Preliminary Programme

"How can you be sure that what's being told in an interview isn't based on blurry or fake memories?" This student's objection and the distrust it expresses towards interviews as historical sources is a good starting point for discussing the challenges of teaching oral history at universities. Despite the fact that oral history has become an established method of historiography over the last 30 years, there are no regular and ongoing offers for students at German universities to learn about the history and the practice of oral history. This is particularly unfortunate because students generally are very interested in this field of research. In my paper, I would like to draw on my experiences with teaching oral history. The focus of discussion will be on the meaning and evaluation of oral sources, as I have the impression that the students' interest and difficulties in dealing with them are equally great. What students should learn is complex: above all, they should understand what kind of source an interview is and what questions can be answered based on oral sources. They also should get acquainted with the special communicative aspects of oral history, the dialogical quality of the interview and conduct an interview themselves. In order to classify oral history in the history of historiography, they must also familiarize themselves with the history of oral history. These are many demands. How and if that works in the classroom, I would like to discuss in my lecture. The aim of my paper would be to stimulate a discussion about teaching oral history on a European level. To support this I edited with Karin Orth an issue of the journal BIOS with contributions from authors who teach Oral History in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands. (Show less)

Since as early as 1975, German participants in the Federal President's History Competition, which was established in 1973, have been explicitly invited to include contemporary witnesses’ testimonies into their research-based historical essays. The participants (students no older than 21 years) thus tested the value of contemporary witness surveys for historical learning and research long before German historians took up this method. The competition therefore represents a major field experiment for research-based historical learning with contemporary witness surveys. The paper presents a qualitative longitudinal study that uses selected student contributions to the Federal President's History Competition from the years 1975 to 2013 to show developments in the processual interaction of learners with contemporary witnesses’ testimonies. This study also considers changes in the competition’s methodological guidelines. Changes in German historiography serve as an essential frame of reference. (Show less)

Over the last decade, multiple oral history collections have been made online accessible and searchable, especially in relation to the Holocaust. Consequently, the reception of oral history interviews has become more user oriented – users of online interview portals can navigate through interview collections following their own interests and watch and compare interview fragments as they like. In this way, online interview portals are not only a means of disclosing oral history to wider audiences. They can also serve as a means to investigate the use of and interest in interviews. This paper reports on focus group interviews with students history teacher about their interest in video interviews about the Second World War. How did these young (19-24-year-old) teachers assess video interviews as teaching material, and based on which criteria do select relevant content out of the abundance of interviews? (Show less)

The history curriculum at secondary schools, colleges and universities does not reflect the diverse and multicultural Dutch society. History education is often mainly about white men, macro events and far too little about diversity and personal stories. For example, the voices of minority groups, such as migrants and women are barely heard. In 2018 we have started an oral history project at the Teacher Training Institute that aims to make history education more diverse and democratic by using and constructing digital oral history sources.
Students history teacher made oral history documentaries about diverse and inclusive history. They interviewed and filmed eyewitnesses and compared these stories with the content of history text books and academic historiography. This paper elaborates on the aims, process and learning outcomes of making inclusive documentaries. Is it possible to make history education more diverse and democratic by using oral history? And what are challenges for educators? (Show less)

Over the last few decades, the major thrust in historical education research and practice has focused not on the passive development of 'factual' knowledge but on fostering amongst students the habits of mind employed by expert historians. Many frameworks and models such as 'historical reasoning skills' have been proposed, particularly across Europe, North America, and Canada, in an effort to capture and communicate the expert ways of thinking we should teach school students. Oral historians, however, often emphasize the particular nature of their work and the fact that their sources cannot be treated in the same way as any other historical document. Based on this premise, the present research proposes a framework of 'oral historical thinking' to better equip teachers and students to deeply engage with audio-visual interview sources by grappling with the same issues and problems as experts in the field. (Show less)