Arie Wilschut - Böcker

As educators in the United States and Europe develop national history standards for K-12 students, the question of what to do with national history canons is a subject of growing concern. Should national canons still be the foundation for the teaching of history? Do national canons develop citizenship or should they be modified to accommodate the new realities of globalization? Or should they even be discarded outright? These questions become blurred by the debates over preserving national heritages, by so-called 'history wars' or 'culture wars,' and by debates over which pedagogical frameworks to use. These canon and pedagogical debates often overlap, creating even more confusion. A misconceived “skills vs. content” debate often results. Teaching students to think chronologically and historically is not the same as teaching a national heritage or a cosmopolitan outlook. But what exactly is the difference? Policy-makers and opinion leaders often confuse the pedagogical desirability of using a ‘framework’ for studying history with their own efforts to reaffirm the centrality of national identity rooted in a vision of their nation's history as a way of inculcating citizenship and patriotism. These are the issues discussed in this volume.Today's students are citizens of the world and must be taught to think in global, supranational terms. At the same time, the traditionalists have a point when they argue that the ideal of the nation-state is the cultural glue that has traditionally held society together, and that social cohesion depends on creating and inculcating a common national culture in the schools. From an educational perspective, the problem is how to teach chronological thinking at all. How are we to reconcile the social, political and intellectual realities of a globalizing world with the continuing need for individuals to function locally as citizens of a nation-state, who share a common past, a common culture, and a common political destiny? Is it a duty of history education to create a frame of reference, and if so, what kind of frame of reference should this be? How does frame-of-reference knowledge relate to canonical knowledge and the body of knowledge of history as a whole?

As educators in the United States and Europe develop national history standards for K-12 students, the question of what to do with national history canons is a subject of growing concern. Should national canons still be the foundation for the teaching of history? Do national canons develop citizenship or should they be modified to accommodate the new realities of globalization? Or should they even be discarded outright? These questions become blurred by the debates over preserving national heritages, by so-called 'history wars' or 'culture wars,' and by debates over which pedagogical frameworks to use. These canon and pedagogical debates often overlap, creating even more confusion. A misconceived “skills vs. content” debate often results. Teaching students to think chronologically and historically is not the same as teaching a national heritage or a cosmopolitan outlook. But what exactly is the difference? Policy-makers and opinion leaders often confuse the pedagogical desirability of using a ‘framework’ for studying history with their own efforts to reaffirm the centrality of national identity rooted in a vision of their nation's history as a way of inculcating citizenship and patriotism. These are the issues discussed in this volume.Today's students are citizens of the world and must be taught to think in global, supranational terms. At the same time, the traditionalists have a point when they argue that the ideal of the nation-state is the cultural glue that has traditionally held society together, and that social cohesion depends on creating and inculcating a common national culture in the schools. From an educational perspective, the problem is how to teach chronological thinking at all. How are we to reconcile the social, political and intellectual realities of a globalizing world with the continuing need for individuals to function locally as citizens of a nation-state, who share a common past, a common culture, and a common political destiny? Is it a duty of history education to create a frame of reference, and if so, what kind of frame of reference should this be? How does frame-of-reference knowledge relate to canonical knowledge and the body of knowledge of history as a whole?

What makes history difficult to learn is the fact that one has to travel in time. Studying events and circumstances from a time perspective different from our own is something that doesn’t come naturally to people. It is an ability that has to be acquired.This book discusses teaching and learning history from the perspective of passage of time. Time experiences exist in different shapes and dimensions, one of which is historical time. The specific characteristics of the kind of time are defined in this study, based on philosophical and psychological insights, as well as on theory of history. The differences with other kinds of time, such as daily time and social time, are outlined. Six key concepts of historical time are then defined: chronology, periodization, relics, anachronism, contingency, and generations – meaning a specific way of dealing with the generations of our predecessors. The main issues for teaching historical thinking are described using these six categories. An inventory is made of what is known about them from existing research and what questions still need further investigation.An empirical study is reported about the means students preferably use to orient in historical time: timelines and numbered years attached to events, or imaginative-associative contexts? It is demonstrated that ‘images of time’ are the optimum means for historical orientation.An historical consciousness of time is essential to an open democratic society. The one-dimensional perspective of the present is broken up, it is shown that alternatives are possible, that the present is only the coincidental result of a contingent development and might have been totally different, and that the views held by people have changed, may change now and certainly will change in the future. All of this can enhance tolerance, open-mindedness and promote a healthy societal debate. This study provides insights into the kind of history teaching that might be helpful in developing this.

What makes history difficult to learn is the fact that one has to travel in time. Studying events and circumstances from a time perspective different from our own is something that doesn’t come naturally to people. It is an ability that has to be acquired.This book discusses teaching and learning history from the perspective of passage of time. Time experiences exist in different shapes and dimensions, one of which is historical time. The specific characteristics of the kind of time are defined in this study, based on philosophical and psychological insights, as well as on theory of history. The differences with other kinds of time, such as daily time and social time, are outlined. Six key concepts of historical time are then defined: chronology, periodization, relics, anachronism, contingency, and generations – meaning a specific way of dealing with the generations of our predecessors. The main issues for teaching historical thinking are described using these six categories. An inventory is made of what is known about them from existing research and what questions still need further investigation.An empirical study is reported about the means students preferably use to orient in historical time: timelines and numbered years attached to events, or imaginative-associative contexts? It is demonstrated that ‘images of time’ are the optimum means for historical orientation.An historical consciousness of time is essential to an open democratic society. The one-dimensional perspective of the present is broken up, it is shown that alternatives are possible, that the present is only the coincidental result of a contingent development and might have been totally different, and that the views held by people have changed, may change now and certainly will change in the future. All of this can enhance tolerance, open-mindedness and promote a healthy societal debate. This study provides insights into the kind of history teaching that might be helpful in developing this.

Debates about the identity of school history and about the nature and purpose of the learning that does, can and should take place in history classrooms continue in many countries around the world. At issue, in many of these debates, beyond the concerns about history and national identity, are often unaddressed questions about the role and inter-relationship of historical knowledge and historical understanding in historical learning.Research on historical thinking is on-going and a complex tradition of enquiry has developed across national borders in the last 30 years, focusing, in particular on developing students understanding of historical meta-concepts such as ‘evidence’ and ‘causation’. There has been comparatively little focus, however, on the historical content that students study, on how they study it and on how mastery of historical content contributes to students overall picture of a historical past.This volume gathers together recent research and theorising from around the world on key issues central to historical learning and instruction. What sense do students make of the history that they are taught? Are students able to organise historical knowledge in order to form large scale representations of the past and what difficulties can children face in doing so? What are the relationships that obtain between history as an academic discipline, as practised in universities, and history as a subject taught in schools? What can research tell us about the effects of instructional strategies that aim to help students ‘join up’ what they learn in class into meaningful historical knowledge and understanding?