The international context of history teaching

New trends – in many cases related and frequently in conflict or opposed to one another – can be identified in the area of international history teaching in the past three decades. All of these are related to the challenges of the global world, the advance of the knowledge economy and the paradigm of life-long learning. They connect to society's politics of memory, to the transformation of historiography, to changes to the perception of knowledge and to the rapid rise of digitalization. In recent years, the view has become generally accepted in international circles of discourse that the conventional model of history teaching does not sufficiently equip students with the knowledge to face the diversity and complexity of today's democratic society or the great global challenges of our age (Haydn, 2019; Nordgren, 2021).

The 1990s was a period marked by the emergence of new topics, new approaches and new methods of processing. Education policy decision-makers acknowledged that the teaching of the subject of history and the historical consciousness of society can contribute, to a significant degree, to the understanding of ties between various peoples, religions and states, and may play a key role in the fight against social deviance (e.g., aggression, exclusion) (Huddleston & Rowe, 2002). At that time there appears prominently in historiography and history teaching – in connection with the buildup of the postmodern approach – the history of society, mindset and culture, and topics earlier dealt with on the periphery, such as regions outside of Europe, women and children, minorities or the history of the natural environment become generally accepted (Haydn, 2019). With regard to the regulation of content, the theory of curriculum that put development aspects of the learner in the focus in the selection of teaching materials on the one hand and on the other introduced the genre of the core curriculum as a booster of institutional professional autonomy. Furthermore, it stressed not only a more complex subject approach (e.g. areas of literacy), but the interdisciplinary point of view as well.

In addition to the conventional, chronological approach, other topical, synchronous approaches emerged, but the legitimacy of the chronological principle was basically never questioned. At this point – in connection with the emergence of constructivist pedagogy – the study of depth approach to historical topics became generally accepted. The starting point for the approach was that knowledge must not only be absorbed, but reconstructed in the consciousness of the learner while being processed. Because of this, the teaching strategy makes a strategic priority not of the volume of topics but of a program studying fewer topics over a longer period of time (Seixas, 2020).

History didactics, as a science dealing with historical thinking and historical learning, becomes increasingly focused on historical awareness and the culture of memory and culture of history affecting the shared thinking of the entire society, while also stressing education for citizenship and democracy (Lévesque, 2018; Rüsen, 2004, 2005). This area of study deals in a many-sided manner with the important historiography issues of reconstruction and deconstruction, while using retrospective, perspective, selective and partial approaches (Jeismann, 1991).

As a result of this changed approach, greater stress was placed on the personal horizon in the politics of memory, while appreciation for oral history grew and the emergence of cultural diversity as a value along with the multi-perspective and controversial approaches became generally accepted (Schreiber, 2008). Narrative competence, which makes priorities of establishing thinking in alternatives, debating skills and the ability to form independent opinions, while developing problem-solving thinking, was placed at the center of the goals system of history instruction. As a result of this, the strategy of problem-based learning (problemorientierter Geschichtsunterricht) became widespread in English- and German-speaking areas (Uffelmann, 1999; Wansink, Akkerman, & Wubbels, 2017), as did discovery learning (entdeckendes Lernen) and inquiry-based learning (forschendes Lernen) (Létourneau, 2006). These teaching strategies do not place the stress on mechanical learning of historical knowledge, but are based on the acknowledgment that learner activity and an authentic context play an important role in the effectiveness of learning (Jonassen, 1997). The trend brought the ensuing competition between the teaching principle of substantive history and the history teaching strategy of disciplinary understanding to the forefront.

It emerged as an important realization that history teaching must be adjusted not only to the study of history but to what students deal with in their everyday lives (Chapman, 2021), as history learning takes place not only in the formal environment of the school, but is a part of the everyday cultural curriculum (Wineburg, Mosborg, Porat, & Duncan, 2007). By the time students enter school, they have mastered the basic matrices of understanding that assist them with coding and decoding the world around them and are able to interpret the information that affects them (Létourneau, 2006). This is why studies dealing with historical consciousness have entered the field of history didactics recently (Lévesque & Croteau, 2020), along with the realization that history learning involves not only an analytical approach from the cognitive sphere, but necessitates the development of affective areas as it is through these that social norms and ethical associations may be presented and democratic attitudes can be formed (Chapman, 2021).

In the multipolar world order, the European horizon has gained a new meaning and framework With regard to this, there is increasing recognition that attitudes conveyed in the subject of history play an important role in sustaining democratic systems as well as in shaping community identity. The greater appreciation of the classroom teaching of civics began on the European continent at the end of the 1990s, driven by the Council of Europe which started the program for education for democracy. A milestone of this endeavor was the 2005 Year of Citizenship through Education. Curricula and requirements were increasingly supplemented with content on current affairs studies, education for democracy aims and practices requiring student activity.

