Tim Lomas explores one of the key disciplinary concepts that form part of school history – that of interpretations and representations. This has been a staple of the National Curriculum since its inception. While many schools have a successful approach to it, others struggle. In this article Tim Lomas discusses its origin, the key ideas underpinning it, the challenges teaching it to primary age children and some ways in which it can be addressed through the primary history curriculum.

Basically what interpretations is about is getting children to see that there is usually more than one way of looking at something in history. In recent years it has been given a greater role than in the history teaching of the past when the emphasis was less on seeing problems in history and more on presenting an account of the past with little time to discuss this account...