From "Progression is historical understanding 7-14" Lee, P. and Ashby, R. (2000), in P. Seixas, P. Stearns and S. Wineburg, Teaching, Knowing and Learning History, New York, New York University Press: pp. 199-222.

"To make sense of these changes (to the history curriculum) it is necessary to distinguish between substantive history on the one hand, and second order or procedural ideas about history on the other. Substantive history is the content of history, what history is 'about'. Concepts like peasant, friar or president, particulars like the Battle of Hastings, the French Revolution or The Civil Rights Movement, and individuals like Abraham Lincoln, Marie Curie or Mahatma Gandhi, are part of the substance of history. Concepts like historical evidence, explanation, change, and accounts, are ideas that provide our understanding of history as a discipline or form of knowledge. They are not what history is 'about', but they shape the way we go about doing history. The changes in English history education can therefore be described as a shift from the assumption that school history was only a matter of acquiring substantive history, to a concern with students' second order ideas."

Lee and Ashby go on to stress that this is not a retreat from the importance of students acquiring historical knowledge:

"Instead, 'knowledge' was treated seriously, as something that had to be understood and grounded. It was essential that students knew something of the kind of claims made by historians, and what those different kinds of claims rested on."

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