An important element of the Europeanization trends affecting the sphere of education was the drafting of European key competences that served as road signs for the orientation of content development in member states. With regard to history instruction, social and citizenship competences were included in this framework, in which interpersonal, intellectual and social, as well as civic competences also appeared. The document laid down the most important knowledge, skills and attitudes for education for citizenship, touched on documents of defining significance (e.g. the European Union Charter of Fundamental Rights), the connections between national, European and global historical events, and the institutional system for European integration. In terms of skills, they stress proficiency in public affairs and the necessity of participation in community activities and decision-making. Typical emphasis is also placed on the matter of the entire educational process being part of a complex manner of thinking aimed at resolving social problems, with the basic assumption that we must think about social issues in complex, multi-dimensional systems, that is, we must see that there are multiple players, interests and alternatives.

A global approach to the study of the past, according to which history is the shared story of humanity, became widespread in the 1990s. In addition to traditional world history curricula, there appeared the concept of global history which spanned regions and examined global interactions and ties while processing the history of globalization (Popp, 2021). Among the curricula that took this approach should be noted the National Standards for World History produced by the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Curricula that took such a perspective did not become widespread, but did provide an important impetus; thus, school curricula around the world become enriched with many world history topics and ideas. These include, for example, the impact on history in general of the migration of people, ideas and goods, as well as a focus on local history or ecological issues.

Around the turn of millennium, competency-based ways of thinking and the learning-teaching strategies based thereon became one of the defining phenomena of educational theory. Instead of codified or explicit knowledge, the tacit or passive knowledge embedded in the learner's personal and social competences comes to the forefront (European Commission, 2007). The advancement of this manner of thinking is manifested in that key competences became the focus of discourses. As a consequence of the competency-based approach, stress shifted to key ideas as these make it possible for students to recognize the similarities and differences of ties between various events, to organize their processed historical knowledge, and to identify generalities and repeated historical patterns (Stradling, 2001). Competency-based strategies and the shift to bipolar curriculum regulation in many countries clearly leads to the strengthening of quality and effectiveness aspects in the sphere of education. This manner of thinking has prevailed – among others – in the expansion of systems of evaluation and assessment and in the increasing appreciation of the role of outcome or examination requirements.

In the past decade, it has become generally accepted in history didactics discourses that one of the most important tasks of history teaching is the development of historical thinking. The expressions historical consciousness or historical reasoning are used in the international literature, and historical literacy also serves to identify this. One of the most important goals of teaching history in school is to establish a kind of adaptive framework of interpretation which students can be able to effectively apply to historical events and analyze processes in well-structured and new situations. Furthermore, dealing with history helps students to understand that which is historically and culturally different and to apply the kind of knowledge, skills, attitudes and values that make them able to effectively participate in the everyday life of a civil society founded on democratic values (Hoskins & Crick, 2008). In the practice of this kind of teaching approach, the promotion of the formation of learners' competences to learn and to act (learning by working) takes priority over the mere interpretation of the events of the past characteristic in the framework of frontal teaching.

History didactics research around the world deals with the development of key competences, critical and problem-solving thinking and communication skills, as well as opportunities posed by historical key ideas (Stradling, 2001), narrative skills and multiperspective views, analytical skills, adaptable interpretative framework (Lee, 2004), and the establishment of historical thinking (Lévesque & Croteau, 2020). Professional organizations dealing with history teaching and education for citizenship in Europe, such as the Georg Eckert Institut für Internationale Schulbuchforschung, Mémorial de la Shoah and the EuroClio Association for History Educators (EuroClio, 2020; Modena, 2020), have set in the 2020s as the most important goals remembrance education, inquiry and evidence-based education, and the establishment of a multiperspective learners' attitude. Eurydice, one of the European Union's support institutions, issued a publication in 2017 entitled Citizenship Education at School in Europe in which it examined the fundamental pedagogical documents of several countries and, using earlier research, established the competence areas of education for democracy and identified four main areas of development: critical thinking, social responsibility, democratic processes, and effective and constructive cooperation.

