From quality to ideology: Italian governmental policies on primary school history textbooks (1923–1928) and the international debate on cosmopolitan history teaching

History is an important academic discipline that has been a key concern for states. The task of writing independently about history is complicated because interpretations of the past are often “imagined, studied and constructed” under the influence of states and ruling governments to aid them with the prolongations of national identity and political order.2 As such, history can through its teaching materials and narratives impinge on the lives, memories and relations of the community of peoples. In particular, history education plays an increasingly important role in upholding sustainable peace, security and humanity. While acknowledging this fact, it is yet difficult or impossible for different nations to reach or bridge international understandings about their contested histories and conflicting collective memories. The discretion of history education and textbooks, which serve as a principal basis for any successful post-conflict reconstruction, would today seem even greater in the context of past East Asian historical interpretations. This chapter, while dealing with the issues of painstaking reconciliation between Japan and the Republic of South Korea (hereafter Korea), aims to reflect the role of UNESCO in the region’s most complicated disputes relating to history textbooks. In what way has UNESCO contributed to the improvements in regional international understandings and textbook revisions since 1945? Does it today play a sufficient role in those improvements?

Since the first attempt to teach art in the schools, curriculum development in the arts has been a primary concern; any time one deals with the content and direction of a teaching learning situation, one must face the basic issues of curriculum development. Those issues are three: stating objectives, devising plans for implementing them and, in some cases, attempting to evaluate the achievement of those objectives. It is with the first and last of these curriculum development concerns - stating objectives and evaluating the achievement of these objectives - that I would like to deal. As the history of art education tells us, curriculum development in the arts has taken many turns. Early efforts at developing a curriculum for the training of eyehand coordination moved toward more industrially oriented art curricula in the 1850's. The late 19th century saw culturally oriented art programs; the early 20th century, child centered art curricula. In the 1930's the emphasis was on good taste. The 1950's saw increasing emphasis laid on creative thinking. Today the major curriculum concerns of arts educators are interrelating the arts or aesthetic education. Large scaled curriculum development projects, as popular as they are today, are not new. As early as 1933, Dean Melvin Haggarty and his staff at the University of Minnesota launched a major curriculum development project in Owatonna, Minnesota. Funded by the Carnegie Corporation and based upon the premise that art is a way of life, the Owatonna Art Education Project attempted to implement art in daily living. Working in the schools as well as in the community, the project staff endeavored to channel the natural aesthetic interests of the people of this representative, small, midwestern city into formal and informal art activities.' Although interrupted by the war, the project still had a significant impact upon art curricula around the country as evidenced in the many art activities and projects attempting to deal with art in daily living. To take but one example of its influence upon the field, one might look at the well-known book Art Today,2 which was a direct outgrowth of this project. Its authors have done a brilliant job of reflecting the philosophy of the book - art today - in its quality. For a period of years, the field of art education did not engage in any major curriculum development projects, although many thousands of art teachers and supervisors across the country were engaged in curriculum development on a local or state level. Evidence of such endeavors is the many and varied art curriculum guides which are in use across the country today. With the increased interest of the government and private foundations in the arts during the past decade and the subsequent increase in federal and private money for curriculum research and development, we have experienced large-scale and sustained

