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As I set out in my last post, substantive knowledge concerns knowledge of the past, and in history curriculum theory can generally be seen as the counterpart of disciplinary knowledge, which involves knowledge of the discipline. Over the last few decades, however, substantive knowledge has generally played second-fiddle to disciplinary knowledge in models of progression, […]

In my previous post I focused on ability statements (which take the form “pupils can x”) and argued that it is problematical to incorporate these into progression models where the ability statement is left at a general level. A statement such as “pupils can construct causal arguments” is not a meaningful addition to a progression

  Progression models are frequently constructed from ‘ability’ statements. Put simply, if you have an ability, it means you can do something. It is therefore quite common to see progression models in history education containing statements about “pupils can construct causal arguments” or “pupils can critique interpretations of the past”. The rationale behind this is