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Learning history is vital for students' intellectual, spiritual, emotional, and physical development. Students perceive history subject as difficult and boring because they must memorize facts and understandthose facts, concepts, time, and historical events. Interactive multimedia can increase students' enthusiasm and make the teaching and learning process more interesting to make the history "alive." Game-based learning uses game elements and principles to effectively deliver teaching and learning process in the classrooms. Yamashita's Treasure: A Quest to Find the Treasure is a game-based instructional material designed for grade 7 students of the Philippine K-12 curriculum that aims to teach significant lessons and events occurred in the Philippines over the last century. In this paper, we present findings from an assessment of an instructional material in teaching Philippine history. A System Usability Scale (SUS) was used to test the system's usability which generated a positive score. Respondents were highly satisfied with the game's usability scoring 87.5 on the SUS. Future work includes developing a programmed system, conducting quasi-experimental research design, and consultations with the experts for further enhancement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to a preliminary historical and decolonial analysis of teaching and research in the field of education and international development at the UCL Institute of Education. The preliminary analysis, published as ‘Education, decolonisation and international development at the Institute of Education (London): a historical analysis’ by Elaine Unterhalter and Laila Kadiwal, appeared in the Special 120th Anniversary Issue of London Review of Education. That article and our response to it focus on the work of the Centre for Education and International Development, and its preceding organisational forms from 1927 onwards. In a responsive critique, we consider the evidence, methods, analysis and conclusions offered by Unterhalter and Kadiwal and identify a wide range of additional material on curriculum, staff, students and international partnerships that will be of value to future historians. Contemporary decolonial analysis is important for interpreting the history and for the future positioning of the Centre for Education and International Development, and the wider field of study. We conclude by identifying challenges for ongoing work in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the Reformation studies in China contextualized within the academic framework of world history as it developed from 1949 to the present, including the diachronic changes that scholarship has experienced, its essential characteristics, current debates, and ongoing trends. Over the last seventy years, steady development and some unique characteristics of Chinese academic research are evident. The Chinese academic community has not existed as an isolated island. On the contrary, it has been closely linked to the international scholarly ecosystem and affected by the international political and ideological environment. This paper summarizes those impacts and three trends evident in China within the study of the Reformation, as well as within the study of world history as a whole, and pointed out the sprout of creating historical writing from “the other’s perspective”: a Chinese perspective of the Chinese academics [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Value co-creation unfolds as a system of interactions in which the user and service provider play an active role in collaboratively creating values that go beyond economical and financial worth. Value co-creation is a growing trend in museums; however, little is known about how it can enhance educational activities, especially concerning digital technologies. This study analyzes the role of digital technology in the value co-creation process by addressing the following research questions: (1) how can museums, and schools implement actions to enhance co-creation activities? and (2) how does digital technology contribute to the generation of a value co-creation approach, engaging a young target audience in history education? The research adopts a single case study methodology, which is based on WORld Wars Toward Heritage for Youth (WORTHY), an educational European project that involves cultural and educational institutions from Germany, Poland, Croatia, England, and Italy. WORTHY creates a virtual collaborative museum through a digital platform. The paper's findings make clear that digital technologies play a role in value co-creation through two main experiences: learning and sharing. In the learning experience, digital co-creation is grounded in artifacts and contents, while during the sharing experience, digital technologies play a role relatively to people and content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to provide a unique overview of how third-order concepts, linked to moral consciousness, are expressed in research articles on historical consciousness related to education, as well as to document how frequently the concepts are applied between 1980 and 2020. A count of word frequency says something about how popular (strong) a concept is during a particular period, while different themes of moral consciousness enable teachers, students, and researchers to broaden their perceptions and sharpen their (moral) judgment in their day-to-day reflections and practices. The following questions guide the study: 1. How do words signal good/bad and right/wrong in the texts about historical consciousness? 2. How frequently are the words mentioned? And 3. What kind of frames do the choices of words indicate for educational practice and purpose(s)? Very strong, strong, medium, and weak words have been located between 1980 and 2020 depending on how often the words are mentioned. Five themes were found and are reported on in this article: cosmopolitanism, democracy, emancipation, character building, and existential struggles, which all come with different frames for how to approach the past in relation to the present and future in history education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the article, the author discusses world history education worldwide, particularly how world history is integrated in the curricula of universities, colleges and precollegiate schools in various countries. Topics include how American models were used by other countries to teach world history and the performance of world history education in the U.S.

