In Austria, there have been repeated reforms of history curricula in recent years. In particular, these reforms have had the goal of implementing competence orientation. However, numerous research studies have shown that history teachers find it difficult to implement the new standards and that they only partially incorporate the central…

The ability to apply various reading skills is an important prerequisite to comprehend expository texts commonly found in history textbooks, but it is unclear which specific skills contribute to students' historical content knowledge and historical reasoning abilities. This study used a digital learning environment (DLE) to measure and support…

In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada released a Final Report containing 94 Calls to Action. Included were calls for reform in how history is taught in Canadian schools, so that students may learn to address such difficult topics in Canadian history as Indian Residential Schools, racism and cultural genocide. Operating…

We have studied how eliciting historical empathy in a class of 13th grade students through using the film "12 Years a Slave" (McQueen, 2013) supported their in-depth understanding of slavery in nineteenth-century USA. Historical empathy is one of the core elements of the new curricular reform implemented from 2020 in Norway, and it is…

Analysis of primary sources has been recognised to have a significant impact on the development of students' historical thinking. This study explored US history teachers' attitudes and practices to using primary sources by interviewing six history teachers and observing 29 history lessons between August and November 2016 in Indiana and California.…

The concept of 'powerful knowledge' has become extremely influential in discussions about curriculum in England over the last ten years. However, the concept seems to have done little to revolutionise curriculum design, and in some cases it has led to curricular narrowing and a focus on an increasingly nationalistic narrative in history. Michael…

This article focuses on an approach to the concept of historical time in early childhood education through the lens of cognitive psychology. It consists of three parts: (1) theoretical approaches, inspired by three broad scientific fields -- cognitive psychology, pedagogy and history; (2) the presentation of educational examples, formed by…

Addressing legacies of past injustice is a central concern for transitional justice. It has most commonly been attempted through a 'truth-telling' approach; it is assumed that if the truth of past injustices is made known, then justice can be acted upon within contemporary society. 'Truth telling'--and disciplinary approaches to learning about…

This article presents a study that examined the historical social narratives of 14-17-year-old Finnish-speaking adolescents in Finland and transnational settings. Our goal was to research what kinds of narratives young people would tell when they were asked to write the history of a group or nationality most suitable for them. The research…

Employing Bernstein's (1990, 2000) concepts of recontextualisation and pedagogic discourse, this case study aims to identify types of discourse and forms of knowledge in primary history lessons, and to explain the observations through teachers' thinking. Two Finnish primary teachers were observed for nine or ten consecutive history lessons and…

Previous studies from German-speaking areas of Europe could not prove any substantial development in the competences and the pedagogical content knowledge of prospective history teachers during teacher training, and thus could not empirically confirm the effectiveness of teacher education. We report on the theoretical framework and the results of…

This study explores how undergraduates, as historical thinkers, learn to interact with history and construct their understanding of the past, and examines the role that primary and secondary sources play in narrative construction and revision. Using the African American civil rights movement as a content focus, participants used images to create…

This article explores student meaning making in a Grade 11 US history unit on the Second World War. The 10-lesson unit was designed as an experiment that aimed to apply an instructional model of historical consciousness to a classroom context. Although the notion of historical consciousness has gained significant interest in the field of history…

Teaching sensitive histories in post-conflict societies makes particular demands on educators to understand students' identities and their relationships to the past. This paper expands our understanding of post-conflict youth identities and experiences of history education through a small-scale study of students' life stories in Northern Ireland…

Building on theories of historical justice, reconciliation and transformative change, this article investigates how 293 secondary school students make sense of the difficult past, present and future of the Romani in a national history test. Using qualitative and quantitative text analysis, this study seeks to explore whom students foreground as…