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This article reports on the impact visits to community-based museums in a divided society, Northern Ireland, had on young people’s historical, political, and cultural understanding of the commemora...

How can history pedagogy account for racialized experiences impacting historical thinking in the present? In contrast to a more universalized set of historical thinking skills, this article asserts...

Secondary education students do not usually perceive history as a subject connected with their lives, backgrounds and interests. At the same time, prospective and in-service teachers do not always ...

This mixed-methods study explored the factors secondary history teachers use to determine historical content for their classrooms and the degree of perceived control in decision-making. Through a s...

History education has been instrumental in transmitting collective memories across generations while sustaining national traditions. Many nations use history education to instill national memories ...

Haptics in the sense of active touch, as well as internally felt bodily sensations, add an important dimension to learning sessions at historical sites. Drawing on observations of primary school pupils visiting historical sites in Sweden, and interviews with pupils, teachers, and site educators following the visits, this study investigates in which ways haptics affect how young pupils learn history. Three aspects of haptics are identified as important to learning in history education: touch, internally felt bodily sensations, and visual and auditory senses, the latter interacting with haptics. The study argues that visits to historical sites help pupils develop their historical understanding through knowledge by acquaintance. It also emphasises that for historical learning to take place, the experience must be put in relation to a historical frame of reference. Skolbarn relaterar till historiska platser

‘Intercultural understanding’ (ICU) and its core concept ‘interculturality’, was introduced in the new national curriculum, implemented across Australia from 2013 (Australian Curriculum, ACARA. [20...

In this study, I sought to understand the disciplinary nature of an expert third-grade teacher’s practice as she apprenticed students into ways of reading, analyzing, and employing historical evide...

History teaching is often seen as essential to the project of nation-building and construction of national identity. Despite the rise of disciplinary approach, national master narratives and nation...

Historical consciousness is regarded as an important means to stimulate moral citizens through history education. This article conceptually examines the moral dimension associated with historical consciousness by revisiting the paradigm wars between natural science based on positivism and human and social sciences during the 1960s–1990s as expressed through the voice of Gadamer. More specifically, the article explores: (1) the moral arguments that Gadamer put forward for introducing historical consciousness and (2) the epistemological and ontological building blocks for approaching morality in history education that his arguments brought to the fore. In general, moral consciousness in relation to historical consciousness draws attention to: (a) people’s life conditions, (b) that moral reasoning and practice are influenced by feelings and reason, (c) that reflections on past events can help to interpret our ways of being towards others in the present and future, (d) that a plurality of people, thoughts and history are important to acknowledge and (e) that every person is part of creating history and responsible for weaving the past/present/future web in ways that acknowledge others.

In light of current tendencies, where appreciating plurality and uphold everyone’s equal value is being questioned from different directions, there is arguably a need to revive the ethical dimensio...

Based on a qualitative study of teachers, teacher educators and educational policy makers, this paper examines how political history is framed within national history curricula at primary level and...

The notion of historical thinking has in recent years become popular in research on history education, particularly so in North America, the UK and Australia. The aim of this paper is to discuss the cognitive competencies related to historical thinking, as expressed by some influential Canadian researchers, as an history educational notion from two aspects: what is historical thinking and what does it mean in an educational context, and what are the consequences of historical thinking for history education? Our discussion will focus on possible implications of this approach to history education regarding what should be taught in history classrooms and why. By focusing on the notion of historicity, we want to argue that while a focus on a more disciplinary approach to history education is welcome, we think that more attention should be given to what could qualify as a disciplinary approach. We further argue historical thinking and the history educational challenge should be understood as wider and more complex than what history education informed by historical thinking entails.

The main aim of this paper is to compare the opinions and perceptions of trainee teachers in Spain and the United Kingdom on the most appropriate procedures, activities and exercises to assess hist...