An introduction is presented to this special section arising from the August 2016 panel entitled “New Technologies and Methods in the Classroom," at the Sixteenth Century Society & Conference held in Brugge, Belgium on topics including material culture, the use of primary source material, and and historically-based games.

This study examined the effect of YouTube audio-visual documentaries (YAVDs) on students' achievement and interest in History in Enugu state, Nigeria. Six hypotheses guided the study using a quasi-experimental research design. Multi-stage sampling techniques were used to sample 70 Senior Secondary two students (SS2) in four intact classes. Data were collected using History Achievement Test (HAT), which yielded 0.65 reliability index using Kuder-Richardson Formula 20 (KR20), and History Interest Inventory Scale (HIIS), which yielded 0.78 reliability index using Cronbach Alpha. Analysis of Covariance (ANCOVA) was used to test the null hypotheses at.05 significant level. The findings revealed that there was a significant difference between the achievement and interest of students taught History using YouTube Audio-visual documentaries (YAVDs) and those taught without. Recommendations focused on teachers' empowerment by the governments on how the use of YAVDs in teaching History. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various aspects of disciplinary literacy, also referred to as historical literacy, within world history, and how such literacy informs a particular approach to K-12 history education. It attempts to define world historical literacy and how world history teachers must define the parameters for becoming literate in world history.

Debates over which historical content should be compulsory for study in the school curriculum are a common feature of education systems across the globe. These debates invariably weigh the perceived benefits to social cohesion of a 'common core' of knowledge against the perceived risks to democracy of government-sanctioned 'official knowledge'. Scotland has, perhaps, taken an extreme position on this debate by specifying no mandatory historical content in its social studies curriculum. This paper uses 21 interviews with Scottish history teachers to explore how schools use this curricular autonomy: which historical periods they choose to teach and why. The paper suggests that, without access to theoretical debates about the nature of historical knowledge, schools fall back on instrumental justifications for content selection within the curriculum. The result in many cases is an extremely narrow and fragmented syllabus in which pupil preference, teacher interests and the logistics of timetabling guide content selection. The paper concludes that the formulation of coherent school-level history curricula is dependent on the fostering agency among a theoretically-informed teaching profession. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyses history teaching in South Sudanese secondary schools and focuses on the interplay of local context, curricular intentions, and teachers' agency. Drawing on ethnographic data, the article focuses on how the main objectives of national unity and critical thinking are enacted by teachers in the classroom. Through theories of history teaching and learning in divided societies, I explore how teachers teach the recent violent past and how they navigate and mediate 'invisible' tensions among opposing truths in the classroom. Foregrounding the context of civil war, the article illustrates how narratives of current and previous civil wars in the country limit teachers' ability to fulfil the goals of the syllabus. Despite the role of teachers as key mediators for a peaceful classroom, the context of war limits the ideological space for them to promote a culture of peace among students in the classroom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What do secondary school students in Ontario, Canada, need to know about the world in which they live in? How did a secondary school 'World Politics' course that emerged in Ontario in the 1960s address this question? The 'World Politics' course that emerged in the 1960s clearly came about as a result of societal and educational developments. Educators in nineteenth-century Ontario felt no need for such a course. In more recent times, post-Second World War, the discipline of history underwent dramatic upheavals. The opportunities for new courses meant possibilities to reach out to new groups of students. Simultaneously, with this change, the importance of international relations in the history curriculum was reduced but this also allowed for its re-emergence elsewhere. Finally, 'World Politics' emerged as one of the responses to the need for an understanding of a much more complex world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In collaboration with historic sites in Washington, DC, that have shared commitments to place-based and experiential learning, Ford's Theatre teaches K-12 educators about Civil War history through engagements with places, artifacts, stories, and enduring conflicts that can be made relevant to students' lives. In this article, we provide program descriptions and findings from a program evaluation to articulate how Ford's and its partners both model and teach historical empathy, community building, and reflective practice as they strengthen teachers' historical knowledge, pedagogical tool kits, and professional networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how a standards-based form of assessment in operation in New Zealand has impacted upon the knowledge taught to secondary history students. The segmentation of history into assessable