As teachers trainees, the authors were frustrated trying to create a lesson on the British Empire. But this challenge seems to be magnified ten-fold when teaching the history of Britain's empire: a complex political, cultural, social and economic phenomenon that has a broad chronological and geographical scope. And yet, despite the seemingly…

Frustrated by the generic statements that her Year 12 students were making about sources, Jacqueline Vyrnwy-Pierce resolved to undertake a research project into how her students were approaching sources about the French Revolution. Fascinated by the research of American educational psychologist Sam Wineburg, Vyrnwy-Pierce decided to use Wineburg's…

What is a sense of period? And how can pupils' sense of period be developed? Questions such as these have troubled history teachers for many years, often revolving around debates over the role played by empathy and imagination in coming to know a period on its own terms. Rather than adopt a comparative approach, Dan Smiths decided in his teaching…

Mary Woolley decided to make four revision sheets for her lower-band Year 11 set. Each was to help them view their American West study through a different lens. She was rather uncertain, however (and so were the pupils) about her fourth sheet on places. Her reflections on the revision sheet and subsequent reading led not only to a totally new…