Grounded in a critical sociocultural approach, this volume examines issues associated with teaching and learning difficult histories in international contexts. Defined as representations of past violence and oppression, difficult histories are contested and can evoke emotional, often painful, responses in the present. Teaching and learning these histories is contentious yet necessary for increased dialogue within conflict-ridden societies, reconciliation in post-conflict societies, and greater social cohesion in long-standing democratic nations. Focusing on locations and populations across the globe, chapter authors investigate how key themesincluding culture, identity, collective memory, emotion, and multi-perspectivity, historical consciousness, distance, and amnesiainform the teaching and learning of difficult histories.
Introduction: Terrie Epstein and Carla L. Peck
Section 1 Re-presentations of Difficult Histories
Chapter 1: Sustainable History Lessons for Post-Conflict Society Sirkka
Ahonen
Chapter 2: Teaching the War: Reflections on Popular Uses of Difficult
Heritage Maria Grever
Chapter 3: "Argue the contrary for the purpose of getting a PhD": Revisionist
historians, the
Singapore government and the Operation Coldstore controversy LOH Kah Seng
Chapter 4: The State and the Volving of Teaching about Apartheid in School
History in South Africa, Circa 1994-2016 Johan Wasserman
Commentary: Peter Seixas
Section 2 Teaching and Learning Indigenous Histories
Chapter 5: Teaching and Learning difficult histories: Australia Anna Clark
Chapter 6: Pedagogies of Forgetting: Colonial Encounters and Nationhood at
New Zealands National Museum Joanna Kidman
Chapter 7: People are still grieving: Mori and non-Mori adolescents
perceptions of the Treaty of Waitangi Mark Sheehan, Terrie Epstein, Michael
Harcourt
Chapter 8: "Thats Not My History": The Reconceptualization of Canadian
History Education in Nova Scotia Schools Jennifer Tinkham
Commentary: Sirkka Ahonen
Section 3 Teachers and Teaching Difficult Histories
Chapter 9: "On whose side are you?": Difficult histories in the Israeli
context Tsafrir Goldberg
Chapter 10: Teaching History and Educating for Citizenship: Allies or uneasy
bedfellows in a post-conflict context? Alan McCully
Chapter 11: Teacher Understandings of Political Violence Represented in
National Histories: The Trail of Tears Narrative Alan Stoskopf and Angela
Bermudez
Chapter 12: Teacher Resistance Towards Difficult Histories: The Centrality of
Affect in Disrupting Teacher Learning Michalinos Zembylas
C
Terrie Epstein is Professor of Education at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, USA.
Carla L. Peck is Associate Professor of Social Studies Education in the Department of Elementary Education at the University of Alberta, Canada.