components along with assessment mechanisms which encourage the reduction in the number of standards being attempted has impacted upon both the breadth and range of historical content in history programmes. The reduction in knowledge is problematic as it diminishes learners' opportunities to draw connections between inter-related historical concepts from a wider knowledge base. Social realists have raised concerns about the reduced focus on knowledge in education and its effects in restricting students' development of conceptual knowledge which enables higher order, more abstract thinking. Experiences of standards-based assessment for history in New Zealand are indicative of this reductive phenomenon. In a culture of accountability, standards-based assessment, as enacted in New Zealand, may impede delivery of critical knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article sociocultural lituanization in gymnasiums of national minorities in Kaunas in 1926-1940 is analysed as well as teaching (learning) of subjects of Lithuanian language and literature, History of Lithuania and its results are discussed. The attitude of gymnasiums' communities for the lithuanization of the pupils is evaluated. The study found that in 1926-1940 the pupils' skills of the Lithuanian language and literature and the History of Lithuania improved, but the desired level of Ministry of Education wasn't reached. Jewish and Russian gymnasiums were more favorable for the lithuanization; however, Polish and German gymnasiums were less favorable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although most teachers adapt curriculum, we know little about teachers' rationales for modifying materials, how these rationales align with actual modifications, nor whether any patterns exist in the modifications that teachers make. This is especially the case in history/social studies, where research on curriculum is scant and research on teacher adaptation of curriculum is virtually non-existent. This paper addresses that gap. We report the results of a large-scale survey on curriculum use with over 1900 history teachers. The online survey focused on how and why teachers use and adapt lesson materials from a free online history curriculum and prompted teachers to upload examples of curriculum materials they had modified. We found that individual differences among teachers correlated with particular types of modifications. Moreover, we found that teachers were motivated to modify materials to address their students' needs, and that their modifications rarely affected the core structure - or theory of content - of the lessons. We argue that such alignment between teachers and curricular materials represents an example of curricular fit. We discuss what curricular design features may have contributed to the high level of curricular fit among users as well as the implications of this construct for curriculum implementation efforts across subject areas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study presented in this article examines the internal consistency of the formal Swedish history curriculum for the upper-secondary school. The research question addresses the extent to which disciplinary aspects—also referred to as vertical knowledge discourses—are transferred from fields of knowledge production to the Swedish formal history curriculum. A qualitative research design is adopted and document content analysis is used to examine the presence of vertical knowledge discourses in the aims, the core content and the level descriptors of the curriculum. The results show that a vertical knowledge discourse is present in two areas of the curriculum: the aims and the section that defines the content of history education. An exception is identified in the section of the curriculum that focuses on assessment, the knowledge requirements. Here, the presence of vertical knowledge is marginal. The conclusion is drawn that there is an inconsistency regarding the presence of vertical knowledge discourses in the Swedish history curriculum. This inconsistency can diminish the availability of vertical knowledge for the students and also lead to a situation where control over history education to some degree is transferred from curriculum designers and teachers to other agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

History curriculum and textbooks, as a key mechanism of constructing collective memory, play a critical role in shaping national, social, and cultural imaginations of the young. This paper analyses history textbooks in Taiwan during the martial law period (1950-1987) to explore narratives about Taiwan and examines the ways in which those narratives as collective memory created particular images of Taiwan. The analysis indicates that history textbooks delineated two threads of narrative, one is a Sinicisation narrative, namely Chinese colonisation, and the other is Chinese restoration narrative. The Sinicisation narrative constructed particular collective memory about Taiwan being of Chinese descent and an inheritor of Chinese culture, lost and restored by China after World War II. In the narrative of restoration, Taiwan was imagined as reborn to be the model child of Chinese descent that was obligated to emancipate all Chinese compatriots from Communism and to ultimately realise the goal of Chinese reunification. These narratives served for emancipating Taiwan from Japanese colonisation and constructed particular collective memory that Sinicised Taiwan for Chinese restoration. The image of Taiwan as Chinese descent, identified with Chinese culture, has endured to the present and continue to shape imaginations and discourses about Taiwan in the present. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

