Historical Thinking, Culture, and Education

Is there a place for hope in history education?

Bjorn Wansink — Tue, 15 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

To hope is an integral part of being a human (Webb, 2012). Several educators have suggested that hope should play a crucial role in education to empower young people to shape their own futures and build resilience (hooks, 2003; Freire, 1994; Jacops, 2005; Vlieghe, 2019; de Winter, 2024). I propose that history can and should offer inspiring examples to provide hope for the future, but teaching "hopeful histories" presents both historiographical and ideological challenges. With this miniature I want to start a broader discussion by exploring the question: Is there a place for hope in history education?

Historicus* in Resonance, Understanding, Encounter

Friedemann Scriba — Tue, 20 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In this miniature the author of the book “Historicus* - Wie wir Geschichte erleben” (2023) presents his key ideas to an English-speaking audience. He analyses individual “historical acts”, describing them under the perspective of “Resonance”, “Understanding”, and “Encounter” and uses various language games to do this (e.g. Hartmut Rosa, Charles Taylor, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Avishai Margalit or Emanuel Levinas). At the end he transforms his theoretical results into the profile of a persona called Historicus*

Overcoming anthropocentrism

Heather E. McGregor, Sara Karn — Tue, 20 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

History educators are well positioned to connect, or reconnect, young people to their environmental relations, if they can expand the purposes and vehicles for history learning. This effort may include historical thinking, while also moving beyond it towards better understanding and upholding our relationships to the planet. We offer history educators a set of considerations as they plan experiences for learning that bring environmental topics into their teaching, bridging between theoretical literature and practical guidance. The four facets of experiences for learning on which we focus are: 1) eco-emotional literacy, 2) nature connectedness through experiential learning, 3) storying, and 4) inquiry practices. All facets are characterized by understanding how the past, present, and future are connected in ways that move towards overcoming anthropocentrism. To illustrate the possible learning outcomes of this approach to history education, we describe a teaching unit entitled “What is the story of this watershed?”