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine the ways that history curriculum has worked to legitimise dispossession through narratives that elide questions of Indigenous sovereignty, and which construct and consolidate white settler identity and possession.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses two case studies to compare history education documentation and materials at key moments where dominant narratives of settler legitimacy were challenged in public discourse: (1) the post-war humanitarian agenda of fostering “international understanding” and; (2) the release and educational recommendations of the 1997 Bringing them Home Report.FindingsThe paper shows that in two moments where narratives of settler legitimacy were challenged in public discourse, the legitimacy of settler possession was reiterated in history curricula in various ways.Practical implicationsThis research suggests that the prevailing constructivist framework for history education has not sufficiently challenged criticisms of the representation of Aboriginal history and the history of settler-colonialism in the history syllabus.Originality/valueThe paper introduces two case studies of history curriculum and shows how, in different but resonant ways, curricular reforms worked to bolster the liberal credentials of the settler state.

This paper reports on an intervention study conducted with the A level students whom I teach at a sixth form college in the north-west of England. The study aimed to survey the students’ perceptions of the purposes of history education, and to broaden their understanding of the debate. The study drew upon data from 82 online forum posts from 41 history A level students. It consisted of two stages: the first surveyed students’ initial perceptions of the purposes of history education; the second aimed to further develop students’ perceptions through the deployment of stimulus material and activities designed to broaden students’ understanding of the issue. Following these activities, students’ perceptions were surveyed for a second time to facilitate comparison. The study data indicate that students who have chosen to pursue their historical studies to a higher level tend to appreciate the intrinsic value of knowing history (as opposed to its extrinsic value, such as developing transferable skills or for the sake of employability). The study also indicates that students’ perceptions of the purpose and value of historical study can be significantly altered by teacher intervention, although the long-term impact remains unassessed.

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.

This exploratory case study examined how two teachers used a comparative approach to teach genocide histories in a Holocaust Literature elective course. Through interviews and observations, we stud...

The essay reinterprets the 1845–1847 pamphlet war between Emma Willard and Marcius Willson, authors of popular history schoolbooks. Willson publicly attacked the accuracy and literary quality of history schoolbooks by eight leading authors, with particular attention to Willard's, just as he was publishing his first school history. Willard and Willson practiced different kinds of history authorship that reflected their different backgrounds, intellectual milieus, and professional circumstances. This essay questions conventional readings of the debate and argues that their subsequent exchange over plagiarism, style, and sourcing illuminated important issues in the purposes of history education, the challenges of growing markets, and new theories of historiography. The debate showed that schoolbooks were not simply derivative “guardians of tradition,” but that they could be portals for new disciplinary theories in an age without a robust professional research infrastructure to test and filter them.

In their 2018 article, “Enriching Ethical Judgments in History Education,” Milligan, Gibson, and Peck reference me as follows: “Den Heyer [sic] (2012) maintained that disciplinary approaches to his...

This paper combines the perspectives of applied linguistics and history education in order to explore the viability of a genuinely non-binary pedagogy for content and language integration. Cognitive Discourse Functions (CDFs) are mapped against the model of historical competences underlying the current Austrian secondary history curriculum. The theoretical analysis shows the performance of CDFs as central to the constitution of historical competences. For the empirical part of the study, two complete didactic units on the topic of the Industrial Revolution were recorded, and oral and written utterances by students were analysed both in terms of CDF use and historical competences. The results confirm a significant connection between competences and CDFs. We argue that some explicit attention to CDFs and the linguistic resources necessary for their competent verbalization could significantly enhance the subject literacy level of Austrian CLIL history learners in both oral and written production.

The history curriculum in the United States, particularly in the elementary grades, has long been in need of a revamp, argues Kevin Krahenbuhl. The predominant model of history education, expanding horizons (EH), which begins with students’ local communities and expands outward, is built on incorrect assumptions about what young people are able to understand. In addition, the child-centered nature of the EH approach can lead to “presentism,” in which the past is evaluated in terms of present-day understandings. The focus on skills over content in EH also denies the extent to which growth in historical skill requires content knowledge. Krahenbuhl proposes an expertise-oriented approach that includes specific content and practices and a broad and deep examination of content.

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 t...

This study analysed questionnaire responses from 309 history teachers who come from nine European countries and Israel. The open-ended questions explored their experiences of teaching Sensitive historical Issues (SI) from joint social psychological and history didactics perspectives. First data was analysed hermeneutically, it was then interpreted using a heuristic framework to analyse these teachers’ beliefs about SI. Three themes of shared patterns were identified in teachers’ answers: the choice of teaching SIs, pupils’ emotional reactions, and teaching strategies. Focusing on the in-depth analyses of comments about teaching strategies, 29 representative quotes were identified illustrating the teachers’ decisions to teach SIs, teachers’ pupil orientation reflecting pupils’ emotional reactions, and teachers’ orientations towards pupils` learning.

