Responding to SHP 2025: Part 2, Claire Holliss on Stories at A-Level

The 2025 Schools History Project (SHP) conference was, as ever, a highlight of the teaching year and a stimulus for all sorts of thoughts.

Inevitably, the best workshops at such an event are those that leave you with more (interesting) questions than answers.

In these two posts (including my last one, on Arthur Chapman’s presentation on stories and narratives), I’m going to try to formulate some coherent thoughts in relation to two really excellent sessions in particular, both of which sent me away with a number of very interesting questions. The second post, here, discusses Claire Holliss’ workshop on stories at KS5.

 

Sometimes, new directions in pedagogy develop their own momentum and give rise to new orthodoxies and (near-)universally accepted wisdom. When this happens, it’s important to take a step back and evaluate the evidence to establish how sound that wisdom actually is.

This is what I understood Claire Holliss’ fantastic SHP 2025 workshop to be honing in on.

In her very clear-minded, critical, but open discussion of using stories at KS5, Claire gave a well-deserved nod towards some very interesting and valuable work done on integrating stories into classroom teaching. She then asked how far doing so would actually benefit teaching History at KS5.

Claire’s work links to an ongoing research project, involving the selection and use of specific stories in her own teaching. This was also of interest to me, as our department has also been starting to develop stories in our own KS5 teaching of Russian and Soviet History (I’ll explore this a bit below).

Language and Substantive Concepts: Part 3 – Turning Students into Sceptics

This is the third of a three-part post focusing on what I term, following Caroline Coffin, the “language of history” and substantive concepts.

After the first post set out a broad theoretical framework, and the second post proposed approaches to foreign-language terms as substantive concepts, this post argues that we should aim not just to teach students to use substantive concepts but also to question and critique them.

I’ll be presenting on this topic with colleagues at the upcoming Schools History Project (SHP) conference in Leeds in July 2025, so this is also a first attempt to set out and develop a broad methodological approach to this work.

Questions, comments, and criticisms are very much welcome!

 

George Orwell once argued, “The worst thing one can do with words is to surrender to them.” If language is there "for expressing and not for concealing or preventing thought, let the meaning choose the word, not the other way about." (Orwell, quoted by Brubaker and Cooper, 2000)

Accepting uncritically the words others give us is to surrender to them. It means us and our world being defined by others in their terms. Mastering and manipulating words to our own ends means we can define ourselves and our world in our own terms.

In that case, words in the classroom hold enormous power. They give us, the teachers choosing the words and how to use them, power. They can also give our students, if they can master those words for themselves, power.

In relation to substantive concepts – those weighty conceptual terms we use to group together different phenomena the past – we have a responsibility to not just teach our students concepts, but also to invite them to question and critique those concepts.

Language and Substantive Concepts: Part 2 – Speaking in Tongues

This is the second of a three-part post focusing on what I term, following Caroline Coffin, the “language of history” and substantive concepts.

After the first post set out a broad theoretical framework, this post aims to set out an approach to teaching a specific sub-category of substantive concepts: foreign-language terms.

I’ll be presenting on this topic with colleagues at the upcoming Schools History Project (SHP) conference in Leeds in July 2025, so this is also a first attempt to set out and develop a broad methodological approach to this work.

Questions, comments, and criticisms are very much welcome!

 

Language and Substantive Concepts: Part 1 – Weighty Conceptual Terms

This is the first of a three-part post focusing on what I term, following Caroline Coffin, the “language of history” and substantive concepts.

It aims to set out an approach to teaching substantive concepts by explicitly engaging with the linguistic structures of the historical discipline. I’ll be presenting on this topic with colleagues at the upcoming Schools History Project (SHP) conference in Leeds in July 2025, so this is also a first attempt to set out and develop a broad methodological approach to this work.

Questions, comments, and criticisms are very much welcome!

Spoken Dictionary and Pronunciation Guide

“Saying it right” is a particular challenge for teachers of Russian and Soviet History.

However familiar we are with the content and concepts of this area of study, the language – from people and places to the names of individuals and organisations, belief systems, and ideas – can often seem alien.

The purpose of this spoken dictionary and pronunciation guide is to provide teachers with accessible and accurate pronunciations for that language.

It comprises over 200 words, giving a brief definition and anglicised and Russian pronunciations for each.

The Substantive Concepts of Modern Russian and Soviet History

A few years ago, Michael Fordham led an online project to quantify the substantive concepts students should know by the end of KS2 and KS3. The result was a list of several dozen recurring concepts, ranging from Absolute Monarchy to Working Class.

Fordham’s approach to substantive concepts, which he subsequently developed in a brilliant chapter in MasterClass in History Education: Transforming Teaching and Learning (eds. Counsell, Burn, and Chapman, 2016), focused on terms that describe recurring phenomena across and through periods of history. These, he argued, quoting Ashby and Lee, make up “the content of history, what history is ‘about’.”