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This article aims to offer both an overview of the key issues and controversial policy decisions that defined history education in Korea for the past 10 years and a critical analysis of the actions taken by, and claims exchanged between, the advocates of New Right thinking and their opponents during this period. In doing so, it will point out the following three things. First, there has been a great deal of partisan political interference, more on the part of the right than of the left. Second, there was a strong presence of a nationalist element in the collective efforts made by the left to counter the conservative government's attempts to take firm control of what and how history is taught in schools. Third, both the right and the left played fast and loose with the idea of diversity in order to consolidate their academic and political positions. This was, it will be argued, as much a manifestation of fragmented reflections on relevant epistemological issues as the result of political expediency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over half a century since the last wave of political decolonisation, the handling of "dark" colonial histories remains topical. Influenced by the postcolonial turn, this study aims to examine, from a novel historical and comparative perspective, evolving textbook representations of Belgian colonialism and its legacy in Belgian and Congolese school history education since 1945. Its diachronic and synchronic narrative analysis identifies continuity and change, and convergences and divergences, in perspectives, emphases, and silences in textbook narratives. Pinpointing the influence of colonialism and postcolonial discourse on educational practices of representation, the study explores the sometimes contradictory influences on these practices of politics, academic historiography, popular historical culture, and processes of educationalisation. The analysis illuminates parallel shifts in the two countries from triumphalist colonialist ideologies towards more critical postcolonial perspectives. In relation to educational practices of representation, often aimed at socialising citizens into worldviews sanctioned by the political dispensation of the time, the traces of these shifts have reflected dominant societal discourses while being largely at odds with historiographical advances. These dynamics are evidence of a slow process of decolonisation of existing power structures and knowledge systems which only gradually gave way to a postcolonial world still in the making. [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]

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]

Nation-states needed various ideological apparatuses when they wanted to eliminate traditional loyalties to the pre-modern era and establish a new superordinate identity. As frequently emphasised in conceptual discussions, two elements among these ideological apparatuses come to the fore: historiography and education. While social values that create a national identity have been constructed by historiography continuously from the past to the present, it aims at spreading such values through education. History education at the intersection of these two concepts has occupied a privileged place in the nation-building process. The most concrete examples of this phenomenon are the developments experienced in the context of history teaching in Turkey from 1923 to 1938, also known as the early republican period. The present study, using history textbooks, analyses changes in history teaching and expectations of it between 1923 and 1938, which were the most active years of the nationalisation period in Turkey. The findings of this study indicate that the historiography of the early republican period adopted an anthropology-based understanding in line with the conjuncture between the two world wars and that, in accordance with this understanding, a national identity with ethnic, religious, and political dimensions was intended to be promulgated through history teaching. [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]

