What is history teaching? : language, ideas and meaning in learning about the past

How do pupils make sense of the past? What is the relationship between the way historians construct interpretations of the past and the way pupils learn history in schools?

This book draws together developments in a wide range of fields: in academic history, in the study of language and in classroom research on pupil learning, as the basis for a distinctive approach to the teaching and learning of history in school.

Chris Husbands analyses four approaches to learning about the past: through looking at evidence, through the language of the past, through story and through the imagination.

He emphasises the ways in which pupils and historians structure their own interpretations of history, and considers the implications for teachers by examining the ways in which classroom talk, writing and assessment can support the development of sophisticated understandings of the past.