Controversial issues

The legacy of the past and its impact on the present, as well as the process of interpretation by which accounts of the past are constructed, mean that many topics studied in history may carry an emotional charge. Certain events or developments may have a particular relevance – or resonance – for some young people and their communities, but carry different overtones (or none at all) for others. This section contains advice and resources for teachers who are tackling potentially sensitive topics that may generate emotionally charged responses and explores the issues that may arise as topics studied in the classroom intersect with personal, family and community histories. The materials here will help teachers to reflect carefully on the appropriateness of their objectives and to develop effective teaching strategies for promoting sensitive and productive kinds of discussion, especially when both the past and its implications for the present are disputed. They highlight the risks involved and the ways in which they can be mitigated, and include guidance and advice related to the Prevent Strategy.

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  • 'History on Trial'

    Article

    International Journal of Historical Learning, Teaching and Research [IJHLTR], Volume 14, Number 2 – Spring/Summer 2017 ISSN: 14472-9474 Abstract This study discusses the relevance of morality in the explanation of controversial history. It presents a discourse analysis of two representative adolescents’ narratives from Mexico and Spain about the 16th century Spanish Conquest of...

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  • A need to know: Islamic history and the school curriculum

    Article

    In this article, Nicolas Kinloch questions some of the principal justifications often advanced for teaching Islamic history in schools. In particular, he wants to move us beyond our concern with current events in the Middle East. He suggests that there are dangers in looking at Islamic history if it is...

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  • Active remembrance

    Article

    A year after the end of the First World War, George V stated: "I believe that my people in every part of the Empire fervently wish to perpetuate the memory of the Great Deliverance and those who laid down their lives to achieve it." From that moment, the idea of large-scale remembrance...

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  • An authentic voice: perspectives on the value of listening to survivors of genocide

    Article

    It is common practice to invite survivors of the Holocaust to speak about their experiences to pupils in schools and colleges. Systematic reflection on the value of working with survivors of the Holocaust and other genocides and on how to make the most of doing so is rarer, however. In...

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  • Attempting to reach the heart of the matter

    Article

    Michael McIntyre and Vanessa Hull explain the work of Facing History and Ourselves, an education organisation based in the United States and working internationally. Facing History aims to engage students in reflection on why violence occurred in the past, on what this teaches us about the world today and on...

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  • Being historically rigorous with creativity

    Article

    After a Fellowship in Holocaust Education at the Imperial War Museum, Andy Lawrence decided that something was missing in normal approaches to teaching emotive and controversial issues such as genocide, a deficit demonstrated by recent research by the Holocaust Education Development Programme. As part of his fellowship, Lawrence created an...

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  • Bringing Rwanda into the classroom

    Article

    A short 20 years: meeting the challenges facing teachers who bring Rwanda into the classroom As the twentieth anniversary of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda approaches, Mark Gudgel argues that we should face the challenges posed by teaching about Rwanda. Drawing on his experience as a history teacher in the...

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  • Building an overview of the historic roots of antisemitism

    Article

    ‘But I still don't get why the Jews': using cause and change to answer pupils' demand for an overview of antisemitism Research by the Centre for Holocaust Education has suggested that students need and want more help with building an overview of the historical roots of antisemitism and that they...

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  • Can we educate Year 9 in genocide prevention?

    Article

    Patterns of genocide: can we educate Year 9 in genocide prevention? Alison Stephen, who has wrestled for many years with the challenges of teaching emotional and controversial history within a multiethnic school setting, relished the opportunity to link her school's teaching of the Holocaust with a comparative study of other genocides....

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  • Confronting conflicts: history teachers’ reactions to spontaneous controversial remarks

    Article

    Sometimes, things don’t go to plan. Current events come into the classroom, especially the history classroom. How should students’ responses to current affairs be dealt with there? How should students’ desire  to voice their opinions be handled if their opinion is unpopular. What if the student is simply wrong? How...

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  • Creating controversy in the classroom: making progress with historical significance

    Article

    No longer is historical significance the ‘forgotten key element.’ Indeed, it is now being remembered at last – by politicians, telly-dons and the media in any case. Matthew Bradshaw suggests that the popular emphasis on significant events is wrong. Instead, we should be enabling our pupils to make their own...

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  • Cunning Plan 166: developing an enquiry on the First Crusade

    Article

    "What shall I say next? We were all indeed huddled together like sheep in a fold, trembling and frightened, surrounded on all sides by enemies so that we could not turn in any direction. It was clear to us that this had happened because of our sins. A great clamour rose to the sky, not...

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  • Cunning Plan 191: diving deep into ‘history from below’ with Year 8

    Article

    Can the ‘subaltern’ speak, Year 8s? When the Indian scholar and literary theorist Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak asked this question in 1988, she wasn’t asking Year 8s on a Monday morning. What she wanted to explore was whether those marginalised people written out of the archive – ‘the subaltern’ – could...

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  • Decolonise, don’t diversify: enabling a paradigm shift in the KS3 history curriculum

    Article

    In this article, Dan Lyndon-Cohen makes the case that history departments should move from diversifying the curriculum to decolonising it. After reflecting on some examples of how he made the content of his lessons more representative, he explores how the influence of writers such as Michel-Rolph Trouillot and Emma Dabiri...

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  • Decolonising sources: helping Year 9 pupils critically evaluate colonial sources

    Article

    Danielle Donaldson’s history department was already working within a professional culture that sought opportunities for making the history curriculum diverse and representative. Responding to wider debates within and beyond the history education community, however, the department began to ask fresh questions about what it meant to decolonise a curriculum. Donaldson...

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  • Defying the ‘constrictive grip of typologies’

    Article

    History teachers have frequently made recourse to character cards as a device to help young people, each assigned specific roles, to understand how different kinds of people responded in different ways to particular situations in the past. Edward FitzGerald builds on this tradition, demonstrating the value of using rich historical...

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  • Empathy without illusions

    Article

    Empathy may have disappeared from official documents but the history teacher who does not still regularly think about it, plan for it and teach it would be hard to find. What is history if not, in part, an attempt to understand how people thought and felt in the past? This...

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  • Examining the Value of Teaching Sensitive Matters in History

    Article

    International Journal of Historical Learning, Teaching and Research [IJHLTR], Volume 14, Number 2 – Spring/Summer 2017 ISSN: 14472-9474 Abstract Driven by the overarching objective of promoting reconciliation through education, this paper explores the impact of history teaching on youth identity and ethnic relations in Sri Lanka. Building on the arguments of scholars the...

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  • Facing History

    Article

    Facing History is an American organisation and website that provides CPD materials and resources on identity, memory and forgiveness. They have a series of case studies and video materials for teachers. There are materials on Civil Rights and, for example, the Armenian Genocide, on their website. Facing History Website>>>

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  • Family stories and global (hi)stories

    Article

    Teaching in Greece, a country with extensive recent experience of immigration, Maria Vlachaki and Georgia Kouseri were interested to examine how they might use family history as a means of exploring the historical dimensions of this potentially sensitive topic. They hoped that encouraging pupils to explore their relatives’ stories would...

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