During the interwar period, a number of organisations started to look into education as part of an attempt to understand how nationalism was fuelled through education and to what extent it had forced the outbreak of the Great War. In response to nationalism and a perceived need for reformation of national narratives, the school subjects of history and geography became the primary suspects as advocates of chauvinism and militarism. In 1919, associations for the promotion of understanding and cooperation between the Scandinavian countries – the Norden Associations [föreningarna Norden] – began investigating history textbooks. This revision of textbooks was expanded in the 1930s to explore, assess, and develop the entire teaching of history in the Nordic countries. The Norden Associations converged on many levels with the disparate international movements for educational change. This article presents the Norden Associations as part of a process of hegemonic isomorphism in which cultural hegemony set the institutional boundaries within which the organisations could work in order to attain legitimacy. The article demonstrates how an organisation with a specific political agenda, and with only limited international objectives came to be – not only a part of – but, to some extent, an organisational role model for loftier efforts aimed at global and cosmopolitan history teachings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Early American historians provided the public and policy-makers with information about US history that provided both entertainment and policy suggestions. As American historians became more professionalised in the early twentieth century, they concentrated more on their own scholarly concerns and less on policy-relevant writings. In recent decades, however, there has been a gradual revival of interest among academic historians in policy-making. In the 1950s and 1960s American education history was revitalised from two different directions. Some scholars questioned the highly positive, in-house histories previously written by education professors. Later a group of “revisionist” education historians pointed to the failures of American public schools and the neglect of children living in poverty. During the creation of Head Start and the Elementary and Secondary Education programme in the mid-1960s, there was a lack of historically relevant education policy studies. Education historians now have joined other scholars in analysing these programmes as well as the recent billion-dollar initiative to improve American history teaching. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent research on history teaching has begun to focus on political motivation. This paper is the result of the author’s dissertation, which investigates Latvian history teaching under the authoritarian regimes of Ulmanis and Stalin. It reveals the effects of authoritarianism on goals, curriculum, teaching materials and methods, and the teacher’s position in the classroom. The research undertaken attempts to discern how authoritarian political rule manipulates the teaching of national history to further its political goals, and the resulting effects. The article focuses on the teaching of Latvian history under the Soviet authoritarian regime in Latvia (1934–1940, 1940–1941/1944–1991), but includes discussion of the Nazi occupation and periods of democracy in Latvian history as a source of comparison in order to analyse the teaching of Latvian history in democratic and authoritarian societies and define the traits characteristic to authoritarian regimes. Authoritarian traits are revealed through comparisons of the purpose of history teaching as determined by the ruling order, the goal of history teaching, curriculum, methodology and materials, and teacher status under authoritarian regimes and democratic regimes. Results indicate that goals of history teaching become contrived under authoritarianism – politicised curriculum marginalises some groups, textbook authorship and choice is limited, and teachers become transmitters of the regime’s agenda resulting in marginalisation. This study deduces that two cultures of history teaching emerge – official history in school and unofficial history acquisition that helps maintain a sense of national identity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Were teachers, of the early modern era not longing for the present? Most colleges of that time did not offer a history course. Still, they did teach a lot about the past since the teaching consisted in the reading of the works of ancient writers. This is because ancient science and literature were considered much more advanced than the science and literature of the Middle Ages. Hence, teaching ancient languages and history was thought the best way of preparing students for life in the society of the time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented which discusses articles within this issue on topics including the role of teaching history in the humanist education system, civics curricula in primary education in France beginning in 1882, and the teaching of contemporary history proposed by the Dutch Society for History Teachers.