History education has been continually challenged by political competition in Cyprus. The education systems on both sides of the divide reflect the ongoing ethnic conflict and suffer from ethnocentrism. In particular, the history textbooks are used to convey and legitimise official narratives and reinforce identities defined vis-à-vis the other. As a result of the political debates in the early-2000s, a challenging process of educational reform and revision of history textbooks started in North Cyprus. This paper provides a historical perspective on the changes in the Cypriot history textbooks, and undertakes an in-depth comparative analysis of the old, revised and re-revised Cyprus history textbooks that have been used in schools from 1971 until the present day. The data was collected from document analysis of the textbooks used in lower- and upper-secondary schools both before and after the education reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries Russia experienced a considerable lack of teachers. In this situation, foreign migrants became Russia's preferred teachers for more than a century. Foreigners were particularly welcome to teach languages and a whole range of other subjects such as history, geography, and mathematics. All teaching was done in a foreign language. Foreigners became important actors in cultural transfers from Western Europe to Russia. Social elites (the nobility, particularly its upper strata) became the main clients of these foreign teachers. This process ended up producing several generations of aristocracy possessing a sort of hybrid culture, both Russian and Western-European with a particular predominance of French culture starting from the generation of the middle of the eighteenth century. In my paper I will first analyse the national composition of the teaching staff in some major Russian educational institutions, first and foremost the institutions for the nobility or in which noble students were present, and in private education; then I will give a brief overview of the geographical origin of the students in these institutions. I will finally analyse the positive aspects as well as the problems caused by this situation and will show what reactions the predominance of foreign teaching staff in Russia provoked in Russian society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the development of history teaching in West Germany from the 1970s onwards. When in the early 1970s the relevance of history - both as an academic discipline and as a school subject - was challenged, this led to fierce debates as a multitude of new concepts were being developed. One of these was Annette Kuhn’s revolutionary concept of teaching history which immediately came under attack. This debate - and others - had far reaching consequences. At first glance it was a debate about how to model objects like the English Revolution in a way to make them suitable for the history classroom. At second glance, however, this debate revolved around fundamental issues like the role of history in school, the relation between social sciences and didactics, and history’s relevance for today in general. The debate and its eventual outcome are explained within the framework of Bourdieu’s field theory. The study re-examines the consequences of this debate. In discussing alternatives to Kuhn’s approach, it shows how debates forced upon traditional history led historians to readdress the essentials of historical thinking and thus to gain new theoretical strength which resulted in a stronger position for history at universities and schools as well as in history didactics. This resulted in a specific construction and role of Geschichtsdidaktik in Germany which helps to explain why there is a difference in comparison to other countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article proposes a new of field of research in social sciences education: Historical Memory Education (HME). Despite the large amount of educational experiences following the end of violent conflicts and totalitarian regimes during the twentieth century, historical memory has not been recognized as a field in educational research. From a review of research and experiences worldwide, the authors identify a new field in education research that cannot be reduced to peace education, bullying prevention, or history education, but that takes elements from all these fields, as well as from local pedagogical experiences, to face the challenge of healing the wounds of longstanding violent conflicts. This article organizes prior research in a comprehensive framework that describes the levels, pedagogical principles, and spaces of HME. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since its inception in 2003, Kurdistan's Regional Government (KRG) has implemented a wide range of reforms in Iraqi Kurdistan's (IK) education system. The history education curricula (HEC) students encounter glorify war, exclude different narratives or interpretations, and fail to foster critical debate or enquiry. In their explicit content, as well as in their implications, processes, and delivery, IK's HEC encourage violence, foster divisions between Muslims and non-Muslims, and serve to establish the dominance of the most powerful group in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An essay is presented discussing why former U.S. President Barack Obama's 2008 speech known as the "A More Perfect Union" (AMPU) speech can be used in history classes in historicized discussions on race. The authors explore Obama's curricular-historical legacy and how the AMPU speech could be used to promote racial literacy.

