Controversial issues
The legacy of the past and its impact on the present, as well as the process of interpretation by which accounts of the past are constructed, mean that many topics studied in history may carry an emotional charge. Certain events or developments may have a particular relevance – or resonance – for some young people and their communities, but carry different overtones (or none at all) for others. This section contains advice and resources for teachers who are tackling potentially sensitive topics that may generate emotionally charged responses and explores the issues that may arise as topics studied in the classroom intersect with personal, family and community histories. The materials here will help teachers to reflect carefully on the appropriateness of their objectives and to develop effective teaching strategies for promoting sensitive and productive kinds of discussion, especially when both the past and its implications for the present are disputed. They highlight the risks involved and the ways in which they can be mitigated, and include guidance and advice related to the Prevent Strategy.
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... gender and sexuality
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Cunning Plan 191: diving deep into ‘history from below’ with Year 8
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Decolonising sources: helping Year 9 pupils critically evaluate colonial sources
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Podcast Series: Confronting Controversial History
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How ‘good’ are Key Stage 3 textbooks in supporting the teaching of the Holocaust?
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Telling difficult stories about the creation of Bangladesh
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Historical thinking and art education in Canada’s era of societal reckoning
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Integrating the historical Holocaust
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Navigating the ‘imperial history wars’
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Helping Year 9 to engage effectively with ‘other genocides’
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Teaching about the Russian invasion of Ukraine and events happening there
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Decolonise, don’t diversify: enabling a paradigm shift in the KS3 history curriculum
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Transatlantic slavery – shaping the question, lengthening the narrative, broadening the meaning
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What Have Historians Been Arguing About... migration and empire
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Moving Year 9 towards more complex causal explanations of Holocaust perpetration
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Unravelling the complexity of the causes of British abolition with Year 8
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What have historians been arguing about... decolonisation and the British Empire?
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Family stories and global (hi)stories
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Confronting conflicts: history teachers’ reactions to spontaneous controversial remarks
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‘Its ultimate pattern was greater than its parts’
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