Along their path towards expertise, historians undergo conceptual changes. The purpose of this theoretical paper is to argue that conceptual change in history involves, first, a fundamental shift from an understanding of history as the past to an understanding of history as human production. And second, expert conceptual change involves understanding multiple approaches to the production of history. Each approach is associated with constraints on historical concepts and meta-concepts. We outline differences and similarities between these broad approaches through a framework that merges epistemic cognition and historical theory. Currently, there exists no singular conception of history to set as an unproblematic aim of epistemic education, and conceptual change must therefore embrace the aim of understanding of multiple conceptions.

Some education practices can impede learning democratic citizenship agency by reinforcing injustices or omitting dissenting perspectives. Other practices may help address conflict issues through problem-posing inquiry activities. This literature review explores the ways social sciences’ curriculum practices can select knowledges that enhance peace or exacerbates violence. Considering peace and conflict theories, I highlight the limitations and possibilities for peacebuilding of Colombia’s citizenship and social sciences’ curricula. Also, I discuss the ways certain social studies curriculum decisions (selections and omissions) may reproduce violence, injustice and passivity. Finally, I discuss how certain practices may develop critical citizenship capacities to handle conflicts.

This study focuses on problems in pupils’ reasoning when they situate historical phenomena in time. The context is the Dutch curriculum with 10 eras and characteristic features, which was implemented to support pupils in orientating themselves in time. Twenty-two pupils aged 6–12 conducted assignments in which they had to place historical phenomena in time. Next to problems that were described in previous studies, problems were identified that related to the names and icons of the 10 eras, which sometimes helped, but also hindered pupils in their reasoning. Awareness of these problems is helpful for teachers, teacher trainers and educational policymakers.

History education frequently aims at developing active citizenship by using the past to orientate to the present and the future. A pedagogy for pursuing this aim is making connections between the past and the present by means of comparing cases of an enduring human issue. To examine the feasibility and desirability of this case-comparison teaching approach, students (N = 444) and teachers (N = 15) who participated in an implementation study conducted in the Netherlands were questioned about their experiences and views. Results show that both students and teachers felt that case-comparison in the context of an enduring human issue is feasible and not more complex than the usual history teaching in which topics are studied separately without explicitly making comparisons between past and present, even if some students thought that taking account of episodes from different historical periods concurrently required an extra learning effort. Both students and teachers believed that connecting past and present in history teaching enhances engagement and meaning making. They suggested a curriculum combining the case-comparison approach with the type of history teaching they were accustomed to. Mixed methods were used for data collection. Implications for further research on case-comparison learning in history are being discussed.

Facilitating classroom discussion requires preparation and improvisation. How might learning improvisational theatre affect teachers’ verbal moves while facilitating discussion? This articl...

Teachers’ beliefs about skills play a significant role in how they teach those skills. Similarly, students’ mastery of a skill is influenced by their ideas about its value and what the performance of the skill exactly entails. In this study, 10 history teachers and 17 students in secondary school (age 16–17) were interviewed about their beliefs about historical empathy, objectives, and teaching strategies. The results show that the participants primarily saw historical empathy as a skill that can be learned. As main elements of historical empathy, they named contextualization, awareness of their own positionality, personal connection, and historical imagination. Inviting an eyewitness, visiting a historic site, and classroom discussions were considered particularly effective teaching strategies. Most teachers reported that they did not provide explicit instruction. Most teachers and students connected historical empathy to empathy in daily life. Extending this connection could be a significant way to work on citizenship competences.

Using data from the 2010 National Association of Education Progress eighth grade test of U.S. history (NAEP-US8), the current study explored the intersections among traditional indicators of teacher quality and competing dimensions of quality teaching on students’ history knowledge. Findings indicated that eighth grade social studies teachers with academic backgrounds in history and secondary education were associated with increased use of disciplinary practices valued by the field (i.e., reading across multiple source materials, discussion, and writing in the content area) and performance-based assessment. Furthermore, when accounting for both teacher characteristics and instructional decision-making, alternatively licensed middle grades teachers were associated with lower average student achievement on NAEP-US8. Holding other conditions constant, eighth grade teachers with backgrounds in secondary education were associated with higher average student performance. Results further suggest that middle grades teachers who focus instruction on disciplinary practices are associated with increased student learning outcomes as measured by NAEP-US8. Findings from this study have potential implications for middle grades social studies teacher education as well as curricular and certification policies.

