Historical understanding, memory, identity, and action: Why do narratives matter?
[M]an is in his actions and practice, as well as in his fictions, essentially a story-telling animal … I can only answer the question ‘What am I to do?’ if I can answer the prior question ‘Of what story or stories do I find myself a part?’ (MacIntyre, 1984) What is memory? At times, in…
Connectivity as a historical and curricular concept
Survival in fact is about the connections between things; in Eliot’s phrase, reality cannot be deprived of ‘the other echoes [that] inhabit the garden.’ – Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism Historians are increasingly writing histories about connectivity. Perhaps most influentially for history teachers, Peter Frankopan’s ‘The Silk Roads’ sought to recentre the narrative of world…
School history in a planetary age: why global histories are necessary but not sufficient in teaching modern history
I hope here to (very roughly) chart and hopefully extend or at least provoke thought about curriculum design for modern history, beginning with what I think has been for many in the history teaching community a common starting point for curriculum critique and development, through to what I see as one potential end (although, of…
Humanity in nature: a new paradigm for school history
‘… the special task of environmental history is to assert that stories about the past are better, all other things being equal, if they increase our attention to nature and the place of people within it … If environmental history is successful in its project, the story of how different peoples have lived in and…
Planning for progression in pupils’ understanding of first-order (substantive) concepts
Hello and welcome to my first blog post. Thanks for coming to read! With knowledge very much on the educational agenda nowadays, I’m going to throw an idea into the ring about how we might plan in relation to one aspect of historical knowledge: first-order, substantive concepts. In this post, I’m going to suggest an…
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Monsieur Benger's (Historical) Dish of the Day 