The politicization of history education relating to colonialism in former major colonial powers, like Britain and France, and former colonies has for obvious reasons received ample scholarly attention. But how is colonial history represented in educational materials aimed at primary school students in countries with a less evident connection to…

Controversial issues are often regarded as abundant in history education. Most topics can be regarded as controversial in one way or another. The purpose of this article is to analyse the way history teachers in Swedish lower secondary schools relate controversial issues to a particular view of the nature of the subject of history. By analysing…

The purpose of this article is to discuss the opportunities and challenges of using students' personal narratives of the past as a vehicle and catalyst for learning history. The point of departure is a research project entitled "My Historical Backpack," conducted at Örebro University in Sweden since the fall of 2016. The project is a…

Based on Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) informed genre theory, this paper investigates the interplay between narrative and analytical representations of the past in texts used for history-educational purposes. In this paper, it is argued that the role of narrative merits further attention in history genre descriptions. Thirteen history…

The aim of this article is to increase our understanding of how history and social studies teachers in vocational preparation programmes (VET) in Sweden relate to the obligation of preparing students for their future lives as citizens. Previous research on VET programmes has primarily emphasised predetermined roles of education. Different critical…

This article explores representations of problems regarding citizenship in changes to the syllabi of social studies and history in Swedish secondary schools between 1970 and 2017. Previous research has shown that the general educational discourse changed from an emphasis on the societal needs of committed citizens to an emphasis on the…

In the study presented in this article, the aim is to further the understanding regarding the differences between pupils (aged 15-16) from schools with low or high socio-economic status (SES), regarding the amount and diversity of content knowledge in history that they have acquired by the end of compulsory schooling. Following a definition of…

The study investigates upper secondary school students' use of counterfactual reasoning when engaging in a task concerning historical explanation. The study analyses student answers to a prompt asking them to evaluate the causal importance of a historical actor for a historical event, aiming to characterize the counterfactuals used, as well as…

Over the last 50 years, the school subject of history has increasingly been described as a subject about interpretation and multi-perspectivism. Discussing the subject this way might require a specific view of the subject's nature. This study investigates the genre position and epistemic cognition of Swedish upper secondary school history…

Does a teachable agent influence the uptake or neglect of 'critical constructive feedback' and learning within a digital environment? 285 middle-school students engaged with a history learning game in a 2x2 study design. One dimension was inclusion of a teachable agent. Orthogonal was whether critical constructive feedback was presented…

The study presented in this article examines the internal consistency of the formal Swedish history curriculum for the upper-secondary school. The research question addresses the extent to which disciplinary aspects--also referred to as vertical knowledge discourses--are transferred from fields of knowledge production to the Swedish formal history…

History education comprises moral issues and moral aspects, often perceived as an important and meaning-making foundation that makes learning relevant and interesting. The interrelationship between time layers fuels historical interpretations and facilitates perceptions of moral issues. This article focuses on a study investigating how secondary…

The aim of this article is to explore the processes of learning when students are engaged in intercultural historical learning (IHL), specifically how spaces of learning were, or were not, opened by students' struggle to construct meaning. Since IHL is complex, involving both intrinsic disciplinary and extrinsic curricular goals, it is vital to…

How do two Swedish secondary school teachers relate to and make sense of history via their experiences and educational media? This article seeks to gain knowledge about history education by analyzing two teachers' narratives of their personal experiences of the Cold War and classroom observations of the teachers in practice. The article finds that…

This paper takes an interest in how schools and teachers dealt with new demands when teaching rapidly went online during school closures related to the COVID-19 pandemic, in what we see as an example of emergency remote teaching. The aim is to make visible how schools and teachers dealt with the demands that they were confronted with while under…