In recent years, increasing academic attention has been focused on the educational potential of video games. Serious games for heritage applications have received much interest, and many examples are well documented in the literature. Many frameworks and methodologies have been proposed for how to design serious games, yet there is a lack of guidance for how to embed heritage information in the mechanics and content of these games. There are also many examples of commercial (non-serious) games that contain heritage content, and there is interest in how these games can be used in educational contexts. However, these games are designed primarily for entertainment purposes, without pedagogical foundations and with limited historical accuracy. There is currently a lack of a rigorous, scientific approach to support the critical analysis of the content of these games and to inform their use within learning settings. In this paper, we propose that the above issues are related by a lack of definitions of heritage content in the video game medium. We describe a model that defines how historical information can be presented in a video game at a content level and demonstrate how it can be applied to the analysis of the content in a commercial historical game. Finally, we propose a novel methodology based on activity theory to guide the design of serious games, based on pre-defined heritage instructional content. The findings are relevant both to educators who wish to use heritage video games, and to designers of serious games for heritage.

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.

This article reports a validity study of History Assessments of Thinking (HATs), which are short, constructed-response assessments of historical thinking. In particular, this study focuses ...

This study reports five Dutch expert history teachers’ approaches to multiperspectivity in lessons on three topics varying in moral sensitivity (i.e., the Dutch Revolt, Slavery, and the Holocaust) ...

The authors describe the politicization of the process to revise Michigan’s social studies standards from 2005 to the present. In 2005, critics objected to the omission of topics they considered important, even though the content expectations document was not intended to be an exhaustive list of material to be covered. The latest, more limited revision, is being criticized for its leftward political leanings. The authors suggest that critics lack the expertise in the subject matter and that it is dangerous to let politically motivated non-experts make curricular decisions.

This “think-aloud” study examines how a group of American Jewish teenagers read historical documents that addressed what it has meant over time to be American and/or Jewish. It demonstrates...

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 asses...

This study explores the psychometric qualities of the Relevance of History Measurement Scale (RHMS), a questionnaire designed to measure students’ beliefs about the relevance of history. Participants were 1459 Dutch secondary school students aged between 12 and 18. Data analysis revealed three reliable factors, compliant with our theoretical framework which defines three strands of relevance of history: relevance for building a personal identity, for citizenship, and for insight into the ‘human condition’. The convergent and known-groups validity of the RHMS was demonstrated. The collected data show that students find history more relevant as they grow older, with most progress taking place between 14 and 16. Out of the three strands of relevance, building a personal identity scores lowest in students’ appraisals. This study shows that the RHMS is psychometrically sound and can be used to evaluate effects of lesson interventions directed at enhancing the relevance of history to students.

The Egyptian Christian (Coptic) minority’s marginalization in politics and the Egyptian public sphere has been well investigated by several scholars. However, while many scholars and activists cont...

This article explores the relationship between the philosophy of ethics, history education, and young people’s historical ethical judgments. In the last two decades, “ethical judgments,” which focu...

This paper addresses narrative thinking and literacy levels in future primary school teachers in Spain. It uses the study of a historical synthesis of one of the main narratives in Spanish history: the Christian expansion through Muslim territories in the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages. Accounts by 283 students of the degree in elementary school teaching at the universities of Valencia and Murcia were studied. The aim was to ascertain the students' discursive abilities with respect to their historical thinking skills. The results reveal poor narrative skills in future teachers and a very low level of historical literacy.

