In my three-article dissertation, "Concerning the Other: Empathic Discourse in Worldwide, National, and Student-Authored Textbook Historical Narratives," I explore how textbook authors empathize with marginalized groups. My data includes approximately 1,000 textbooks published from 1910 to 2010 from over 100 countries around the world,…

While Holocaust education has been mandatory in Romanian schools for over a decade, educators do not necessarily teach about it. Distortion and obfuscation of Romanian Holocaust crimes during the communist and transition periods means that teachers, like the majority of Romanians, know little about their country's perpetration of genocides. From…

As today's high school students ranged in age from four to eight that fateful Tuesday morning, for many of them 9/11 is ancient history even though they live with the consequences of 9/11--namely, two wars (Afghanistan, Iraq), at least two low-level wars using special forces or drones (Yemen, Somalia), smaller-scale terrorist incidents (Fort…

With all of the time constraints and institutional pressures that teachers face, it may seem odd to suggest using an anomalous event such as the Christmas Truce to study the first World War. However, the uniqueness of this event helps grab the attention of students and, as the authors demonstrate, can be used both to illustrate the common…

On June 19, 1771, the young, admired captain of the Regulators, Benjamin Merrill, and 11 of his compatriots were condemned to the gallows for high treason. But what heinous actions did these men commit? What reprehensible crime would constitute such a punishment? The answer lies in the failure of the Regulator Rebellion, a prolonged conflict in…

Scholars often define historical reasoning as constructing defensible interpretations of past events. Drawing on critical theory, this article suggests that it also entails consciously framing one's topic of inquiry. The article examines an instructional unit that aimed to foster this expanded view of historiography. Forty students, ages 14-15,…

This article explores the teaching of the history of National Socialism in East and West Germany. Against the backdrop of the dual politics of memory that existed before reunification, the article examines how the divergent value systems of the two German nations came together to produce a single national conception of "Education after…

For the author, teaching history has become a double challenge: to help students understand both "History" (the narrative crafted by the historian, based on documentation, supported by previous scholarship, and bound together through logical argument) and "history" (the real events that occupied real lives that are largely…

This article highlights the role of teachers in confronting traumatic, hidden wartime histories in communities traumatized by them. The study illuminates patterns based on field observations, emails, and surveys of 60 teachers who participated in a Holocaust teacher preparation program in Poland during the summer of 2010. The teachers surveyed…

Many scholars have argued that history education during the antebellum period in the United States supported conservative values and sought to produce close-minded citizens. History textbooks of that era, they frequently posit, cast Americans as God's chosen people and present the past in a style that reaffirms established social conventions. Ruth…

The article examines how Ukrainian history textbooks dealt with the Holocaust between independence and 2006. The analysis reveals two major, conflicting narratives about the Holocaust, though both externalize and relativize the Holocaust. As a template for understanding genocide, the Holocaust was applied to the Soviet-imposed 1932-33 famine in…

Today, a growing number of teachers are moving beyond the textbook in teaching about the war, and U.S. history more broadly. Teachers are digging directly into primary sources and harnessing technology, all in an attempt to help students better understand the past and bring it to life. Doing so may be especially important with the Civil War,…

William Faulkner famously wrote, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." He would not be surprised to learn that Americans, 150 years after the Civil War began, are still getting it wrong. Did America's most divisive war start over slavery or states' rights? The author says that too many people--including educators--get it wrong. The author…

Much educational research on globalization aims to prepare students to be successful citizens in a global society. We propose a set of three concepts, drawing on systems theory (Nassehi, Stichweh) and theories of the subject (Butler, Foucault), to think the global which enables educational research to step back from hegemonic discourses and…

Holocaust education in Slovakia stands at the confluence of diverse discourses of state and supra-national legitimation. Principles of national self-determination, minority rights, and political ideologies inform and lend credence to how Slovaks' national and state identities are narrated in Slovak history textbooks. For small nation-states with…