“What influences expert Holocaust education teachers, and how do they teach?”

• In Event: As the witnesses fall silent: Holocaust education for the new Millennium (Panel and Book Launch)

Abstract

This paper presents principal findings from a 2014 study of teachers who participated in one or more selective Holocaust education teacher-training programs and then returned to their classrooms to design and imple,ent Holocaust instruction for students. The study was conducted during a 2013-14 Teacher Fellowship project of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and included teachers trained by at least one of three national organizations offering selective Holocaust education programs for teachers: The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum; the USC Shoah Foundation; and The Memorial Library. The survey asked teachers to identify a range of factors that influence how they design and deliver Holocaust pedagogy in their classrooms, and given those factors, what pedagogical choices they make. This chapter identifies trends in both key influences on trained teachers and the pedagogical decisions these trained teachers make. A central finding is that Personal Objectives/Commitment is the key factor that influences the pedagogical choices of teachers delivering Holocaust education, and that a Literary or Text-Based Approach is the key pedagogical approach used by teachers who participated in this survey. The author argues that these trends in influences and pedagogical choices can be instructional for both individual teachers interested in Holocaust education training and the organizations that train them.

Author

• Corey Harbaugh, Gobles High School, Michigan, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Fellow