This book examines the evolving representations of the colonial past from the mid-19th century up to decolonization in the 1960s and 70s - the so-called era of Modern Imperialism – in post-war history textbooks from across the world. The aim of the book is to examine the evolving outlook of colonial representations in history education and the underpinning explanations for the specific outlook in different – former colonizer and colonized – countries (to be found in collective memory, popular historical culture, social representations, identity-building processes, and the state of historical knowledge within academia). The approach of the book is novel and innovative in different ways. First of all, given the complexity of the research, an original interdisciplinary approach has been implemented, which brings together historians, history educators and social psychologists to examine representations of colonialism in history education in different countries around the world while drawing on different theoretical frameworks. Secondly, given the interest in the interplay between collective memory, popular historical culture, social representations, and the state of historical knowledge within academia, a diachronic approach is implemented, examining the evolving representations of the colonial past, and connecting them to developments within society at large and academia. This will allow for a deeper understanding of the processes under examination. Thirdly, studies from various corners of the world are included in the book. More specifically, the project includes research from three categories of countries: former colonizer countries – including England, Spain, Italy, France, Portugal and Belgium –, countries having been both colonized and colonizer – Chile – and former colonized countries, including Zimbabwe, Malta and Mozambique. This selection allows pairing up the countries under review as former colonizing-colonized ones (for instance Portugal-Mozambique, United Kingdom-Malta), allowing for an in-depth comparison between the countries involved. Before reaching the research core, three introductory chapters outline three general issues. The book starts with addressing the different approaches and epistemological underpinnings history and social psychology as academic disciplines hold. In a second chapter, evolutions within international academic colonial historiography are analyzed, with a special focus on the recent development of New Imperial History. A third chapter analyses history textbooks as cultural tools and political means of transmitting historical knowledge and representations across generations. The next ten chapters form the core of the book, in which evolving representations of colonial history (from mid-19th century until decolonization in the 1960s and 1970s) are examined, explained and reflected upon, for the above mentioned countries. This is done through a history textbook analysis in a diachronic perspective. For some countries the analysis dates back to textbooks published after the Second World War; for other countries the focus will be more limited in time. The research presented is done by historians and history educators, as well as by social psychologists. In a concluding chapter, an overall overview is presented, in which similarities and differences throughout the case studies are identified, interpreted and reflected upon.

Textbooks are one of the most widely used teaching materials in history lessons. History textbooks are important resources that facilitate the achievement of learning outcomes and ensure the realization of the curriculum. The newly prepared 11th Grade History Textbook and Program were implemented in the 2017-2018 academic year. This study aims to determine the evaluation of history teachers regarding the physical design, educational design, use of visual materials, and assessment and evaluation of the new 11th-grade history textbook. The textbook was developed in accordance with the curriculum change implemented by the Ministry of National Education in 2018. The universe of the study is history teachers who utilize the 11th-grade history textbook published by the Ministry of National Education in Türkiye. The study sample consists of history teachers working in Kırklareli province during the 2019–2020 academic year. While choosing the sample, the "cluster sampling" technique was preferred. The IBM SPSS Statistics 20 program was used to analyze the collected data. The descriptive statistics of the collected data are given in detail. At the end of the independent sample t-test and variance analysis, it was investigated whether teachers' attitude levels toward the subject of "Evaluating High School History Textbooks" showed a statistically significant difference according to the variables "age," "years of experience, "and "the department of graduation.". It was determined that teachers' attitude levels toward the "Evaluation of High School History Textbooks" showed a statistically significant difference based on "Age" and “the Department of Graduation” variables (p

Primary sources help us to visualize the past, bringing it into the present day. Primary sources are multifarious: they can be illustrations, original texts, maps and examples drawn from real-life events, all of which are important components of history textbooks. In order to use these sources, students can develop different skills, such as critical thinking, the ability to assess different views and the ability to think empathetically, all of which are crucial attributes in a democratic society where primary sources are to be used. To benefit from primary sources, history teachers and students must know how to use these sources effectively. However, it is a generally held belief that some Turkish history teachers do not use primary sources in history textbooks effectively. The purpose of this paper is to elicit history teachers’ perceptions about primary sources in history textbooks. A qualitative approach was used in this study in order to gather data in response to the research questions, and the information itself was secured through a semi-structured interview. History teachers who joined this study were chosen from the province of Trabzon through random sampling. In the light of the data, it seems that the majority of history teachers do not know how to use primary sources presented in history textbooks effectively.

This article studies processes, policies and practices for geography and history education in Estonia. The analysis covers the societal transformation period in an ethnically divided society from the 1980s to the early 2000s characterized by Estonia’s disintegration from the Soviet Union towards the integration to the European Union and NATO. Geography and history education curricula, textbooks and related policies and practices promoted a particular national time-space by supporting the belongingness of Estonia into Europe, rejecting connections towards Russia and suggesting a division between ethnic Estonians and ethnically non-Estonian residents of Estonia. In geography and history textbooks, the Russian-speaking population, comprising then almost a third of the entire population of Estonia, was divided into non-loyal, semi-loyal and loyal groups of whom only the latter could be integrated in the Estonian time-space. The formal education policies for geography and history supported Estonia’s disintegration from the Soviet past and pawed way to integration to the western political and economic structures. However, challenging market and sensitive cultural contexts created peculiar, alternative and sometimes opposing local practices in geography and history education.

