Who are we and what is the group for?

The Teach Climate History group grew out of an enquiry put together by Peter Langdon (Head of History, Highbury Fields School) which invited Year 7 students to decide when the Anthropocene began, covering about 200,00 years of human history.  You can find the resources for this enquiry on this website.  The enquiry was shared at teacher events and generated much interest, including at UCL where history tutors were already exploring how to embed an environmental perspective into school history.  The Teach Climate History group emerged from these conversations and has attracted history teachers and teacher educators from the UK and internationally, including Canada, the US, South Africa and Sweden.

The principal aim of the group is to support the implementation of an environmental perspective into school history.  We have identified a number of relevant themes (link to document?) including big history and the Anthropocene (inspired by Peter's work), the history of climate change, local landscapes and colonial and indigenous histories.

The group meets six times a year and invites a wide range of keynote speakers including teachers, teacher educators and historians, to share their perspectives and help us to collectively develop our subject knowledge.   In the longer term, the website will become a repository of relevant resources to support teachers' practice.

Who can attend meetings?

Anyone can attend who has an interest in how school history can help young people to understand the environmental crisis.   In addition to the speaker events, there will are opportunities to join smaller groups who are supporting each other to explore particular themes in the classroom.

Steering Group

The Steering Group members are:

Peter Langdon

Alison Kitson

Michael Riley

Tom Morton

Arthur Chapman

Glen Thielman