Examination of the treatment in Vietnamese history textbooks of national and world history against the backdrop of the collapse of socialism in the Soviet Union and Soviet Bloc countries suggests that the authors of these textbooks fear that what happened in the Soviet Union could also happen in Vietnam. The purpose of the textbooks' depiction of the past is to allay these fears. The textbooks reflect Vietnam's turn back towards China after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and of socialist countries in Eastern Europe. For the leadership in Hanoi, the emphasis on fraternal ties with China has, however, recently lost its allure. Beijing's actions in the South China Sea have, in turn, prompted many Vietnamese to demand a more comprehensive coverage of Sino-Vietnamese relations in history textbooks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article uses the example of a university course about the Indigenous and settler histories of Kingston, Ontario, and the Crawford Purchase that constitutes its treaty, to argue that critical heritage practice can importantly and effectively be embodied as critical pedagogy. Beginning with a personal genealogical reflection by the author whose family was granted land by King George III in 1796, the article describes the Crawford Purchase and some of the questions it raises. It articulates and contextualizes key principles of the course in question (look around you, look to your ancestors, be responsible, be eclectic, and don’t finish). Students in the course engage with the physical space around the university, with their own personal family histories, and with literature, art, and archival materials, in order to develop a multi-dimensional set of resources for their final projects. The essay illustrates how students have taken up the responsibility to understand and to activate awareness of treaty relations and ongoing colonialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Holocaust was one of the most significant events of contemporary history and still has great relevance for current times. This paper analyses the portrayal of the Holocaust in secondary education history textbooks in Spain. As this type of research has grown in the international arena, the need to review critically this event in Spanish textbooks has become ever more evident. This paper reviews what has already been written on this subject in the international arena and makes a number of methodological observations both quantitatively and qualitatively. In the review, a number of deficiencies in the representation of the Holocaust were found. This strongly indicates the need to contextualise the study of the Holocaust and frame it within a structural perspective that would account for its multi-causal origin. Attention is also drawn to the need to improve the content, dispel some myths and improve deficiencies identified in textbooks on the subject. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Issues of transitional justice are central to countries moving away from identity-based conflict. Research tends to focus on the most well-known forms of transitional justice, like truth commissions. Far less attention has been given to education as a form of transitional justice, and even less to teacher professional development, even though education is central to signalling the new society and teachers are expected to become agents of change in their classrooms. This article focusses on history curriculum change in post-apartheid South Africa. We show how the post-apartheid South African government developed a human rights-based history curriculum but failed to support teachers to implement it. Aspects of these inadequacies included a failure to take into account the de-skilling of a large segment of the teaching population under apartheid and teachers' personal legacies of that era. Through a review of the teacher professional development programme, Facing the Past, this article demonstrates the possibility to implement teacher training programmes attuned to the particular needs of a transitional justice environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the notion of 'justice-sensitive education' - derived from the ideals and practices of transitional justice (TJ) in countries emerging from conflict. It describes three mechanisms for this: structural reforms (relating to inequity and division); curriculum change (the treatment of history, human rights and citizenship) and institutional culture (critical thinking and democratic, participatory pedagogy). A case study of Sri Lanka provides fresh illustrations of actual or potential work in these three areas. There appear five challenges to a justice-sensitive education: the wider context of schooling; willingness of educators to confront the past; barriers to introducing the critical thinking required for new norms and values to take root; programming and planning; and difficulties in measuring the impact of TJ measures in education. Yet however imperfect, TJ mechanisms indicate a society that wants to learn from past mistakes and show that some form of justice is possible in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This historical study reflects on history curriculum debates over the last 20 years in Taiwan. To open up possibilities for contemporary Taiwanese to rethink themselves in terms of national culture and subjectivity, this paper explores the construction of Taiwanese subjectivity in the past. It focuses on the history of Taiwan under Japanese occupation as a key issue in history curriculum debates. Particularly, it examines language issues in the 1920s, an important theme in the histories of the formation of Taiwanese consciousness, ideology, and cultural nationalism during the Japanese colonial period. Rather than addressing issues of identity (national or cultural), identifying who Taiwanese really were, or looking for Chinese or Taiwanese consciousness, this study explores how meanings of “Taiwanese” in the 1920s under Japanese occupation were constructed in the discourse of language reform for civilisation. The analysis of the New Culture Movement discourse suggests that the classical Chinese language ofHànwénas a valuable cultural resource and flexible linguistic instrument played an essential role in constituting Taiwanese subjectivities that shaped Taiwanese practices of the self for distinctive civilisation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Ahmet Cevdet Pasha, who had been in important positions in the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century, is a historian, jurist, educator, linguist and poet as well as a statesman. There are very few people in Ottoman history who carry all of these features together. In this respect, many researches have been done about Ahmet Cevdet Pasha up to the present day. Studies carried out in different fields with each passing day about him, are showing that these investigations are not yet completed. Ahmet Cevdet Pasha, who carries on many features, is one of the most important chronicler and historian of the Ottoman Empire in 19th century. Due to a great number of Ottoman historians are state chronicler, they usually deal with events in chronological order. Ahmet Cevdet Pasha is one of the few Ottoman historians who can go beyond this, use his own opinions about the causes and consequences of the events and take criticism as a method while deciding upon the sources. Ahmet Cevdet Pasha's studies and publishings in various fields affected his titles as historiographer and history educator positively. Having a multidisciplinary approach, Ahmet Cevdet Pasha brought a new understanding to Ottoman historiography and was in the struggle to deliver a philosophy of history and methodology. In this study, Ahmet Cevdet Pasha's historiography and his opinions on history education and history teaching will be discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