The chapter offers a global overview of current research in history education reforms and school history textbooks. History textbook research has been characterised by the ‘highly explosive political nature’ of history textbooks design and research (Fuchs, 2011). National and global debates in relation to history textbooks and the construction on national identity in the nation-building process are also defined and controlled by the ambivalent nexus between ideology and political expectations (that history textbooks contribute to national identity and patriotism), curricular assumptions (that quality history textbooks impact on pedagogical outcomes) and academic rigour and objectivity. History education and history curricular reforms globally demonstrate that history textbooks and their new Master Narratives, depicting significant events in the nation-building process, have been used by different nations to instil the values of patriotism, national identity and cultural heritage (Zajda, 2015c). The chapter concludes that a methodology, based on a blend of critical theory and discourse analysis, focusing on evidence and sources, the role of power and the state, unbiased interpretation and the multiperspectivity, is very useful in critiquing the overall reforms in history curricula and the content of school history textbooks.

INTRODUCTION Although our understanding of the differing forms of repair for grave historical injustices continues to grow, education still does not figure prominently on the list of available remedies. Arguments for considering history education reform as a form of historical justice and a force for reconciliation have been made over the last decade – including by myself. The calls for history reform, however, generally focus on the content of history education, most often history textbooks. The idea that what is taught about other groups in national history textbooks (and, to a lesser extent, geography and literature textbooks) can be a cause of intergroup hatred and war dates back to just after World War I. Efforts to start an international organisation dedicated to analysing history textbooks and making recommendations for their reform led to the founding of the Georg Eckert Institute in Germany after World War II, and the formation of various bilateral commissions in Europe to do research on contested historical issues, publish their findings and then analyse and reform history textbooks. The reform of history textbooks to remove stereotypes and gross inaccuracies was an integral part of building peace and regionalisation in post-war Western Europe, as well as of the rehabilitation of (West) Germany and its process of public reckoning with the past beginning in the 1960s. In addition to calls by entrepreneurs of justice and reconciliation to make history education content reform part of reckoning with difficult pasts, there are more poignant calls not to forget school-based education in the search for justice, which lend legitimacy to the history education-justice-reconciliation nexus. This call comes from victims/survivors and their advocates in many parts of the world: even more commonly heard than calls for violent revenge – surprisingly – are requests from victims, or their descendants, that governments ‘convey the historical fact to the younger generation’. In this way survivors express their belief that it is morally important to include both the injustices themselves and also the histories of the victims and their contributions within the nation's history. A sampling includes the following.

The teaching of history in Ireland has proved highly relevant to the development of Irish national identity and continues to be politically and culturally significant. Critics of the approach taken to the teaching of history in Irish secondary schools between 1922 and 1970 and of the process of curricular development might suggest that deficiencies in these areas facilitated the propagation of a prejudiced account of Irish history, and contributed to a phenomenon whereby a sense of history was replaced in popular memory with a sense of grievance. This article is an analysis of the social, political, economic and cultural factors that influenced the teaching of history, the content and tone of textbooks, and the development of the history curriculum in secondary schools in the half-century following the inauguration of the Irish Free State in 1922. It charts the evolution of the exploitative relationship between church, state, and history and assesses the costs involved.

The most controversial issue in history teaching in Indonesia is the history of the 30 September Movement. History teachers have to deal with seven versions of the narrative presented in history textbooks and a bunch of pseudohistories invented by students from the Internet and social media outlets. This research analyzes the discourse of history teachers in teaching the history of the 30 September Movement in Indonesia. Critical discourse analysis based on the socio-cognitive approach was used to analyze the perception and attitudes of 25 history teachers in five cities in Indonesia. The findings of the research show two typologies of history teachers in dealing with the history of the 30 September Movement. The first is the conformist history teachers who try to accept and confirm the official history but feel confused when dealing with other narratives. The second is the objectivist history teachers who try to criticize the official narrative but are afraid to express it in the learning process. They tend to believe in one narrative to be the historical truth that closely relates to the narratives in history textbooks. Based on the findings, it can be pointed out that history teachers need an appropriate pedagogical approach that accommodates multiple narratives in teaching controversial histories such as the history of the 30 September Movement.