In recent years, the issues of inclusion and cultural diversity have come to the fore, as have the emergence of strong state systems and the management of counternarratives they produce in a strongly politicized public life, as well as the placement on “equal footing” of approaches supported by science with the approaches of dilettantes, which is related to the advancement of digital social media platforms (Benziger, 2017; Wineburg, 2001). More recently, a new concept has appeared in the forefront of history didactics research: the intention of establishing powerful knowledge has been formulated (Chapman, 2021) which reinforces the stress on disciplinary knowledge, that is, knowledge of the work methods of the historian, in students' instruction in citizenship. The OECD Learning Compass 2030, a document that defines skills, offers the development of transformative competences as a response to global challenges: creating new value, reconciling tensions and dilemmas, and taking responsibility are designated as the most important of these. International trends clearly show the role of education for citizenship has come to the forefront because of a questioning of faith in democratic structures and a decline in active citizen participation, among other reasons (OECD, 2019).

After this review, which by no means strives to be exhaustive, it can be established that the results of international history didactics research have appeared in professional discourse in Hungary, too, over the past decades (F. Dárdai & Kaposi, 2021), in line with the professional recommendations of the International Society for History Didactics (ISHD) and EuroClio. A good indicator of this is the international conference Viewpoints, organized by the Hungarian Historical Association's Teachers' Division in April 2021, and the thematic issue of HERJ, which offer a look at the writings of internationally renowned professionals and at the current trends of history didactics.

The special issue of the journal starts with a paper by Susanne Popp in which the author, who is the president of the International Society for History Didactics, examines the international situation of history didactics, as an academic discipline, from the aspect of terminology. She demonstrates that the interpretation and use of a number of disciplinary concepts vary significantly in international practice. Her paper focuses on the different forms in which World History, as a historical concept (e.g. Global History or Big History) appears and its varied interpretations. She establishes that the terminological diversity present in this area poses an obstacle not only to international researchers, but also hinders identical school approaches or those pointing in the same direction. World History, as a subject, is present in a number of countries, but the same expressions mean different things in the various regions of the world. So is it that a divergent terminological framework hinders the prevalence of global approaches. In her analysis, she points out that international comparisons of curricula and textbooks in history didactics deserve greater attention as it is these documents that establish and show the terminological system of one or another given country or region.

In Stephane Levesque's paper, an answer is sought to the very pertinent contemporary question of Why we need to learn history in times of memorial controversies? Its starting point is the newly appearing and spreading theory and practice according to which various activist groups confront monuments that are controversial to contemporary public opinion, as well as the disputed or disputable histories and personalities of their mnemonic phenomena, and the divergent visons of the future that result from their interpretation. The paper presents a possible problem-solving model for the analysis of controversial issues of commemoration, in which the historical events or actors in questions are examined in the context of the given period of time. Relying on the theory of historical consciousness, it presents monuments as a type of mnemonic infrastructures of historical culture. Afterward, it delineates a conceptual model for understanding various “types” of individuals or means of involvement, then examines the appearance of the resulting phenomena through the presence of the concrete mnemonic creation. The concluding section of the paper discusses how competencies of historical consciousness in relation to Jörn Rüsen's recognized typology can be used to transpose this analytical model into educational practice to help students analyze controversies that may appear in monuments and other vestiges of the past. Furthermore, the author makes a recommendation on how to apply more complex methods of mnemonic approaches at the societal level.

At the center of Karl Benzinger's study is a problem that is at once of a professional nature and concerns public affairs: how everyday history teaching is to respond to falsifications of history built on highly politicized, often false myths, and in some instances supported by state apparatus. The pretext for the paper is provided by the narrative founded on voter fraud, tinged with elements of conspiracy, connected to the election loss of Donald Trump, that culminated in the attack on the United States Capitol after an escalation of serious differences, with a tragic outcome. He establishes in the paper that countering ideology based on a complete disregard for truth is of paramount importance in the United States from the aspect of prevailing democratic norms. The study shows how Trump's most important election promise, Make America Great Again (MAGA), is a further evolution of the Lost Cause mythology that began after the Civil War. The original story casts the enfranchisement of African Americans as a failure touting white supremacy and the righteousness of Jim Crow laws. At the end of the paper, the author suggests that history teachers should produce methodological recommendations that are suitable for countering highly politicized historical myths.

Zsoldos Szabó's paper seeks to comment on the recently evolved debates over the culture of remembrance in the area of decolonization. The starting point of the paper is the toppling of the statue of the slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol and the removal of monuments of King Leopold II from public places in Belgium. It also touches on the Black Lives Matter protests in the summer of 2020 and mass demonstrations drawing attention to the ongoing disputes around the legacy of colonialism. He establishes in the paper that decolonization is a long and drawn out process: the decolonization of the culture of the former colonizing country, and points out that decolonization tendencies are among the most debated issues of history teaching. The article reviews history teaching's most important decolonizing efforts in the United Kingdom, examining its goals, messages and methodologies. It calls attention to the contradictions that are embodied in the question “Why is the curriculum white?”. It also presents recommendations for supporting the resolution of this complicated set of problems in practice at various levels of education (teacher training, curriculum, teaching methodology).

