How one period casts shadows on another: exploring Year 8 encounters with multiple interpretations of WW1

Dan Smith was concerned that his pupils were drawing on over-simplified generalisations about different periods of the past when they were considering why interpretations change over time. This led him to consider how pupils’ contextual knowledge and chronological fluency might be used more explicitly in order to avoid weak generalisations about the context in which an interpretation was produced.

Dan Smith is Head of Year 7 at Cheam High School (11-18 comprehensive), Sutton.