This article considers the representation of the controversial issue of the Great Irish Famine (1845–50) in 27 recent Irish and UK history textbooks for the secondary level. Key contested issues – imports and exports, the British government’s laissez-faire economic policy, providentialist interpretations, and victim–perpetrator discourses – have long formed part of the narrative repertoire of Famine history; their representation and narrativisation in textbooks is analysed through narrative and content analysis. Historical contextualisation and perspective taking are considered key skills for students studying history; these skills become even more important when dealing with controversial issues. The questions central to this research are: How do secondary-level history textbooks from Ireland and the UK represent the key contested elements regarding the Famine? Do they provide sufficiently complex accounts, thereby facilitating historical contextualisation and perspective taking? While some Irish and UK textbooks offer learners complex representations of the Famine, several others provide students with insufficient opportunity for perspective taking, and for developing a thorough understanding of the historical context. Specifically, the majority of the textbooks provide simplistic victim–perpetrator discourses. As such issues complicate historical contextualisation, perspective taking and, relatedly, empathy formation, the article suggests including more complex subject positions in textbook discussions of the Famine.

Multiple-documents-based (inquiry) tasks are often used to examine historical thinking, as they require students to apply discipline-specific ways of reasoning and writing. Intervention studies using such tasks have often relied on principles from cognitive apprenticeship to make these discipline-specific heuristics explicit to students. While several studies have found positive results, they offer little insight into how and where exactly students’ progress on historical thinking manifests itself, nor into the differential effects of the intervention. Building on essay data gathered during an intervention study on students’ historical inquiry skills, this study explores differential effects of the intervention according to students’ initial historical inquiry ability. To this end, a purposeful sample of students was selected for whom the intervention was particularly effective. The qualitative analysis of students’ essay tasks (pretest and posttest) revealed remarkable differences between students with high and low pretest scores. Although both groups made progress on all aspects of the essay task, they differed in terms of where and how this progress manifested itself: at posttest, students with a high initial score outperformed others in evaluating sources and rebuttals. This study offers insight into patterns of progress in students’ historical inquiry skills which can inform differentiation in instructional practices.

Amid a growing national debate regarding the current health and future direction of the history curriculum in Britain, there have been numerous calls for an examination of its roles and purposes, and questions have been raised as to how far it engages an increasingly diverse student body. This article examines the perceptions and attitudes of students towards the history curriculum within the context of one secondary school in south-east England through an exploratory case study. The findings draw upon research undertaken with Year 9 students, through 105 completed questionnaires, and through focus group interviews conducted with 12 participants. Thematic analysis suggests that, although students very much value learning about British history, they would prefer a curriculum with a wider focus which incorporates broader global studies. Although the environment offered by the case study is not particularly socially diverse, there is evidence that some groups of students desire greater curriculum reform and inclusivity. As a case study, the results are not intended to be generalised outside of context, but merely to provide points of discussion regarding an area in which prior research has been somewhat limited.

This article analyses the changes in education legislation and the history curriculum in Spain over recent decades. To this end, the characteristics established for the teaching of history in the last two education laws, passed in 2013 and 2020 – the first by a conservative government and the second by a progressive one – are studied and compared. This study is carried out by situating the education debates presented in this research in the social and political context of Spain. The study of these legislative changes allows us to observe the different visions of national identity existing in Spain, which find a prominent area of confrontation in education and the teaching of history. The article also argues that the emergence of the ultra-right has led to a markedly nationalist vision of Spanish history that seeks to recover elements of national unity, and that has become one of the axes defended by conservative options for the teaching of history in Spanish schools. This view contrasts with the approaches advocated in the latest education legislation, which propose a more heterogeneous approach to the subject of identity in Spain.

