Product reviews for 40 Ways to Diversify the History Curriculum

<p>An extremely useful toolkit to use as a starting point to help diversify, reimagine and decolonise the history curriculum. While shedding light on experiences of the working class, women, Black and LGBT+ communities, it provides thoughtful suggestions on how educators can teach key historical events through an alternative lens.</p>
<p>Each chapter includes the background context to a history once forgotten and a viewpoint never seen. Online resources are also available to support chapters on African kingdoms, migration, and the empire and slavery. It encourages educators to challenge undermining notions of incivility and backwardness when it comes to African civilisation and culture.</p>
<p>A great resource for teachers to deepen, enlighten and enrich their history lessons from key stage 2 upwards.</p>

<p>This book is a must-read for any teacher of history which offers detailed, practical and insightful advice on diversifying the curriculum. These are not ‘top tips’ or tokenistic gestures of representation, but deeply thoughtful suggestions linking to second-order concepts which will help students understand how, as the author makes clear in her introduction, identity and representation matter in shaping our sense of self, our communities and the ways in which our conception of the world is constructed. In doing so, Elena Stevens doesn’t simply introduce us to people and situations we may have been ignorant of, but she offers a way of making us all better historians along the way. And, it would not be too much to claim, better human beings too.</p>

<p>Designing a history curriculum is a fraught activity, with an unmanageably wide canvas to draw from and every decision saying something about the relevance, or significance, or impact of a particular event, person or period. An additional limitation is provided by what is already known to the teachers – not only can you not teach what you don’t know, but it’s also almost impossible to go looking efficiently if you don’t know where to start. To this end, Elena Stevens’ book is invaluable. If you are looking to move your curriculum beyond ‘Our Island Story’, then <em>40 Ways to Diversify the History Curriculum</em> offers you a treasure trove of starting points: historical nuggets that have been looked over by a practised teacher’s eye and are accompanied by suggestions for enabling the stories to capture students’ learning and to swiftly develop their historical skills of enquiry and reflection. This is a fascinating resource that will send you off reading more about the questions that capture your imagination – there’s something new here for everyone to find.</p>

<p>This is a timely and inspiring book which provides history teachers and educators with excellent theoretical and practical advice on how to diversify their curricula. Not only does Elena Stevens provide a clear rationale on why we should diversify many different areas of the ‘traditional curriculum’, but crucially she also offers many practical ideas, strategies and even enquiries to inspire teachers to help create a curriculum fit for the 21st century. </p>
<p> <em>40 Ways to Diversify the History Curriculum</em> is a real practical guidebook that should be a core text in all history departments.</p>