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The Palgrave Handbook of History and Social Studies Education pp 145–163Cite as

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Form or Substance? Weighing Critical Skills Against Identity Narratives in History Education

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Abstract

History education has broad significance beyond the delivery of knowledge of the past. History is a form of knowledge, consisting of its particular criteria of truth. As identity narratives, history is also a societal asset. The international community of history educators conducts an ongoing debate on which should be the core of history education, the critical skills of dealing with evidence, or the historical consciousness of the interconnectedness of the past, present, and future. The chapter refers to empirical investigations to the potential of history in fulfilling the alternative pursuits and ends up with a judgment of their relevance in the ‘post-truth era.’

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Peter Lee, “None of us Was There,” Historiedidaktik I Norden 6, Historiemedvetandet—teori och praxis, ed. Sirkka Ahonen et al. (Institut for Humanistiske Fag, Danmarks Lærerhøjskole, 1996); Jörn Rüsen, “Functions of Historical Narration—Proposals for a Strategy of Legitimating History in School,” in Historiedidaktik I Norden 3, ed. Nils Gruvberger et al. (Bergen Lærerhøgskole, 1987), 19–40.

  2. 2.

    The conference resulted in the anthology, Knowing Teaching and Learning History. National and International Perspectives, ed. Peter N. Stearns, Peter Seixas and Sam Wineburg (New York: New York University Press, 2000).

  3. 3.

    Robert J. Parkes, “Teaching History as Historiography: Engaging Narrative.” Diversity in the Curriculum. International Journal of Historical Learning, Teaching and Research 8, no. 2 (2009): 118–132.

  4. 4.

    Keith, C. Barton and Linda S. Levstik, Teaching History for the common Good (New York: Routledge, 2009).

  5. 5.

    Larry C. Cuban, Teaching History Then and Now. A Story of Stability and Change in Schools (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Publishing Group, 2016).

  6. 6.

    In the 1970s the British educators, starting with Denis Shemilt, used the term ‘new history’ to indicate the critical skills as the core of history curriculum, while the North Americans like Jerome Bruner meant by ‘new social studies’ the view of history as a social science. Later, Americans adopted the term ‘historical literacy’ to indicate the ‘form of knowledge’ approach. See Larry Cuban, Teaching History Then and Now. A Story of Stability and Change in Schools (Cambridge: Harvard Education Publishing Group, 2016).

  7. 7.

    Denis Shemilt, History 13–16 Evaluation Study (Edinburgh: Holmes McDougall, 1980); Denis Shemilt, “The Caliph’s Coin: The Currency of Narrative Frameworks,” in Teaching History. Knowing, Teaching and Learning History. National and International Perspectives, ed. Peter N. Stearns, Peter Seixas and Sam Wineburg (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 84–85.

  8. 8.

    Shemilt, “The Caliph’s Coin.”

  9. 9.

    Shemilt, History 13–16 Evaluation Study.

  10. 10.

    Jerome Bruner, Actual Minds, Possible Worlds (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), 11–43.

  11. 11.

    Sam Wineburg, Historical thinking and other unnatural acts. Charting for the future of teaching the past (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2001).

  12. 12.

    Peter Lee and Rosalyn Ashby “Progression in Historical Understanding among Students Ages 7–14.” in Knowing, Teaching and Learning History. National and International Perspectives, ed. Peter N. Stearns, Peter Seixas and Sam Wineburg (New York: New York University Press, 2000), 199–222; Peter Lee “Historical Thinking and Transformative History,” in The Future of the Past. Why History Education Matters, ed. Lukas Periklous and Denis Shemilt (Nicosia: Association for Historical Dialogue and Research, 2001), 129–154.

  13. 13.

    Lee and Ashby, “Progression in Historical Understanding.”

  14. 14.

    Wineburg, “Historical Thinking and other Unnatural Acts.”

  15. 15.

    Frances FitzGerald, America Revised. What History Textbooks Have Taught our Children about their Country, and How and Why those Textbooks Have Changed in Different Decades (New York: Vintage Books, 1980).

  16. 16.

    Wineburg, “Historical Thinking and other Unnatural Acts.”

  17. 17.

    Bruce VanSledright and Peter Afflerbach, “Assessing the Status of Historical Sources. An Exploratory Study of Eight US Elementary Students Reading Documents,” in International Review of History Education, Vol: Understanding History, Recent Research in History Education, ed. Rosalyn Ashby, Peter Gordon and Peter Lee (New York: RoutledgeFalmer, 2005), 1–19.

  18. 18.

    Jukka Rantala and Marko van den Berg, “Lukiolaisten tekstitaidot arvioitavina” [Historical Literacy of the Upper Secondary School Students]. Kasvatus 44, no. 4 (2013): 394–407; Jukka Rantala, Marika Manninen and Marko van den Berg, “Stepping into Other People’s Shoes Proves to be a Difficult Task to High School Students. Assessing Historical Empathy through Simulation Exercise,” Journal of Curriculum Studies 48, no. 3 (2016): 323–345.

  19. 19.

    Rantala and van den Berg, “Lukiolaisten tekstitaidot arvioitavina.”

  20. 20.

