Historical Agency of Others: A Troublesome Knowledge

• In Event: Roundtable Session 34
  In Roundtable Session: Influences of Inquiry on Secondary Students' Learning in the Social Studies

Abstract

This case study recounts how students make sense of the historical agency of others. Understanding the complexity of historical agency, and that people of the past were active participants in events though (simultaneously) constrained by the societal conditions they operated within, is crucial in diverse societies. This requires a lot from students, and even more so, when the people of the past are ”distant”, viewed as peripheral or simply ”others”.The paper analyses the meaning-making practice of groups of Swedish secondary students when confronted with the agency of non-western, colonial soldiers that fought in Europe during WW1. It is argued that understanding the historical agency of others has the opening and empowering qualities of a threshold concept.

Author

• Maria Johansson, Karlstad University