The purpose of this study was to examine the writing skills of 7th- and 8th-grade students with a high proportion of migration background in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. The study was part of the SchriFT project (2017–20), funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research. A writing task was given on the topic:Why can we only make assumptions about many past events?As an answer to the task, the students had to write a historical explanation that took into account the epistemological principles of historical reasoning. The students’ writing was analysed using a category system, and their historical knowledge was assessed through a knowledge test. The results showed that the students possess diverse levels of writing skills, with few producing elaborate explanations, and most struggling with the subject-specific language and reasoning skills. The study also highlights the potential for genre-based writing approaches in history education. The results suggest that many students perceive history as an image of the past and have limited understanding of historical reasoning. Further research is needed to investigate the influence of motivation and interest on language learning.

In a 2017 book chapter on the continuing erasure of Indigenous epistemes in academia, the Sami scholar Rauna Kuokkanen posed an important question: is it acceptable for a site of learning to be so ignorant? Foregrounding Indigenous scholarship from the Arctic, this article examines the potential of history education to address this question. Based on previous research on Arctic gender history and the coloniality of knowledge, I suggest a paradigm shift, in view of the new UNESCO Education for Sustainable Development framework (May 2021). The research investigates the challenges and opportunities that history education offers in terms of epistemic and cognitive justice within the context of Arctic memory cultures. The article concludes that much can be learned from (not about) Indigenous scholarship, which has long demonstrated a range of critical and sustainable methodologies that offer opportunities to seek epistemic justice and the restitution of cultural memory.

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 statements from six teacher interviews which centred on the risks and opportunities associated with teaching about controversial issues, the authors were able to see a clear relation between views on controversial issues and views on the nature of history as such. The teachers’ reactions to the introduction of controversial issues, whether introduced by the teacher or by the students, was in many cases directly related to a specific view of the subject itself and its epistemological nature.

This article reports a local study of the presence of history as a subject in the kindergartens of Kristiansand, a municipality in southern Norway. There is no syllabus for history in the national curriculum; nevertheless, the research sought to find historical content in the kindergartens. The research method was informed by a precept of history didactics, namely that history is everywhere. Using this observation, tentative categories for content likely to feature history were formulated, and then searched for in the individual yearly plans of the kindergartens. This was supplemented by interviews. It is concluded that, in accordance with the national curriculum, history in the kindergartens is a local affair. It emerges especially through local history, visits to museums, and projects with historical features. This research was not designed to determine whether learning outcomes in history are achieved, nor to consider kindergartens outside Kristiansand. However, it references a corpus of literature on history in Norwegian kindergartens, and interacts with it. The conclusion about the presence of the subject is the same as was found for another city, Trondheim, in research by others. For international readers, the article also argues that in principle it is possible for young children to learn history orally and informally.

Over the past thirty years, there has been a growing body of research investigating the efficacy of pedagogical interventions to enhance the historical literacy skills of primary and secondary school students. However, there exists no systematic review or meta-analysis summarising the impact of such research or the efficacy of interventions trialled. The purpose of this systematic review is to identify pedagogies that have a demonstrable effect on students’ historical literacy skills, with a particular interest in those pedagogies that have a measurable positive effect on historical epistemological knowledge and skills. Findings of this review indicate that when a discrete historical epistemological knowledge or skill is targeted by a pedagogical intervention that utilises a discipline-specific scaffolded heuristic, there is greater likelihood of positive outcomes for student learning. However, the significant heterogeneity between studies, and the diversity in the comparisons being made by the included studies, make it difficult to identify the most effective intervention. This systematic review establishes the characteristic features of pedagogical historical literacy interventions from the available research reporting credible findings.

This article focuses on an approach to the concept of historical time in early childhood education through the lens of cognitive psychology. It consists of three parts: (1) theoretical approaches, inspired by three broad scientific fields – cognitive psychology, pedagogy and history; (2) the presentation of educational examples, formed by empirical data and case studies; and (3) conclusions. Its main purpose is to combine theoretical approaches and findings from contemporary scientific research with empirical data from the educational process, so as to argue that kindergarten children can represent and be taught the concept of historical time and, with its help, can be introduced to history education.