History educators find themselves in the peculiar situation of wishing to introduce students to the history discipline while lacking a clear conception of the features intrinsic to historical inquiry across its various specialisations and subject matters. In affirming that no one methodological charter hangs in the corridors of academic history departments, we fail to provide an adequate justification for an education in history. The doctrine that history is an exercise in disciplined knowledge, a specific way of knowing, is weakened by disciplinary disquietude and dissimilitude. Three features impress themselves upon all who inquire into the past. In the learning and teaching of history, these three features assume a distinct structural shape. First, colligation consists in grouping the events and concepts to be studied according to their shared purposes. Second, historical distance, intimately tied up with tradition and collective memory, provides the means for identifying a past separate from the present to be studied in its own right. Third, reconstruction describes the process of supplying individual content to the general categories illuminated by the earlier stages. To work knowingly in this structure of historical inquiry offers no solutions to the problems of historical thinking, it is to work productively within these problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines and discusses the ways in which hegemonic and subaltern discourses alternatively evoke different, and sometimes competing, notions ofthe nationand how they might productively coexist within the history curriculum. More precisely, using Homi Bhabha's conceptual tools of pedagogic and performative narratives of the nation, the article examines history curriculum as permeable to alternative and endless reinventions of the nation and as intrinsically linked to a fixed, stable, and officialized narrative. The study, based on the analysis of the construction of the Catalan nationhood in school textbooks and teachers' and museums' resources in Catalonia (Spain), suggests complex dynamics between hegemonic and subaltern discourses, rather than fixed conceptualizations. Whereas revolutionary discursive depictions of the nation incorporated in the curriculum have a tendency to be officialized, institutionalized, and domesticated through their mediation in educational texts, the article suggests possibilities for more effectively building the subaltern voice within the school curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper describes some of the affective fall out of teaching slavery in South African schools following the latest version of the curriculum, known as the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statements (CAPS). Over several years, it has become apparent to the author, who is a teacher educator at the University of the Witwatersrand (Wits), that teaching the sections of the curriculum on Cape slavery and on transatlantic slavery causes significant distress among school learners and that student educators have become increasingly apprehensive about the impact these topics will have when they present them to their own classes comprising several dozen adolescents. Student educators have expressed concern that they will be unable to resolve racial conflict that seems to be just under the surface, and which teaching topics like slavery threatens to release. The author gives an account of an ongoing experiment in what are called ‘silent conversations’ that she has conducted with student educators and which, as a methodology, many have subsequently taken with them into their own teaching at schools. It is argued that the silent conversations allow for students to converse with each other in a way that keeps emotions in check while allowing them to express their responses to stimuli related to the topic of slavery. The silent conversation methodology is rooted in an international literature referred to in the paper that investigates possible solutions for teaching controversial histories at school level in countries where divisive political or other allegiances make them particularly difficult to present. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A personal narrative is presenetd which explores author's experience of teaching history, focused on Study Away, Teach Away (SATA) Program in Connecticut.

The article is the continuation of the publication The issue of social functions of history in the periodicals of Latvia in the 1920s and 1930s which was published in Istorija (2016, Vol. 102, No. 2). The article considers the views of teachers-historians about the principles of selection of historical material, its organization in the lower secondary school, their vision of the place of national history in school history education and its proportion with world history in the school curriculum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debates about the purpose and content of history education in schools have been prevalent in most Westernised democratic nations over the last 30 years. Under discussion are essential questions concerning national identity/ies, competing narratives and the aims of history education. The impact of ‘history wars’ has been felt within both Australia and England, as conservative commentators – including politicians and historians – have raised concerns about the depth and effectiveness of history education and have sought to make significant changes to the history curriculum for schools. This analysis examines the history wars in Australia and England, exploring the view that history education has been in danger and/or crisis and examining the curricular implications of a move toward greater recognition of national narratives. It raises some essential tensions that remain regarding two aspects of history teaching in both nations: (1) historiography and (2) chronological understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 2018, the Republic of Ireland abolished history as a required subject in its public secondary schools. What are the consequences for Ireland of this decision, especially in light of the importance of history to Irish self-understanding and national development? What are the implications of such policies beyond Ireland, including in the United States? This article discusses the somber prospects of "forgetting the past" as it addresses these questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author discusses the use of a three-pronged strategy in his introductory Modern Global History course at William Paterson University, a public institution located in northern New Jersey, to teach students about mainstream electoral politics. The strategy will encourage students to think through U.S. President Donald Trump presidency without succumbing to the pitfalls of exaggeration. He notes that the political spectrum is akin to 19th century Europe rather than contemporary America.