Preliminary Programme

Wed 12 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Thu 13 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Fri 14 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00
    16.30 - 18.30

Sat 15 April
    08.30 - 10.30
    11.00 - 13.00
    14.00 - 16.00

All days
Go back

Thursday 13 April 2023 08.30 - 10.30
B-5 EDU05 History Education at the Edge of the Nation
Volvosalen
Network: Education and Childhood Chair: Daniel Tröhler
Organizer: Machteld Venken Discussant: Daniel Tröhler
Rubén Blanes Mora, Santiago Ponsoda López de Atalaya : Documentary Photography as a Historical Teaching Resource for the 21st Century: Possibility, Challenges and Opportunities
When we look at a photograph, and we do so more and more frequently, we never dwell on the possible social, cultural, educational or political functions that they often represent. Documentary photography, in this case, is a unique opportunity to rethink our relationship with the image, and above all, to ... (Show more)
When we look at a photograph, and we do so more and more frequently, we never dwell on the possible social, cultural, educational or political functions that they often represent. Documentary photography, in this case, is a unique opportunity to rethink our relationship with the image, and above all, to reconsider the use we give to photography in teaching today. There are many research works where photography is used as a source of knowledge, that is, as a document that allows us to know a specific fact or a period of history. However, we believe that documentary photography offers a greater breadth of learning when we frame it, not so much as a historical source, but as the result of a particular context and an aesthetic that represents, by itself, a real opportunity to learn diverse knowledge, abstract concepts or multiple experiences. Thus, with this paper we propose the analysis and commentary of some of the most representative documentary photographers, as well as exposed in numerous collections and museums around the world, such as Walker Evans, Robert Adams, Diane Arbus, Nicholas Nixon or Justine Kurland, in order to clarify what educational possibilities would have these images in historical education, raising the debate on the suitability of the same or the knowledge that teachers should use when working with these visual documents, since it is necessary to know the medium well to draw reliable conclusions, and on the other hand, to establish the educational opportunities that documentary photography brings to a society like ours, where the visual predominates in more and more spheres of life, and yet reflection on the image is barely addressed in schools or universities. Based on the theories designed in his day by John Szarkowski, where he developed a suggestive and controversial theory called «mirrors and windows» to explain the relationship that documentary photographers maintained with the reality they portrayed, we will design an educational proposal around the challenges that documentary photography can provide for a correct visual literacy that helps our students to develop, strengthen and enrich an empathetic, creative, reflective look, and ultimately, ready for the challenges of our time. (Show less)

Piero Colla : A Nation-building Tool under Siege: Regional Revival, European Integration and History Teaching in Western Europe after 1989
A weakening and scattering of the Nation’s historical narratives are standard themes when assessing the state of history teaching throughout Europe. The tension between a well-established “canon” and the quest for recognition by minority groups within the nation, is an enduring subject of dispute in the public debates on educational ... (Show more)
A weakening and scattering of the Nation’s historical narratives are standard themes when assessing the state of history teaching throughout Europe. The tension between a well-established “canon” and the quest for recognition by minority groups within the nation, is an enduring subject of dispute in the public debates on educational reform. The article aims to provide a cross-cutting overview of a crucial area for the reassessment of a state-centred paradigm – curriculum writing – as well as its intertwining with cross-national agendas in the fields of devolution of power, social inclusion and European integration.
By looking comparatively at the way sub-national narratives have been addressed in Western European history curricula in the wake of the Maastricht Treaty and the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, the article will highlight both similarities and idiosyncrasies in the reception of a policy trend: the “revival” of regional languages and peripheral identities, at the edge of the nation. Theoretically, at least, otherness is often constructed as a value in cultural terms. To what extent has a multi-polar normative approach of citizenship influenced, globally, the official epistemology of the discipline? The cases of Italy, France and Sweden – three countries where both the idea of multicultural citizenship and the changing relationships between State, local authorities and school administration are framed along quite different lines – will be examined. The article will bring into focus both ideological changes and institutional frameworks – devolution of power in educational matters, subnational curricula and rules, etc. Another factor addressed is the driving role of transnational institutions – in particular the Council of Europe and the European Union – in promoting an awareness of different categories of otherness: linguistic minorities, regions or ethnicities omitted from the dominant narrative, immigrant communities, etc.
By comparing different cases of the reception of a cross-national trend, we intend to bring to light how the acknowledgment of minority or peripheral narratives is conditioned, at a formal level, by the framework for curriculum writing, implementation and follow-up; and, at an ideological level, by the role a canonised memory tacitly plays in a given citizenship-building system. (Show less)

Andrea Di Michele : History at School in South Tyrol: from Identity Tool for the "Small Homeland" to a Contribution to Reconciliation among Linguistic Groups
This chapter deals with history teaching in a specific Italian regional case, that of South Tyrol, also called Autonomous Province of Bolzano. This territory is located on the northern border with Austria, which was annexed to Italy after the First World War and is inhabited mainly by a German-speaking population.
In ... (Show more)
This chapter deals with history teaching in a specific Italian regional case, that of South Tyrol, also called Autonomous Province of Bolzano. This territory is located on the northern border with Austria, which was annexed to Italy after the First World War and is inhabited mainly by a German-speaking population.
In South Tyrol, after 1945, a school system was set up, divided by language of instruction (Italian, German and Ladin), which saw a slow process of differentiation of contents and approaches in the teaching of history. In the Italian standard school system, following the national curricula, national and general history was essentially studied with little connection to the local reality, while in German and Ladin schools regional history was taught with a strong identity mark. In 1972 the province of Bolzano was granted wide territorial autonomy, allowing room for self-government also in determining school teaching programs.
In reconstructing the essential steps in the history of history teaching in schools in South Tyrol, the contribution will try to show how these were strongly connected to the more general field of historical communication or “public history”. In other words, history at school appears as one of the many ways in which history becomes an object of public communication and confrontation on a local level. Secondly, it will be shown how, especially since 2000, history begins to lose its traditional role as a weapon of national confrontation and acquires a completely new one as an instrument of pacification. The study of history continues to be assigned extra-scientific and ethical-political purposes, even if with completely different aims. An emblematic example of this is the story of the creation of a common history book for schools in all three languages. (Show less)

Machteld Venken : Teaching History in Luxembourgish Secondary Schools in the 1950s-1970s: Ideas and Experiments
‘We don’t like over-emphasised patriotism; our national experience is simply more reserved than that of our larger neighbours. Since we do not feel as the significant part in big developments, such as is the case of for example France and Germany, we are forced from the outset to a certain ... (Show more)
‘We don’t like over-emphasised patriotism; our national experience is simply more reserved than that of our larger neighbours. Since we do not feel as the significant part in big developments, such as is the case of for example France and Germany, we are forced from the outset to a certain modesty’, Fanny Beck-Mathekowitsch wrote in the pedagogical student thesis she submitted in order to receive a Luxembourg teacher’s accreditation in 1952. Like other aspirant teachers to the Luxembourg school system, Beck-Mathekowitsch had received her university training abroad, after which she had enrolled for a two-years internship in a Luxembourg school. The 21 pedagogical theses written throughout the 1950s and 1970s that are preserved in the Luxembourg National Archives shed new light on how history teaching in Luxembourg was researched and discussed by students. Given the absence of a research infrastructure in Luxembourg, these theses offer a unique insight in how history was taught, as well as how newcomers to the profession thought and experimented with how it should be taught. Through an investigation of hitherto unexplored historical sources, this chapter brings the reader as close as possible to the Luxembourg history classroom in the years after the Second World War. (Show less)



Theme by Danetsoft and Danang Probo Sayekti inspired by Maksimer