, shape and give meaning to that substance. While the nature of that interplay and the processes by which we enable pupils…

"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…

Why do we teach about the Holocaust and about other genocides? The Holocaust has been a compulsory part of the English National Curriculum since 1991; however, curriculum documents say little about why pupils should learn about the Holocaust or about what they should learn. Tamsin Leyman and Richard Harris decided to use the opportunity presented…

Despite having built a sustained focus on historical thinking into their planning for progression across Years 7 to 13, Rachel Foster and Sarah Gadd remained frustrated with stubborn weaknesses in the evidential thinking of students in examination classes. Students slipped too easily into grabbing any fact or source extract as evidence, and failed…

It is common practice to invite survivors of the Holocaust to speak about their experiences to pupils in schools and colleges. Systematic reflection on the value of working with survivors of the Holocaust and other genocides and on how to make the most of doing so is rarer, however. In this article Andrew Preston reports how his school has worked…

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…

As the twentieth anniversary of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda approaches, Mark Gudgel argues that we should face the challenges posed by teaching about Rwanda. Drawing on his experience as a history teacher in the US, his experience researching and supporting others' classrooms in the US and UK, his training in Holocaust education and his…

Most history teachers will, at some point, recognise the tension between teaching an engaging history course while at the same time meeting the requirements of an exam specification. Mark Fowle and Ben Egelnick reflect here on how they approached teaching a formal requirement of an exam specification. Rather than see "controlled…

The idea of using "little stories" to illuminate the "big pictures" of the past was creatively explored in "Teaching History 107," which offered teachers a wealth of detailed vignettes with which to kindle young people's interest and illuminate major historical events. Paul Barrett builds on the ideas explored in that issue in two important ways.…

Provides background information on the "Atlantic World" and discusses how the author created a course on this topic. Describes two course units used, the assignments, and the student response. Includes a bibliography of course materials. (CMK)

Provides background information for a local history project about the 1793 Philadelphia (Pennsylvania) yellow fever outbreak. Offers potential project topics to help students learn about local history and understand life in the eighteenth century United States. (CMK)

Describes an oral history project to help students understand the narrative nature of history. Explains that the project focuses on "the Big Muskie" earth-moving machine and strip mining in southeastern Ohio. Explores the different stages of the classroom project. (CMK)

Discusses the use of first-person accounts in teaching history. Focuses on a course on Vietnam history called, "The Vietnam Experience." Explores different reading materials that are used in the course, as well as the author's own personal account. Includes a bibliography. (CMK)