Although the history of history education is an under-researched topic worldwide, the international literature about history education contains a clear image of the historical development of the school subject. This image basically consists of a sharp dichotomy between traditional history education, which was largely insensitive to topical affairs and focused on tradition; and modern history education, which placed topical affairs at the centre of attention and critically engaged pupils in the study of history. Despite being very pervasive, this image does not do justice to the complex relationship between past and present in history education. In this article I will attempt to reassess this one-dimensional image by examining the changing relationship between past and present in Dutch history textbooks published between 1945 and 1979. More specifically, the analysis concentrates on the question of how these textbooks dealt with matters of proximity and distance on multiple levels, and how this affected the relationship between past and present in the course of time [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates the role of the recent revolutionary past in post-Napoleonic history education in the Southern Netherlands. From 1794 until 1815 the Southern Netherlands had been incorporated into the French revolutionary state and the Napoleonic Empire, respectively. Often, the experience of the revolution is associated with the birth of a new historical consciousness. I examine the impact that the revolution as a shocking event had on the teaching of history. Did the experience of this shock involve new historical interpretations'? To answer this question, I specifically study how the narratives in use after the downfall of the Napoleonic regime related to previous prerevolution-ary narratives. I argue that post-Napoleonic textbook authors took their narratives from former historians, but particularly adapted the endings of these older histories. This was done differently. On the one hand, the adaptation of former narratives stimulated the spread of new, counter-revolutionary histories. And on the other, new national histories came on the market, in which the addition of the recent revolutionary history played a less crucial role. However, generally, the experience of the revolution as a shocking event did not evoke the feeling of an ever-widening gap between past, present and future in history education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presentism is generally regarded as a necessary evil in historiography. This paper explores the upside of that inevitability. Using a philosophical approach to discourse analysis in the tradition of new cultural history, the paper distinguishes between a strategic use of presentism on the one hand, and a rationalistic approach to history on the other hand. The paper concludes by considering some political implications of rationalistic accounts and strategically presentistic accounts in historiography. Rationalistic accounts inscribe expectations of the past into visions of the future; they cast the historian in the role of prophet; and they perpetuate notions of ahistoric agency. In contrast, strategically presentistic histories incorporate an orientation that deliberately uses the lenses and perspectives of the present in order to bring current assumptions and perspectives into focus. When assumptions are examined in relation to presentistic perspectives, those assumptions loosen their reins on thought. Since presentism is unavoidable, presentism should not be dismissed outright, but ought to be subject to probing and critical examination. With such a focus, strategically presentistic historiography allows for a reflection on the limits of what it is possible to think. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Generally educational research is grounded in the empirical traditions of the social sciences (commonly called quantitative and qualitative methods) and is as such distinguished from other forms of scholarship such as theoretical, conceptual or methodological essays, critiques of research traditions and practices and those studies grounded in the humanities (e.g. history, philosophy, literary analysis, arts-based inquiry). Since the early twentieth century, mainstream educational research is of an empirical nature. In quantitative research, one typically looks for a distribution of variables (how many are there with this or that characteristic) and for explanations, which can be of a deductive-nomological kind, incorporating universal laws, or be of an inductive nature, which employ statistics. Due to being subsumed under its own set of laws, quantitative research can offer an explanation either in terms of an argument (a logical structure with premises and conclusions governed by some rule of acceptance), or as a presentation of the conditions relevant to the occurrence of the event and a statement of the degree of probability of the event given these conditions. Using Polkinghorne's distinction between an “analysis of narratives” and “narrative analysis” one can further differentiate between two kinds of qualitative research. One may be interested in common features in different cases. Here the purpose is not only to describe categories, but also to deal with the relationships between different categories. In many cases this kind of research is generally analogous to a quantitative design (including hypotheses), with the exception that qualitative data are gathered, i.e. they refer to what people feel about, or what their experience is with, particular things, what they say that their reasons, desires and intentions are. To be distinguished from this is a second kind where the researcher arranges events and actions by showing how they contribute to the evolution of a plot. The plot is the thematic line of the narrative, the narrative structure that shows how different events contribute to a narrative. This interpretive research thus goes beyond research as the accumulation of knowledge and comes close to those areas of scholarship (see above) that were distinguished from educational research grounded in the empirical traditions of the social sciences. In other words, an interpretation is offered. In this paper various problems relative to the different types of research will be dealt with. It will be argued that educational research (the study of education) should be characterised by various modes of explanation depending on the kind of theoretical interest one is pursuing. That is does not give us fixed and universal knowledge of the social world as such, but rather that it contributes to the task of improving upon our practical knowledge of ongoing social life. It presupposes dialogue between all those involved and furthermore invokes a normative stance. Finally, it should be seen as a case of positive slowness that prevents us from being absorbed in the chaos of unmediated complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to demonstrate that two traditionally opposed approaches - the official view and a revisionist approach - conflate in defence of authoritarianism in the teaching of History. The main focus is on school textbooks published between 1956, the year when an educational reform was introduced following President Perón's overthrow, and 1983, which saw the fall of the last military dictatorship. There is a comparison of the two main approaches, followed by an analysis of the arguments found in textbooks. These in turn are analysed and compared with those of classic revisionism, which in the 1930s brought about much debate in Argentine history, especially through a reappraisal of Juan Manuel de Rosas's government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

George Makdisi’s The Rise of Colleges: Institutions of Learning in Islam and the West (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981: 10) says: ‘with the advent of the madrasa, the institution inclusive of the foreign sciences began to fade away, becoming extinct by the XII th century’. In fact, the status of teaching rational sciences in the Arab/Islamic Middle Ages was not as clear‐cut as in this quote and requires more elaborate and specific studies. When considering the history of teaching mathematics in Arab/Islamic countries, many issues must be closely examined, some of which will be discussed by highlighting similarities, developments and contrasts, and by attempting to provide answers to a number of questions: Did mathematics have the same status in the organization of knowledge before the twelfth century and after? In which type of institutions was mathematics taught? Who were the teachers of mathematics, what status did they have in academe? Which mathematics subjects figured in the curricula? What textbooks, tools and methods were used to teach mathematics? Our undertaking will be illustrated by a case study involving a student and a teacher of mathematics from the eighteenth century: Mahmūd Maqdîsh (Tunisia). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the implication of the history of teaching and learning mathematics for teachers. The history of mathematics instruction should constitute one of the dimensions of the professional knowledge of mathematics teachers. The approaches and results from comparative education provide an essential tool for an international history of teaching and learning mathematics, in order to grasp national specificities as well as overall and global trends. The crucial point in the different moments of the long history of mathematics education proves to be the rank attributed to mathematics within the respective set of social and cultural values.