The heightened resonance of identity-driven politics in many states across twenty first century Europe emphasizes the critical role of history in shaping public contestation of the idea of the nation, and accordant manifestations of nationalism and national identity. How the past is interpreted or what and how is remembered has proven increasingly…

Friction in the classroom may create useful tension for teachers when they attempt to discuss sensitive topics as part of democratic learning. Due to the openness and indeterminacy of these topics, students can experience what it is like to be (political) subjects in a diverse society and become aware of other people's subjectness in a charged…

Teachers of history will sooner or later encounter issues that are met with disbelief, protest, or feelings of discomfort by the pupils. This special issue aims to contribute to the field of research into teaching sensitive and controversial issues in history by integrating historical, educational and socio-psychological perspectives and theories.…

This study explores the silencing and voicing of sensitive topics in history education from a cross-national and multilevel perspective. In this mixed-method study, we undertook a quantitative analysis of a 'teaching sensitive issues' questionnaire and qualitative analyses of history curricula and teachers' verbal responses. The findings show that…

The present study is about sensitive issues in history teaching that have probably been experienced by most teachers in the field. We conducted a questionnaire study in Austria, Belarus, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Serbia and The Netherlands to assess which issues were experienced as sensitive in class, what the reasons were…

Classroom discussion is frequently proposes as an essential part of democratic citizenship education. Literature, however, pays little attention to what kind of discussion is most effective and how teachers can facilitate a discussion. This study aims to contribute to the development of a framework for analysing the characteristics of classroom…

Bjorn Wansink and his co-authors have aligned their teaching of a recent and controversial historical issue--the Cold War--in the light of a contemporary incident. This article demonstrates a means of ensuring that students understand that different cultures' views of their shared past are nuanced, rather than monolithic--a different concept in…

Both direct and indirect influences have been assumed to impact the transmission of political orientations within families. A lower socioeconomic status is related to lower intended political participation of adolescents. Within this context, schools play a crucial role in political socialisation, as citizenship education is assumed to either…

Citizenship education is one of the main aims of the mandated subject of social studies in secondary schools in the Netherlands. Moreover, the learning outcomes of social studies refer to constitutional rights. Internationally, citizenship education and human rights education are considered to be mutually reinforcing. One may, thus, expect that…

This study analysed questionnaire responses from 309 history teachers who come from nine European countries and Israel. The open-ended questions explored their experiences of teaching Sensitive historical Issues (SI) from joint social psychological and history didactics perspectives. First data was analysed hermeneutically, it was then interpreted…

This study explores whether and how higher education students with various epistemic beliefs engage in argumentative discourse and shift their attitude within a digital dialogue game. Students were assigned to groups of four or five and asked to argue and explore various perspectives of four controversial issues of environmental education in four…

Using an analytical framework based on the concept of historical distance, this article explores how Dutch history teachers and educators navigate between the past and the present when making curriculum decisions on the sensitive topic of the Transatlantic Slave Trade and Slavery. Four history teachers and 2 museum educators were selected on the…

In the literature on intercultural education there is an abundance of text about what ought to be going on in the classroom and a lack of empirical descriptions of the dilemmas of intercultural education in practice. This article describes the practice of five teachers guiding discussions about sensitive issues in ethnically diverse secondary…

This study examined what worldviews are present among Dutch students and teachers and how the students cope with scientific knowledge acquired in the biology classroom. Furthermore, we investigated what learning and teaching strategies teachers adopt when they teach about evolution and worldviews. For this survey, 10 schools for higher general…

Educators in the Netherlands conceive of peace education as alternating between the transformation or improvement of the individual and the transformation of structures within which people act. Peace education aims at raising people's consciousness that they are responsible for peace. (RM)