• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content

Terry Haydn

  • Home
  • About
  • Learning to Teach History
    • PGCE Student Teacher
    • ICT in History Teaching
    • Time and Chronology
    • Assessment
    • History and Citizenship
    • Evidence
    • Causation
    • Substantive concepts
    • Empathy
    • Drama and Role-Play
    • Significance
    • Values and dispositions in school history
    • Class management
    • Interpretations
    • History and newspapers
    • Purpose of School History
    • Inclusion and diversity
      • Parent’s story
      • Claire’s full story
    • CPD
  • Managing Pupil Behaviour
    • The Haydn Scale and ‘The Right to Learn’
    • Levels of Control
    • Links to the research
    • How to get the class quiet; what do teachers say?
    • ‘Coping’; how do teachers handle things when they are not in complete control?
    • It isn’t quick or easy…
    • Sending pupils out; what do teachers say?
    • Moving pupils; what do teachers say?
    • Classroom rules; what do teachers say?
    • Why do some teachers become better than others at managing pupil behaviour? What do teachers say?
    • Complex and sophisticated skills
    • Mistakes: what do mentors say?
    • Zero tolerance: what (some) heads and deputies say…
    • Some of the Variables that influence Classroom Climate
    • Refusal
    • What use is the Scale?
    • Links to Other Useful Resources
  • NEET in Norfolk
  • Pupil Disaffection
  • Blog
  • Contact
You are here: Home / PGCE History at UEA / Time and Chronology / Why an understanding of Time and Chronology is important in the study of history

Why an understanding of Time and Chronology is important in the study of history

Understanding Time and Chronology

(Why it is an important part of school history)

“Chronology provides a mental framework or map which gives significance and coherence to the study of history.”

(Para 3:18 of the Final Report of the History National Curriculum Working Group, 1990)

“Without a grasp of the concept of time, there can be no real understanding of change, development, continuity, progression, and regression…. If development/change are to be properly understood, there must be some idea of the order in which things happened”

(Tim Lomas, Teaching and Assessing Historical Understanding, 1993:p. 20)

“The ability to sequence is a fundamental feature of historical understanding. The past is chaos to pupils, until sequenced.”

(Sydney Wood, ‘Developing an understanding of time-sequencing issues’, Teaching History 79:p.11-14)

“Totally filleted of chronology, history becomes an amusing but rather pointless preoccupation. A project on hats through the ages may look pretty, but loses its point if through the ages are meaningless.”

(Martin Ballard, New Movements in the Study and Teaching of History, 1970, p. 7)

Time is one of the central mechanisms which history has for organising information, and establishing how elements of the past are related to each other. The history teacher (and the historian) often needs to ask “When did this happen? What is its relation to the present day? Where does it fit in with other things in the past? How does it relate to the present and the future?”

This is also a controversial area of school history. What should pupils be expected to know about time and chronology from the study of history in school? How can pupils’ knowledge and understanding of time be developed?

This site attempts to give information and suggestions which will help to develop pupils’ knowledge and understanding of time and chronology.

Copyright © 2025 | Terry Haydn | All Rights Reserved