Issues of Intercultural Learning in Swedish History Education

• In Event: 26.080 - Roundtable Session 8
  In Roundtable Session: 26.080-12 - International Perspectives on Pedagogy and Curriculum in History Education

Abstract

The paper addresses how history education practices could contribute to making students more interculturally competent. The problem was explored through an empirical study of four history classrooms where students dealt with the challenges of understanding differences and of “decentring” as part of intercultural learning. The research questions focussed students’ meaning-making practices. Some of the results indicated that intercultural learning was rendered difficult through interference from previously established “thinking structures” that reduced the meaning of intercultural issues into questions of right and wrong and that deprived actors of their historical contexts. Intercultural learning was supported when teachers created opportunities for the students to study how other people use history to understand the present and move into the future.

Authors

• Maria Johansson, Karlstad University

• Kenneth Nordgren, Karlstad University