    Anna Veijola, “Historiatietoisuus, historiallinen ajattelu ja historian tekstitaidot: Uuden opetussuunnitelman moninaiset lähtökohdat” [Historical Consciousness, Historical Thinking and Historical Literacy]. Kasvatus & Aika 10, no. 2 (2016): 16–18.

  21. 21.

    Najat Quakrim-Soivio and Marko Van den Berg, “Lukiolaiset historian lähteiden tulkitsijoina” [Upper Secondary School Students Making Sense of History]. Kasvatus & Aika 12 no. 3 (2018): 33–48.

  22. 22.

    Keith Jenkins, Why History? Ethics and Postmodernity (London: Routledge, 1999).

  23. 23.

    Jörn Rüsen, “Historical Consciousness: Narrative Structure, Moral Function, and Ontogenetic Development.” In Theorizing Historical Consciousness, ed. Peter Seixas. (Toronto University Press, 2004); see also Frank R. Ankersmit, Historical Representation (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001); see also Frank R. Ankersmit, Sublime historical experience (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005).

  24. 24.

    Jörn Rüsen, “Historical Consciousness: Narrative Structure, Moral Function, and Ontogenetic Development,” In Theorizing Historical Consciousness, ed. Peter Seixas (Toronto University Press, 2004).

  25. 25.

    Rüsen, “Historical Consciousness.”

  26. 26.

    Klas-Göran Karlsson and Ulf Zander, Historien är nu. En introduktion till historiedidaktiken [History Is Now. Introduction to History Didactics] (Lund: Studentlitteratur, 2004), 29–30.

  27. 27.

    Bodo von Borries and Magne Angvik, ed., Youth and History. A Comparative European Survey on Historical Consciousness and Political Attitudes Among Adolescents (Hamburg: Körber-Stiftung, 1997).

  28. 28.

    Roy Rosenzweig and David Thelen, The Presence of the Past: Popular Uses of History in American Life (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998).

  29. 29.

    The Pasts Collective, Canadians and their Pasts (Toronto: Toronto University Press 2013).

  30. 30.

    Pilvi Torsti, Suomalaiset ja historia [The Finns and their History] (Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 2012).

  31. 31.

    Andreas Rasch Christensen, “Historiebrugsdidaktik” [The didactics of the use of history] in Historiedidaktik i Norden 9, ed. Per Eliasson et al. (Malmö Högskola, 2012), 199–215.

  32. 32.

    Swedish National Agency 1994, Curriculum and assessment criteria, lower secondary school, (Stockholm: Swedish National Agency, 1994), 76.

  33. 33.

    National Board of Education 2014, National Core Curriculum for Basic Education. Helsinki: Finnish National Board of Education, 2014; National Board of Education 2015, National Core Curriculum for Upper Secondary Schools (Helsinki; Finnish National Board, 2015).

  34. 34.

    See, for example, Claus Haas, “Den danske folkskoles historieundervinsing som statsstyret erindringspolitik” [History Education as Memory Politics in Danish High Schools] in Historiedidaktik I Norden 9, ed. Per Eliasson et al. (Malmö Högskola, 2012), 182–198.

  35. 35.

    Niklas Ammert, Det osamtidigas samtidighet. Historiemedvetande i svens historieläroböcker under hundra år [Simultaneity of the Non-Simultaneous], Historiska Institutionen, Lunds Universitet. (Lund: Sisyfos förlag, 2008).

  36. 36.

    Lars Andersson Hult, Historia i bagaget. En historiedidaktisk studie om varför historiemedvatandetuttruycks i olika former (Umeå universitet, 2016).

  37. 37.

    Sirkka Ahonen, Suomalaisuuden monet myytit. Kansallinen katse historian kirjoissa [Myths about the Finns. National Gaze in History Textbooks] (Helsinki, Gaudeamus, 2017).

  38. 38.

    Jan Löfström, “How Finnish Upper Secondary School Students Conceive Transgenerational Responsibilities and Historical Reparations,” The Journal of Curriculum Studies 46, no. 4 (2014), 515–539.

  39. 39.

    Löfström, “How Finnish Upper Secondary School Students Conceive Transgenerational Responsibilities.”

  40. 40.

    Jennifer Kavanagh and Michael D. Rich, Truth Decay. An Initial Exploration of the Diminishing Role of Facts and Analysis in American Public Life (Rand Corporation, 2018).

  41. 41.

    Raphael Samuel, “History Workshop. A Collectiana 1967–1991” History Workshop 25 (1991).

  42. 42.

    Jorma Kalela, Making History. The Historian and Uses of the Past (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

  43. 43.

    Masha Gessen, The Future is History. How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia (New York: Penguin Random House, 2017).

  44. 44.

    Heino Nyyssönen, Tasavallan loppu? Unkarin demokratian romahdus (Jyväskylä: Atena Kustannus, 2017).

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  1. University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland

    Sirkka Ahonen

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  1. Department of Liberal Arts, Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design, Denver, CO, USA

    Christopher W. Berg

  2. The Richard W. Riley College of Education and Leadership, Walden University, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Christopher W. Berg

  3. Faculty of Education, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, Canada

    Theodore M. Christou

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Ahonen, S. (2020). Form or Substance? Weighing Critical Skills Against Identity Narratives in History Education. In: Berg, C.W., Christou, T.M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of History and Social Studies Education. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37210-1_7

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