For this issue, Olga Radchenko has analyzed old and new myths about heroes in the standardized year ten Russian history textbook published in 2023. Focusing on visual representations of the Great Patriotic War, she has uncovered fascinating insights. If I nevertheless take another look at the same book here, this time with a focus on textual narratives, it is because I disagree with her interpretations on one key point.

Abstract This article analyzes the representation of women's history in Canadian digital educational media within an international context. While Canadian research has examined both printed and digital educational media, it has tended to focus on digital literacy or disciplinary teaching with little attention to gender representation. This article aims to fill this gap by exploring how gender is portrayed in Canadian digital educational media. It first defines digital educational media in the context of international debates and then analyzes gender representation via a qualitative content analysis of selected online resources. The results of the analysis show that the shift from textbooks to digital media is primarily methodological and epistemological; students with increased agency and teachers as co-builders work with an understanding of knowledge that is less canonized and less definitive but that is subject to active research.

Abstract Given the prominence of heroism and Second World War heroes in contemporary Russian public discourse, this article examines how the monolithic Soviet master narrative about war heroes has been reconstructed in Russian history textbooks since 2012, including those coedited by Vladimir Medinsky in 2016 and 2023. Using a multimodal approach, it tests the hypothesis that Russian textbooks on the Second World War employ verbal and visual components that are designed not only to foster national identity and loyalty to the Kremlin and the president but also to militarize the consciousness of younger generations. The study focuses on narratives about war heroes, analyzing them via examinations of portrayals of great men and heroic stories, actions, and institutions. As Russian education policy connects portrayals of the Second World War and the government's demands for support against Ukraine, the focus will be on those narratives that hold a particular epistemological relevance for contemporary discourses.

Abstract This article examines national memory construction in Russian foreign language education in the early 2010s via a discourse analysis of two EFL textbook sets. It shows how nationally significant events, personalities, and traditions are presented to pupils as the core of collective national memory. Drawing on the concept of nation-building as a continuous project that links past and present in order to legitimize state agendas, this study finds that both textbook sets embed nationalist narratives in order to shape pupils’ sense of belonging. By incorporating ideological messages, these narratives influence language acquisition and promote localized identities in a way that potentially clashes with global English-speaking culture. This article contributes to education and memory studies by highlighting how memory narratives in Russian EFL textbooks shape national identity and impact pupils’ engagement with English as a global language.

Abstract This article examines how educators in Bangladesh teach narratives of the 1971 Liberation War as presented in national social studies textbooks. Since the country's independence, Bangladeshi textbooks have been critical sites of contestation, undergoing politically motivated revisions with each new regime. This article explores how teachers navigate these complex dynamics and reconcile competing narratives in the classroom. Based on six months of fieldwork, we assess the strategies that teachers use to teach these politically contested narratives. Four key themes emerge from our analysis: teaching by the book, teaching “real history,” teaching politicization, and teaching how to comply. This work contributes to the literature by illuminating the gaps between curriculum design and classroom implementation, highlighting the unique strategies educators use to navigate these challenges in a politically charged environment.

Abstract This article examines and compares history textbooks at the lower and upper secondary school levels in Germany and Japan by focusing on their treatment of violence in the twentieth century. Based on Johan Galtung's model of direct, structural, and cultural violence, it explicitly addresses the double-layered potential of textbooks, whereby they themselves can report on and yet at the same time exert (or counter) cultural violence. The comparative approach of this study is refined by comparing not only the textbooks of the two countries but also these national textbooks with transnationally produced textbooks. A typological framework was designed by adopting Galtung's extended conception of violence for systematic analysis, and, based on the data gained by applying the framework, a discourse analysis was conducted employing the ten narrative keys developed by Angela Bermúdez and her colleagues in order to examine the extent to which the textbooks foster or impede a critical understanding of violence.

Abstract This article examines school history textbooks in Afghanistan and investigates the particular ways in which conceptualizations of temporality, history, and the use of calendars contribute toward the construction of the national narrative. It investigates three generations of history textbooks, published between 1998 and 2021 under the Islamic Emirate of the Taliban (one generation) and the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (two generations), respectively. The findings show that the textbooks of the Islamic Emirate and the first-generation textbooks of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan tend toward a religious conception of time and history, while the second-generation textbooks of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan tend toward a secular progressive conception of time and history. The use of calendars in the textbooks evinces narrative and genre hybridity and ideological preferences.

Abstract This article examines the use of world's fairs and other expositions in the early twentieth century in order to showcase educational ideas from American overseas imperial settings. In particular, the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair and the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition demonstrate the nature of American imperial schooling and its changes over a decade. Fairs and exhibitions like these were important sites where educational ideas were exchanged between the colony and metropole, and they allowed experiments being trialed overseas to influence the nature of school reform back in the United States during the Progressive Era.

Abstract Generative artificial intelligence (AI) offers new opportunities for history education, such as the ability to chat with historical figures. However, little is known about pupils’ interaction with AI applications such as ChatGPT. A qualitative case study was conducted to explore how pupils (n = 21, year nine, fourteen years old) interacted with ChatGPT while completing a history-learning task that involved interviewing the chatbot of a historical figure. The resulting chat protocols were analyzed using grounded theory, focusing on a sociocultural approach to history education and concepts from human–machine communication (HMC). The findings suggest that pupils’ interaction with AI can be seen as a kind of human–machine communication involving specific types of history-related prompts from humans and particular responses from AI. Based on these findings, the article discusses implications for further research and practice.

Abstract This article assesses the depiction of gender in texts and pictures contained in civics and mathematics textbooks currently in use from year one to year five in primary schools in Albania. I carry out quantitative analysis in order to examine whether males and females are equally represented in terms of sex, age, designations, activities, and attributes ascribed to the characters, applying a method advanced by Carole Brugeilles and Sylvie Cromer, as well as qualitative analysis in order to investigate potential gender stereotypes in textbooks. The findings reveal that textbooks are not gender-responsive and that pupils are encountering more males than females in them. Both genders are described with stereotyped attributes, which reinforce traditional perceptions of their roles. Moreover, they convey a gendered division between males’ and females’ participation in the public and private spheres.