Developing approaches

to teaching change and

continuity
Nick Dennis, Felsted School

Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge

What does change and
continuity mean?
What does change and
continuity mean?
How things are different and how things have
remained, both physically and psychologically.
Students should look at the extent and pace
of change. I would challenge the notion that
change = progress, looking at what has
changed leads to the why.

Tony Fox
What does change and
continuity mean?
This is an area I don’t consciously tackle
enough in my own teaching. The more I think
about it though the more it seems to be one
of those areas that is woven through others.
Ed Podesta
What does change and
continuity mean?
I feel it is key element of history teaching and
yet it is one of the most difficult to address
when in some courses it is lots of chunks of
different periods or just one relatively short
period.

Richard Woffenden
Shemilt’s Framework
Polythetic Narrative
Frameworks

Multidimensional Narratives

Coherent Historical
Narratives

Chronologically Ordered Past

 Chronologically
Ordered Past

• Timelines with
landmark events.
 cai_morri
Coherent Historical

Illustration by Cai Morris

Narrative ‘thematic stories’ for the simple reason that it conveys that
what we are dealing with is a construct or interpretation
and that this story could be told differently, depending on
viewpoint or choice of content.6

A thematic story can be told in different levels of detail and

across varying numbers of lessons. However it is critical
that the whole story be tell-able in one lesson: a summary
which enables pupils to see the whole story at once. Ideally,
pupils will see this ‘big picture’ a number of times and use it
to contextualize individual events.7 This story can then be
‘exploded’, taught across a term in the style of an SHP Study
in Development or in chronological chunks across the whole
of Key Stage 3.

Figure 2: The thematic story of power and democracy

• A ‘story’ and
not a ‘map’ of
cai_morris@hotmail.co.uk

the past.
Illustration by Cai Morris

Teaching History 130 March 2008 The Historical Association 15

 Multidimensional
Narrative

• Includes political, economic and social

factors to the previous version.
 Polythetic Narratives

• Where multiple narratives of the past are

presented and students can discuss the
validity of each account in comparison with
the next.
Shemilt’s Framework
Polythetic Narrative
Frameworks

Multidimensional Narratives

Coherent Historical
Narratives

Chronologically Ordered Past

Shemilt’s Framework
Polythetic Narrative
Frameworks

Multidimensional Narratives

Coherent Historical
Narratives

Chronologically Ordered Past

 How?

• Limitation in terms of time - 2 lessons

maximum
• Limitation in terms of subject -
International History!
The Twenty Years’
Crisis
 The main feature of the
crisis of the twenty years
between 1919 and 1939
was the move from hope
in the first ten years to
grim despair in the
second.
Prior Knowledge

Empire

First World War

Versailles
 Is Carr right?
Carr’s view of International Relations

Crisis! 10

Ok, 5
but...

Calm 0
1919 1939

Hope Despair
Carr’s view
 The rule of nation-
states

You want your country to be as

great and powerful as possible!
 What is a crisis?

• A time of intense difficulty, trouble and

danger.
 Activity

• Arrange yourself into colours and then into

chronological order.
• Then place events according to crisis rating.
 Questions
• What has changed?
• What has stayed the same?
• When was there a rapid change?
• When did change happen slowly?
• Is there an event that seems to change
everything else after it? Is it a ‘turning
point’?
 Role of the
Economics Politics
individual
 Activity 2

• See if you can trace these themes on the

graph. Do they change your opinion about
the ‘Twenty Years’ Crisis’?
Timeline using 3D Timeline from Beedocs.com.
It shows events and themes.
 Future improvements

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schoolhistory.co.uk/
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