Using the Parallel Histories approach to promote debating at A Level

At our school, all Sixth Form students are allocated a double lesson each fortnight for ‘Enrichment’ activities – and last year I realised that this provided an ideal opportunity to engage some of the students in debate. I was keen to use the Parallel Histories approach, and so planned the first couple of sessions around […]

My top tips and strategies for teaching the Middle East at GCSE

If you’re reading this then you’re already aware of some of the benefits and challenges of teaching the Middle East, so I’ll be skipping past the ‘why it’s a good idea’ and get to the ‘how you can do it successfully’ part of the question. The key to success, in our experience, is to adopt […]

Debating Israel and Palestine in the KS3 classroom

When embarking on teaching the Israel Palestine conflict in our school there was a number of questions that were racing around my mind, and in our department discussions. Will our students be able to access this? Will they understand and respect the continuing relevance and significance of the conflict? Will they engage in live debating? […]

What about Henry Dundas? Ask the students at Lourdes School in Glasgow

The controversy about the statue of Henry Dundas (Lord Melville) which dominates St Andrew’s Square in Edinburgh, and the debate about changing the plaque to reflect his contested role in delaying the abolition of the slave trade has been, along with the Black Lives Matter movement in general, both a source of teaching opportunities and […]

Grasping the nettle – Teaching Israel and Palestine

Talking about Israel and Palestine is like walking into a battlefield where the missiles are tweets or lawyers’ letters thrown by armchair belligerents who seem more intransigently hostile than the real-life combatants, and woe betide anyone who isn’t clearly on one side or another. The demands that political activists make on teachers are simply unrealistic […]

Education, religion and politics: can they ever be disentangled in Northern Ireland?

The Belfast parliament passed the first Education Act (Northern Ireland) in spring 1923, two years after its establishment. The Act was promoted by the then Minister of Education, Lord Londonderry, whose understanding of the situation in Northern Ireland was that of an outsider: a conservative English MP, he was committed to bringing education under state control and […]

“History is constructed, and it’s often constructed for a purpose”

“History is constructed, and it’s often constructed for a purpose; with a particular view in mind, a particular message to get across, a particular moral authority to establish, you know, or a sense of victimhood…” Michael Davies was recently interviewed by Pádraig Ó Tuama for the Corrymeela Podcast. Corrymeela is Northern Ireland’s oldest peace and […]

A student’s guide to History’s history

THE HISTORY OF HISTORY IS SO COMPLEX A DISCIPLINE THAT IT HAS BECOME ITS OWN FIELD: HISTORIOGRAPHY. You will see that in some cases the word is capitalised – this is to show when I am referring to the discipline of History, as opposed to the more general phenomenon of history as a transmission of […]

Dear Parent: why your child is learning histories not history

SOMETIMES WE GET ASKED BY TEACHERS PLANNING TO USE THE PARALLEL HISTORIES TEACHING METHOD IF WE HAVE A SAMPLE LETTER TO SEND HOME TO PARENTS EXPLAINING WHAT THE PROGRAMME INVOLVES AND WHAT THEIR CHILD WILL BE DOING. This is often a good idea, especially when the history of the conflict you are going to be […]

Diversifying the Teaching of the First World War: The Battle of Broken Hill

The massive reaction we got to Elena Stevens’ blog about diversifying the teaching of World War One is proof that teachers are looking for stories about this global war which do not come from the Western Front. Her story of the two brothers is fascinating and there are a myriad of others. One such story is […]