Teaching and Learning Difficult Histories in International Contexts: A Critical Sociocultural Approach

278 Pages·2017·1.501 MB·English

by  Terrie Epstein (editor), Carla L. Peck (editor)

Teaching and Learning Difficult
Histories in International Contexts
Grounded in a critical sociocultural approach, this volume examines issues
associated with teaching and learning difficult histories in international con-
texts. Defined as representations of past violence and oppression, difficult
histories are contested and can evoke emotional, often painful, responses in
the present. Teaching and learning these histories is contentious yet neces-
sary for increased dialogue within conflict-ridden societies, reconciliation
in post-conflict societies and greater social cohesion in long-standing dem-
ocratic nations. Focusing on locations and populations across the globe,
chapter authors investigate how key themes—including culture, identity,
collective memory, emotion, multiperspectivity, historical consciousness, dis-
tance and amnesia—inform the teaching and learning of difficult histories.
Terrie Epstein is Professor of Education at Hunter College and the Graduate
Center of the City University of New York, USA.
Carla L. Peck is Associate Professor of Social Studies Education in the
Department of Elementary Education at the University of Alberta, Canada.
Routledge Research in International
and Comparative Education
www.routledge.com/Routledge-Research-in-International-and-Comparative-
Education/book-series/RRICE
This is a series that offers a global platform to engage scholars in continuous
academic debate on key challenges and the latest thinking on issues in the
fast-growing field of International and Comparative Education.
Books in the series include:
International Service Learning
Engaging Host Communities
Edited by Marianne A. Larsen
Educational Borrowing in China
Looking West or Looking East?
Charlene Tan
Nationalism and History Education
Curricula and Textbooks in the United States and France
Rachel D. Hutchins
Global Literacy in Local Learning Contexts
Connecting Home and School
Mary Faith Mount-Cors
Dialogue in Places of Learning
Youth Amplified in South Africa
Adam Cooper
Faculty Development in Developing Countries
Improving Teaching Quality in Higher Education
Edited by Cristine Smith and Katherine E. Hudson
Teaching and Learning Difficult Histories in International Contexts
A Critical Sociocultural Approach
Edited by Terrie Epstein and Carla L. Peck
Teaching and Learning
Difficult Histories in
International Contexts
A Critical Sociocultural Approach
Edited by Terrie Epstein
and Carla L. Peck
First published 2018
by Routledge
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and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
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© 2018 Taylor & Francis
The right of Terrie Epstein and Carla L. Peck to be identified as
editors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with
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A catalog record for this book has been requested
ISBN: 978-1-138-70247-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-315-20359-1 (ebk)
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Contents
List of Contributors ix
Introduction 1
TERRIE EPSTEIN AND CARLA L. PECK
SECTION 1
Re-Presentations of Difficult Histories 15
1 Sustainable History Lessons for Post-Conflict Society 17
SIRKKA AHONEN
2 Teaching the War: Reflections on Popular Uses
of Difficult Heritage 30
MARIA GREVER
3 “Argue the Contrary for the Purpose of Getting a PhD”:
Revisionist Historians, the Singapore Government
and the Operation Coldstore Controversy 45
LOH KAH SENG
4 The State and the Volving of Teaching About Apartheid
in School History in South Africa, Circa 1994–2016 59
JOHAN WASSERMANN
Section 1 Commentary: Education-Between History
and Memory 72
PETER SEIXAS
vi Contents
SECTION 2
Teaching and Learning Indigenous Histories 79
5 Teaching and Learning Difficult Histories: Australia 81
ANNA CLARK
6 Pedagogies of Forgetting: Colonial Encounters and
Nationhood at New Zealand’s National Museum 95
JOANNA KIDMAN
7 “People Are Still Grieving”: Māori and Non-Māori
Adolescents’ Perceptions of the Treaty of Waitangi 109
MARK SHEEHAN, TERRIE EPSTEIN AND MICHAEL HARCOURT
8 “That’s Not My History”: The Reconceptualization of
Canadian History Education in Nova Scotia Schools 123
JENNIFER TINKHAM
Section 2 Commentary 136
SIRKKA AHONEN
SECTION 3
Teachers and Teaching Difficult Histories 143
9 “On Whose Side Are You?”: Difficult Histories
in the Israeli Context 145
TSAFRIR GOLDBERG
10 Teaching History and Educating for Citizenship: Allies
or “Uneasy Bedfellows” in a Post-Conflict Context? 160
ALAN McCULLY
11 Teacher Understandings of Political Violence Represented
in National Histories: The Trail of Tears Narrative 175
ALAN STOSKOPF AND ANGELA BERMUDEZ
12 Teacher Resistance Towards Difficult Histories: The
Centrality of Affect in Disrupting Teacher Learning 189
MICHALINOS ZEMBYLAS
Section 3 Commentary 203
MARIA GREVER
Contents vii
SECTION 4
History and Identity 207
13 Physical and Symbolic Violence Imposed: The Difficult
Histories of Lesbian, Gay and Trans-People 209
J. B. MAYO, JR.
14 Learning the “Burdening History”: Challenges
for History Education in Brazil 222
MARIA AUXILIADORA SCHMIDT
15 Intersections of Students’ Ethnic Identifications
and Understandings of History 231
CARLA L. PECK
Section 4 Commentary 247
TERRIE EPSTEIN
Index 253

Contributors
Sirkka Ahonen is Professor Emerita of History and Social Sciences Education
at the University of Helsinki, Finland. Her research interests are spread in
the areas of history learning, historical identity, the use of history in post-
conflict societies and the history of education. Among her international
publications there are the monographs Clio Sans Uniform—A Study of
the Post-Marxist Transformation of the History Curricula in East Ger-
many and Estonia, 1986–1991 (1992), Coming to Terms with a Dark
Past—How Post-Conflict Societies Deal with History (2012), and the
chapter “A School for All in Finland” in Ulf Blossing et al. (eds.), The
Nordic Education Model (2014).
Angela Bermudez is a researcher at the Center for Applied Ethics in the Uni-
versity of Deusto (Bilbao, Spain). Her current research investigates the
role of history education in fostering or hindering a critical understand-
ing of political violence, and thus, how it may contribute to peace build-
ing. She obtained her doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of
Education in 2008. Prior to that, she worked in Colombia where she con-
ducted research and developed curriculum guidelines, teaching resources
and assessment tools for social studies and civic education.
Anna Clark holds an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship and is
Co-Director of the Australian Centre for Public History at the University
of Technology Sydney. She has written extensively on history education,
historiography and historical consciousness, including: Private Lives,
Public History (2016), History’s Children: History Wars in the Class-
room (2008), Teaching the Nation: Politics and Pedagogy in Australian
History (2006), and the History Wars (2003) with Stuart Macintyre, as
well as two history books for children, Convicted! and Explored! Reflect-
ing her love of fish and fishing, she has also recently finished a history of
fishing in Australia.
Terrie Epstein is Professor of Education at Hunter College and the Graduate
Center of the City University of New York, USA. She is interested in how
young people’s and teachers’ identities influence their representations of