Popular history magazines and history education

This paper argues that popular history magazines may be a welcome complement toother forms of historical media in history teaching. By outlining a theoretical framework thatcaptures uses of history, the paper analyses popular history magazine articles from five Europeancountries all dealing with the outbreak of World War I. The study finds that while the studiedarticles provide a rather heterogeneous view of the causes of the Great War, they can be used todiscuss and analyse the importance of perspective in history, thus offering an opportunity tofurther a more disciplinary historical understanding.

Historielärares historier : Ämnesbiografi och ämnesförståelse hos gymnasielärare i historia

The overall aim of this study is to analyse history teachers’ understanding of the school subject history. The aim have also been to uncover what factors the history teachers say have affected their understanding of the school subject. Based on survey and interview methods, the question that this study deals with is: in the light of which general understanding of the school subject history, do the teachers make didactic choices on a daily basis? The first theme is biographical. The teachers’ life-history is taken into consideration and several factors in the teachers’ background and the school environment have been identified. It also seems as if the teachers’ understanding of the school subject goes from an elementary and searching approach to one that is more complex and convinced. The second theme is a more structural approach. The results shows three major orientations among the teachers’ general understanding namely, educational (bildung) orientation, critical orientation and identity orientation. Even though a main orientation can be seen among the teachers, an important result is also that the orientation is overall complex. At the most general level some patterns can be seen. First the connection between the teachers’ biography and their general understanding of the school subject. In the understanding of the school subject, it is also notable that teachers relate in different ways to history as science, history as identity and history from an ideological viewpoint. It is also possible to note some signs of change in the school subject history that follows a lager historiographical context.

Historielärares ämnesförståelse : Centrala begrepp i historielärares förståelse av skolämnet historia

This thesis focuses on four different aspects of history teachers’ comprehensiveunderstanding of the school subject history. More specifically, the aim is tostudy the comprehension of the subject as perceived by individual historyteachers. Special emphasis is placed on identifying the concepts of the field ofhistory that are central to the teachers’ understanding of the school subject history.The first aspect studied is the teachers’ biographical changes. In a life historyperspective it seems as if the teachers’ subject conception changes from anunproblematic and tentative approach to a more complex and confident understandingof the subject. The second aspect treated is the rationale behind theirgrasp of the purpose and content of the subject. Three major positions areidentified, namely educational (bildung) orientation, critical orientation, andidentity orientation.The third aspect studied is the teachers’ interpretation of a curriculumnew to them. The teachers placed the curriculum in the field of tension betweenan education policy position, emphasizing more precise knowledge, onthe one hand, and a history science position, emphasizing concepts of historicalconsciousness. The fourth aspect studied is five different conceptual tools displayedin the teachers’ remarks on having completed the teaching of a newcourse. These are termed ‘history as narrative’, ‘history as time-space’, ‘historyas explanation’, ‘history as perspective taking’, and ‘history as skills’At the general level the study shows not only that subject conception is ofimportance to the teachers’ understanding of their obligation as teachers of historybut also how it is formed and constantly transformed by many differentfactors. In this process it is clear that the concepts used by the teachers, althoughvariously defined, can be seen as specific to the school subject historyand essential to the construction of history as a school subject.

Nationella minoriteter i historieundervisningen : bilder av romer i Utbildningsradions program under perioden 1975-2013

In 2000 when Sweden signed the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities the Roma minority became one of the acknowledged national minorities in the country. It meant that the rights of the Roma mi-nority would be safeguarded and the knowledge of its history and culture would be spread. In that context, the Swedish school, with its founded as-signment of democracy, was given an important role. The education was to communicate the multicultural values of the society and to make visible the history and culture of the Roma minority. The school books used in teaching today do not meet these demands. The view of the Roma minority given in school books is often inadequate and simplified. The present study will therefore examine a different type of edu-cational material used in schools and teaching, The Swedish Educational Broadcasting Company‟s programs of history and social studies regarding the Roma minority. Starting in postcolonial theory as well as critical dis-course analysis the study examines how the picture of the Roma cultural and ethnic identity in the Swedish Educational Broadcasting Company‟s material has been displayed and possibly changed during the period of 1975 to 2013. The results show a picture of Roma which, both in form and content, con-sists of some clearly demarcated discursive categories. The obvious continui-ty of the categories gives a picture of static and invariable Roma identity. At the same time this unambiguous picture is broken both by giving the existing discourses new meaning and also adding new discourses. The complexity and nuances become more prominent and the Roma identity is integrated in common Swedish history telling. The changes in the view of Roma, given by the Swedish Educational Broadcasting Company, can mainly be explained by the change of the Swedish immigration and minority policy and, as a conse-quence of this, the change of the school‟s mission regarding knowledge communication of Sweden as a multicultural country.

Högstadieungdomar skriver historia på bloggen : undervisning, literacy och historiemedvetande i ett nytt medielandskap

The purpose of this thesis is to study the literacy formed when a class blog is used as a tool for students studying history and explore how this particular literacy is used to generate historical knowledge. The study was conducted during the course of a project in which ninth-grade students contributed entries to a common blog in the form of a diary written by individuals who experienced the Second World War. Its three major objectives were to study the students' perception of the blog in relation to their gender and level of historical knowledge; how they and their teacher esta-blished and used the formed literacy; and how the students related to this in the production of historical knowledge. In analyzing the results, a concept of literacy was used based on seven writing practices all linked to the new medium and history education. The study was based on a questionnaire, interviews and various student texts. In order to perform a content analysis on the study results a theoretical frame­work for historical conscious-ness was included. The results show that in using the writing practices a literacy character­ized by colla-borative authorship was formed. The study concludes that this affects both what and how the students learn. Together they show each other that history is comprised of many small stories, not necessarily strictly co­herent with the general history as told by their textbooks. Examining the students’ blog entries made a new learning process visible that enabled the enhancement of their historical consciousness.  

Uses of history in history education

This compilation thesis contains an introductory chapter and four original articles. The studies comprising this thesis all concern aspects of how historical culture is constituted in historical media and history teachers’ narratives and teaching. It is argued that the teaching of history is a complex matter due to an internal tension resulting from the fact that history is both a product and a process at the same time. While historical facts, and knowledge thereof, are an important aspect of history, history is also a product of careful interpretation and reconstruction. This study analyses and discusses how history is constituted in history textbooks and popular history magazines, i.e. two common historical media, and in teachers’ narratives and teaching of history. The study finds that the historical media studied generally tend to present history as void of perspective, interpretation and representation, suggesting this to be the culturally warranted form of historical exposition. Moreover, the teachers studied also tend to approach history as if it were not contingent on interpretation and reconstruction. These results indicate that the history disseminated in historical media and history classrooms presents history in a factual way and disregards the procedural aspects of history. Applying the history didactical concepts of historical consciousness, historical culture and uses of history, this thesis argues that an essential aspect of historical understanding is an appreciation of the contextual contingency that characterises history. All history is conceived within a particular context that is pertinent to why and how a certain version of history is constructed. Furthermore, all history is also received within a particular context by people with particular preconceptions of history that are contextually contingent, in the sense that they are situated in a certain historical culture. Readers of historical media are members of societies and are thus affected by how history is perceived and discussed in these contexts. This thesis argues that an awareness of these aspects of history is an important factor for furthering a complex understanding of history that encompasses the tension highlighted above.