History teaching is done on the basis of historical study. Discipline of history communicates with the world in the history textbooks. Discipline of history and history teaching communicate through history textbooks. We teach historical narrative and historical discourse in history teaching.BR Historical narrative is realized in a synthesis of fruits of historian’s study. Historical discourse is made up by abstract historical narratives. There is a distance between historians and history teachers, and a gap between history teaching and discipline of history. There is a difference in the aims of writing history textbooks and historical texts. Historians make efforts to find historical truth, but teachers invent historical narrative.BR The synthesis of these historical narratives is a meta-narrative of history. Ultimate aim of historical study that historians do is to make a communication with the world. The way of communication is a meta-narrative. To teach completed meta-narrative sophisticated in his life is to carry out hitorian’s task. History teaching is developed in help of the sophisticated meta-narrative. Discipline of history and history teaching are put on the win-win situation in a pursuit of meta-narrative of history.

ABSTRACTPrevious research has documented a worldwide shift in the teaching of history that looks beyond nation-state based history instruction in favor of a post-national curriculum that imparts knowledge of diverse identities, cultures, and global issues. In South Korea, however, the construction of national identity in history education continues to be a key function of its civilizing mission because of the uncertainty over inclusion of North Korea within South Korea’s calculus of who constitutes Koreans. This article analyzes the domestic politics of history education in South Korea, with particular attention paid to the controversies surrounding the nationalization of history textbooks. In 2015, the administration of President Park Geun-hye announced plans for its own history textbook to “correct” ideological bias in the private history textbook market. Questions of nationhood, ethnicity, and identity took bitter shape in history textbooks, where portrayals over historical events were revised to underscore competing visions of state legitimacy vis-à-vis the global political order. Hence, we highlight that the South Korean textbook controversy not only challenges transnational convergence in history education but questions a conventional understanding of history education as decisively national or global rendered visible by the complicated and fraught histories of East Asian societies.

The current middle and high school history textbooks under the Revised Curriculum of 2015 are the first history textbooks developed amid the growing social interest in the importance of authorized history textbooks after the regime''s attempt at replacing old history textbooks with new government-designated ones. Today, authorized history textbooks are oriented toward the development of textbooks to present diverse perspectives reflecting the changing situations of the times and the research achievements of the academic circles instead of textbooks containing only a single perspective under the guidance of the government. The description perspective of a textbook serves as a starting line to establish what and how to look at history for students. In the current history textbooks, the perspective for the description of political history finds the accountability of the ruined nation in the failure of political management from factional politics to power politics. The economic and cultural history is described from the perspective of development with the symbolic elements of Western modernization set as a standard of pursuit. The social history describes the social class system and the rural community society from the perspective of discrimination and conflict. The current history textbooks keep almost the same perspectives and descriptions as the old government-designated textbooks within their larger framework of depicting the aspects of Joseon in its latter part. History textbooks need to have a narrative transition and offer students a chance to understand the times from more diverse perspectives so that they can align with the goals oriented by today''s history education. The descriptions of political history should help students figure out the various patterns of political management and changes during the latter part of Joseon according to historical causal relations. The descriptions of economic and cultural history should focus on development as an objective phenomenon based on proof and comparison and present reasonable historical meanings accordingly. The descriptions of social history should move students closer to the reality of Joseon society during its latter part based on the coexistence of conflict and integration. These proposals will hopefully lead to description changes in history textbooks through collaborations among researchers, teachers, and people concerned.

This survey of text-books on history and geography, like those previously published on hygiene and agriculture and nature study text-books, has been prepared in accordance with the decision of the Executive Council of the Institute to compile lists of text-books in actual use in Africa in order to provide material which will be helpful in the preparation of new books and will also show what additional books are most needed. We had intended to confine ourselves to notes on history text-books only, but we found that the teaching of history and geography is so closely connected in most areas that unless both subjects were dealt with the survey would be of little value. The notes have been compiled from a variety of sources. Like previous surveys this is incomplete and we hope that its publication will elicit criticism, comment, and additional information. Our sources of information have been official publications, interviews with education officers and missionaries, and discussion by a group of officials and missionaries convened in London.

IN THE last issue of the REVIEW devoted to the subject of curriculum (1), studies utilizing a historical approach were included under titles dealing with some specialized phase of curriculum and curriculum planning. It is the intent of this chapter to discuss research and other materials based upon research focused upon trends in curriculum development, histories of education and historical studies in special fields, historical development of curriculum in individual or state school systems, and literature of curriculum terminology.