'Whether and how?' History education about recent and ongoing conflict: A review of research

• In Event: Journal on education in emergencies: Launching the inaugural edition

Abstract

This presentation reviews research into history education about recent or ongoing conflict since 1990. History education is recognized as a key site for constructing identity, transmitting collective memory and shaping "imagined communities," making its revision or reform a complex and important part of education in emergencies work. The article reviews 42 empirical studies from 11 countries, exploring whether recent conflict forms part of national curriculum and, where it does, how this teaching is approached. Young people learn about recent conflict in all of the cases reviewed; in the majority curriculum is one source for this learning, but in some cases history of recent conflict is taught without curricular guidance or not at all. Where recent conflict is taught, the review finds a reliance on a traditional, collective memory approach to disseminating national narratives, though often within social studies rather than history classrooms. In many cases, these narratives are top-down and ethno-nationalist and rely on devices like mythical past unity and the exceptionalism of conflict. The review concludes by suggesting that actors undertaking history curriculum revision or reform attend to recent conflict as an 'active past' and it highlights some promising suggestions for approaching such pasts in history curriculum.

Author

• Julia Paulson, Bath Spa University