Overview

To make progress in history, students need to develop both their substantive and disciplinary knowledge within this subject.

The substantive knowledge within this discipline is the knowledge about the past which includes key dates of events and key sources.  It also includes knowledge of ‘substantive concepts’ (abstract concepts such as invasion, tax, trade, monarch or empire). To make sense of this knowledge, students must secure mental timeline. This makes students’ existing historical knowledge more secure and therefore makes new knowledge easier to learn.

Disciplinary knowledge of History is the knowledge about how historians investigate the past and how they construct historical claims, arguments and accounts.

These disciplinary concepts are highly abstract. Therefore, teaching is likely to be most effective when students have repeated encounters with these ideas through meaningful examples in specific contexts. Firstly, students need secure substantive knowledge about relevant historical contexts in order to make sense of this. Once students have obtained this knowledge, they can examine simple sources to answer historical questions and develop an understanding of how historical evidence is used to interpret historical events and their impact. They will be able to analyse causes and consequences, be able to draw similarities and differences between events as well as examining continuity and change.

Throughout their time with us, our students will learn how historians and others have constructed accounts about the past, and gain extensive knowledge of historical events. Students will have lots of opportunities to encounter broad characterisations of particular periods; develop understanding of general features of periods; build knowledge of the chronological order of broad periods; acquire knowledge of particular dates and encounter a wide range of important substantive concepts. Our students will have opportunity to grapple with historical questions and have opportunities to make their own interpretations and perspective using simple sources of historical evidence.