The purpose of this research study is to examine the master's theses and dissertations carried out about history education research in Turkey in terms of certain variables. The study is a qualitative research and it used documentary research design as a research method. The population of the research study is the master's theses and dissertations done in the field of history education in Turkey. No sampling was used in the study but 176 master's theses and dissertations obtained from YOK National Theses Centre data base with open access were included in the study by 18 June, 2016. Document analysis is the data collection method of the research and content and document analysis are used for data analysis. As a result of the study, it was revealed that most of the master's theses and dissertations in the field history education in Turkey were carried out in Gazi University. Moreover, the subjects of the master's theses and dissertations were mostly concentrated on teaching history and teaching of subjects, skills, and concepts. The least studied subjects were local and oral history. Nearly more than 50% of the master's theses and dissertations were carried out with quantitative method. Discussions on identity in history education before 1990 occupied a very small place in master's theses and dissertations.

Assessment is one of the basic elements of teaching. However, there are not enough studies on the evaluation of divergent questions, particularly, in history education. Therefore, after reviewing the past and current literature on the topic, this study describes the design and implementation of a rating scale which can be used in the evaluation of divergent questions. The study based on action research examines history teachers' views on divergent questions and how they evaluate the answers to such questions. The study was conducted with four history teachers who are working in different schools attached to the Ministry of National Education (MoNE) and 68 high school students in Turkey. Interview and document analysis were used as data collection tools. The study consists of two parts. In the first part of the study teachers' thoughts about divergent questions were determined; and the second part involves the generation of a rating scale that can be used in assessing the answers given to divergent questions. The result reveals that the rating scale provides the sufficient reliability and validity value, and can be used by history teachers in terms of divergent questions.

The purpose of the present study is to investigate pre-service history teachers’ perceived self-efficacy and the effect of pedagogical formation training on this perception. The study is based on a one-group pretest-posttest research design, which is a type of pre-experimental design. For the purpose of the study, in the first week of the formation training, the “Teachers’ Sense of Efficacy Scale” developed by Tschannen-Moran and Hoy and adapted to Turkish by Capa, Cakiroglu and Sarikaya was administered as a pre-test to a group of 178 pre-service history teachers who underwent pedagogical formation training in 2016-2017 academic year in two different universities in Turkey. The same scale was administered again as a post-test at the end of the 28-week training. The study has found out that the pedagogical formation training did not make a significant difference in pre-service history teachers’ perceived self-efficacy except for the classroom management subscale, in which the self-efficacy scores of pre-service history teachers decreased after the pedagogical formation training.

Both the Common Core Standards for Literacy and the College, Career, and Civic Life Framework for Social Studies State Standards underscore the importance of classroom discussion for the developmen...

This article examines singular historical narratives of the 1947 British India Partition in four history textbooks from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Britain, respectively. Drawing on analysis and work in the field, this study proposes a seven-module “integrated snail model” with a human rights orientation that can be applied to teaching historical events of conflict and violence in different contexts. It offers opportunities for learners to enhance their historical understanding and consciousness, experience empathy for others, and take actions that uphold human rights.

Since the 1970s, many observation instruments have been constructed to map teachers’ general pedagogic competencies. However, few of these instruments focus on teachers’ subject-specific competencies. This study presents the development of the Framework for Analyzing the Teaching of Historical Contextualization (FAT-HC). This high-inference observation instrument focuses on history teachers’ competency in promoting historical contextualization in classrooms. The results of the study demonstrate the instrument’s content validity. Generalizability studies were conducted to further assess the instrument’s dimensionality and reliability by decomposing the instrument’s variance. A large proportion of the variance was explained by differences between observed teachers, and a small proportion of the variance was explained by lessons and observers, demonstrating the instrument’s reliability. Furthermore, a decision study was conducted to determine the optimal number of observers and lessons needed for a reliable scoring design. The developed instrument could be used to gain greater insight into history teachers’ subject-specific competencies and to focus teacher professionalization on teachers’ specific needs.

Recently, scholars have called for a practice-based framework for teacher education and some have argued more narrowly for a framework built around ‘core practices of teaching.’ These efforts, in part, are intended to make teacher education practice public and available for collective improvement. The purpose of this paper is to highlight challenges and possibilities that arose during a core practice-oriented course redesign. Despite attention to the literature, the teacher educators faced dozens of inherent tensions and contextual challenges that distinguish their understanding of core practices from other teacher educators operating with common principles. Based on lessons learned, the author argues for greater attention to the details of core practice redesigns, rationales explaining redesign decisions, and empirical investigation of teacher candidate outcomes of such redesigned courses and programs.