Elisabet Erdmann's paper starts by pointing out that the Roman Empire spread across a significant area of Europe, including some parts of Hungary, too. The traces it has left behind are evident today in architectural remnants, museum artefacts (tools, objects, pictures, statues) and written sources. In her paper, she shows that the various remnants of Roman heritage that remain in numerous regions in Europe offer a good opportunity for an interdisciplinary approach to shared past, for a comparison of the similarities and differences between monuments, the characteristics of state administration and ways of living at the time. With regard to this, she notes that many expressions from the Roman era that reman with us appear familiar to today's students at first glance, expressions such as state or republic, but the same could be said about the things of everyday life, too. However, when one examines these expressions more closely, one realizes the fundamental differences between society's rules of operation and the interpretation of ethical norms in antiquity and today. In her view, a comparison of the Roman era with conditions today is useful for drumming up interest and motivating students of various ages. The selected examples that appear in the paper may be attractive to Hungarian students, too, as they vividly show similarities and differences, thus supporting the effectiveness of history teaching.

J. Vella studies the good practice of the use of written historical sources in history education in school and shows the results of a related study in the 7- to 16-year-old age group. The paper gives an overview of the worthwhile practice of using written historical sources, when, in the course of processing in the classroom, writing produced independently by the students functions as evidence of analysis. The paper also reveals how teachers can effectively support the independent writing of students during history lessons with the publication and review of various pedagogical research. The author makes various pedagogical recommendations, based on her own experience and research, for including independent student writing in everyday practice in the course of history teaching.

In Lászlo Kojanitz's study, the goals and characteristics of the history school-leaving exam (two-level; competence- and source-centered) developments introduced in Hungary in 2005 are taken into account. In this regard, he establishes that a key intent of the development was to advance beyond the oversimplifying view of history and carve out a bigger role for establishing and using – both in the process of preparation and during the examination – knowledge acquisition and source analysis skills. The author recalls that the developers assigned a key role to examination tasks based on new approaches and various types of sources in the interest of achieving their goals. In this regard, the author of the study examined the degree of application of source processing and analysis skills expected of students in examination tasks over the past 15 years. In conclusion, he puts forward that the intent to innovate was only partially realized in the examination tasks, because the solution to most of them asked about concrete historical facts or for explicit text interpretation, while few put students' differentiated source interpretation skills to the test or called for the application of higher-order cognition.

In a short paper, Barnabás Vajda summarizes about 160 presentations delivered at three international conferences on History Didactics (Graz, Budapest, Lucerne) in recent years. The author analyzes the most important speeches and presentations and the following debates according to the following aspects: What kind of scientific and educational trends have had an influence on History Didactics in the recent years? Which are the most important issues and challenges concerning international History Didactics? What kind of trends can be predicted in the accounts of the participants regarding the future of History Didactics?

Richárd Fodor's and Judit Tóth's study defines the professional role and trends of the International Journal of Research on History Didactics, History Education and History Culture, published by the International Society for History Didactics during the past decade (2011–2021). In the framework of this, they outline and analyze, in detail, the topics of the journal, forming a picture of the workshops, players, current directions and problem systems of history didactics. In the analysis of the two young researchers, it is established that the main focus of the international journal is primarily related to textbook analysis and content-curriculum regulation. Within the European scientific community, the outstanding role of German researchers and history didactics workshops is demonstrated. The results of the research clearly point to the complex directions the development of history didactics is taking, which will presumably have an impact on the scientific discourse (internationally and in Hungary), promoting the renewal of the discipline.

About the editors

• Prof. dr. Ágnes Fischer-Dárdai (Hungary) is professor emerita at the University of Pécs, “Education and Society” Doctoral School of Education. Her main research interests include history didactics, textbook research, textbook analysis, the specificities of historical knowledge.

• Dr. habil. József Kaposi (Hungary) is associate professor at Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Teacher Training Institute. His main research interests include 20th century Hungarian history; historical thinking, curricula, textbooks, exam requirements; civic education, drama pedagogy and theatre education.

• Prof. Dr. Susanne Popp (Germany) is professor at the University of Augsburg, Faculty of Philology and History and president of the International Society of History Didactics. Her main research interests include European and global perspectives in national history teaching and history museums, visual literacy, popular history magazines in Europe, international comparison of textbooks.