• Teachers of history aim to establish and maintain a challenging and effective learning environment in which student diversity is valued and respected.
• They communicate learning goals clearly, negotiating with their students about how best to achieve them.
• They foster productive dialogue enabling students to collaborate in intellectually challenging work. Students understand the value of the historically-based activities in which they are engaged and structures are in place that allow them to evaluate their own learning outcomes.
• Effective teachers of history draw on a broad and flexible repertoire of teaching strategies, attempting to adapt strategies to circumstances, content to context, and curriculum delivery to the different backgrounds, learning styles and capabilities of their students.
• They design rich learning tasks that draw on traditional and new technologies, integrating and balancing listening, speaking, reading, viewing and writing activities.
• They endeavour to create opportunities for students to share their learning with their peers and the wider community.
• They aspire to select print and non-print resource materials from a range of different cultures and eras, providing models of critical exploration, creativity, inventiveness and thought.
• They create opportunities for practical activities within and beyond the classroom. They teach students to evaluate and choose their own historical texts and resources, both for independent study and out-of-school activities.
• They encourage students to draw on the resources of the school community and wider society to extend their historical literacy skills, assisting students in their growth towards active citizenship in a democratic society.

Key Points for Practice

How do I plan for all students to have the confidence to be exploratory in their historical learning?

How do I enable students to engage with and make connections between school and community-based historical understandings?

What decisions must I make about timing, order and balance in teaching? How do these adjustments and interventions support historical learning?

How do I sustain focus on significant learning outcomes in history?