Resources for Teachers
This section of the RHS Teaching Portal is for History teachers of any level in Higher Education and is designed to incorporate new ideas and fresh perspectives on pedagogical practices.
These include materials and strategies for:
- decolonising the curriculum
- ‘pandemic pedagogies’
- designing and enhancing the curriculum
- improving learning and teaching
- reflecting on postgraduate supervision and collaborative doctoral awards.
Posts cover topics from well-established in-class/ synchronous activities such as the lecture, seminar and research-rich teaching, to initiatives in formative and summative assessment, inclusion, compassion-focused pedagogy and quality assurance.
We also offer information that will be useful for those thinking about engaging in their own pedagogic research – methodological approaches; research ethics; research networks and communities of practice; and where to publish.
We warmly welcome ideas and exemplars for inclusion across the board, from undergraduate to postgraduate studies.
Browse the Resources
Facing current challenges can be a vital part of our curriculum
At a time of already great disruption, historians at Aston University this year faced the threat of departmental closure and redundancy. Public and private support for Aston historians led to the programme's survival, though colleagues at Aston and historians...
The Future of (Teaching) the Past
What happens when a university lab-based Digital History module goes online due to lockdown? You might think the imposed digital switch would be straightforward for 'born digital' digital history students. But as Dr Jessica van Horssen of Leeds Beckett University...
Teaching the Tudors on a two-way street
Dr John Cooper was runner-up in the 2020 RHS Jinty Nelson Award for Inspirational Teaching and Supervision in History. Here, he reflects on the importance of open dialogue in teaching: between undergraduate year groups, who've much to teach one another, and between...
Creating an Online Community: A Pre-Pandemic Initiative
Professor Marjory Harper won the 2020 RHS Jinty Nelson Award for Inspirational Teaching and Supervision in History. Here, she reflects on the process of planning an online Master’s Programme in Scottish Heritage in 2017. The RHS annual teaching prizes recognise...
Data Protection and Historical Research: The Basics
Recent data protection laws, implemented across Europe in 2018, have implications for academic researchers. The Royal Historical Society recently published a set of guidelines to help researchers navigate the legal requirements around data protection. Here, Dr...
Ethics in the Classroom Setting
History is about opinion, judgement and (often) getting beyond monolithic assumptions about ‘right’ or ‘wrong’. At the same time, the classroom should be a safe and ethical place for the exchange of views and a space that is marked by respect, sensitivity and...
Teaching Materials for Low-Tech Online Teaching: Online Discussion Groups
Teaching in most HEIs next academic year will be conducted with at least some Covid-19-related restrictions in place. In this second post for the Teaching Portal considering low-tech materials for online teaching, Dr Mary Morrissey, Associate Professor in Early Modern...
Teaching Materials for Low-Tech Online Teaching: Planning for Social Distancing
In this guest post, the first of two looking at low-tech materials for online teaching, Dr Mary Morrissey, Associate Professor in Early Modern English Literature at the University of Reading, offers advice to teachers about the different teaching materials to use to...
Small Group Teaching in a Large Class: ‘Understanding History’
In this post Dr Marcus Collins, Senior Lecturer in Cultural History at the University of Loughborough, shares his knowledge and experience of teaching the course 'Understanding History', a compulsory module for second-year undergraduates which aims to develop the...
Supervising PhD Students: A Collaborative Approach
In July 2018, Professor Julie Anderson, Professor of Modern History at the University of Kent, was the first winner of the Royal Historical Society’s Jinty Nelson Award for Inspirational Teaching and Supervision in History. Here she provides an account of her...
Bridging ‘Digital Divides’ in Virtual Teaching
We should not assume that others interact with the digital world in the same way as we do ourselves. In this post Dr Andrew Smith and Dr Mary Morrissey consider the challenges that many students encounter when required to engage with online teaching. As noted by...
The Anatomy of a Thesis
In this post, historian Dr Andrew Foster provides research students with a general guide about the main elements of writing up a PhD thesis. The advice Dr Foster gives is based on years of discussions with research students in seminars and workshops about the...
Climate in the History Curriculum
In September, Amanda Power spoke to the RHS Education Policy Committee about putting climate into the history curriculum. In this post for the RHS blog, which draws on that presentation, she considers how we might develop history curricula to integrate climate, and...
Gender-Neutral Pronouns
Using correct pronouns for non-binary and trans people is a simple indication of acknowledgement and respect. Gendered appearance does not reliably tell you about a person’s gender. Checking which pronouns to use, and then doing so consistently, is an easy way to...
Race Update 9 – Mia Liyanage, ‘Miseducation: decolonising curricula, culture and pedagogy in UK universities’, HEPI Report (July 2020)
Using testimony from sixteen interview respondents across academia, activism and policy, this HEPI Report addresses the common misconceptions about decolonisation and recommends a series of practical steps towards its implementation. It argues that decolonisation is...
Curriculum Conference Report
From 23-30 April 2020, the RHS hosted its first Virtual Curriculum conference. The event had originally been designed as a one-day workshop to be held in the RHS offices on 23 April. Instead, registered participants were invited to read, watch and listen to a range of...
The Bibliography of British and Irish History (BBIH): A Guide for Teachers and Students
The Bibliography of British and Irish History (known as ‘BBIH’) is the most comprehensive and up-to-date record of what’s been published in British and Irish history. It currently includes records of 620,000 books, journal articles, edited collections, book chapters...