Past Times - Talking and Teaching History

In this episode, Maayke and Andreas speak with Rodrigo Mayorga (Instagram rodrigomayorgac), Director of Momento Constituyente, about the consitutional reform process that took place in Chile over the last few years. Momento Constituyente is an NGO based in Santiago de Chile and focusing on civics/citizenship education. Both Rodrigo and his NGO were actively encouraging conversations around the constitutional reform process and we learn more about its implications for students, teachers and history and citizenship education.

EuroClio's Adam Dargiewicz and Andreas Holtberget speak with Prof. Joanna Wojdon (University of Wrocław) and Jacek Staniszewski (history teacher, headmaster, and co-founder of The Good Education Association). We discuss the latest developments and proposed changes to the Polish history curriculum, the new and controversial subject ‘History and the Present’ (HiT in the Polish abbreviation) and the impact of the war in Ukraine. 

Understand Polish? Have a listen to Jacek's own podcast, Podcasterix!

In this episode, EuroClio staff Eugenie Khatschatrian and Andreas Holtberget speak with a teacher, Tatjana Juric, and a student, Teofan Badza, both from a high school in Banja Luka in Bosnia-Herzegovina about their project focusing on the victims of the Ustase regime during World War II.  The work in Banja Luka was part of the  "Who were the victims of the national socialists" project funded by the EVZ foundation. 

In this episode we are joined by Barry van Driel, President of the International Association for Intercultural Education and Juraj Varga, EuroClio Board Member and Chairman of the Centre for Education and Innovations (CEDIN), to talk about place-based learning. Why and how do we do it? Both Barry and Juraj are involved in EuroClio projects taking history outside of the classroom - which was also the focus of our most recent thematic webinar series. Follow us on social media and consider joining us as an individual member to stay up to date on the latest news, including the Seeking Justice: From Nuremberg to The Hague initiative led by Barry and the Who were the victims of the National Socialists project involving Juraj!

We speak with Russian historian, history teacher, activist and EuroClio ‘Ambassador’ Tamara Eidelman about authoritarianism and totalitarianism. Having left Moscow for Lisbon in connection with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Tamara continues to run her wildly popular YouTube channel on Russian and World History from aboard. Tamara shares her thoughts on teaching about totalitarianism, her experience as a teacher in Russia, her own school education in the Soviet Union, as well as the current war and situation in Russia - and its implications for history teaching. Is Putin’s Russia itself on the road to totalitarianism?

This podcast episode was recorded in connection with EuroClio's webinar series "The Road to totalitarianism". Registrations on euroclio.eu will open shortly!

For more content with Tamara Eidelman, we highly recommend her interview on the YouTube channel of Russian journalist Yury Dud (with English subtitles).

We are joined by Claire Holliss, head of history at Reigate College in the UK and author of the blog Fresh Alarums, to talk about gender and sexuality in the history classroom. We discuss her approaches to teaching queer history, gender and sexuality, including the difficult issue of terminology. Discover more on the topic with Claire's blog (including a set of teacher's primers) and EuroClio's webinar series.

In June 2020 the statue of Edward Colston, a 17th Century slave trader, was pushed into Bristol harbour during a Black Lives Matter protest leading to global media attention. The statue was later recovered by the Bristol city council and displayed at a local museum. We speak with Bristol-based history teacher Richard Kennett about his recent book on the Bristol slave trade, how the controversy over Colston was addressed in the classroom as well as the current situation in Bristol and how the city and its people are dealing with a contested past. 

We are joined by two teachers, Christoph Schiebold from the International Montessori School in Brussels and Riitta Mikkola from Karakallio School in Espoo, Finland, to talk assessment: How do we do it? Formative? Summative? What are the challenges? And from which age should we grade? Our episode is part of a larger thematic focus on assessment and linked to our webinar series on the topic. Want more? Head over to our YouTube channel for recorded sessions. 

We speak with Prof. María Emma Wills Obregón, based in Bogotá, about the role of history education in tackling recent memories of conflict and the reconciliation process in Colombia. Prof. Wills was part of a team that developed a toolkit with methodologies and lessons for debating the historic memory of the conflict with students. What are the pedagogical legacies of the conflict? What advice can she give history educators wanting to teach difficult and contentious topics?

We discover the potential of 'the beautiful game' in education. We speak with two teachers, Enrico Cavalieri in Italy and Hellen Janssen in the Netherlands, about their experiences teaching history through the lens of football. Enrico talks about his lesson plan, exploring the rise of fascism in Europe, migration, World War II and the Shoah, with the life story of Jewish-Hungarian football coach Árpád Weisz. Hellen meanwhile, is no football fan, but still found inspiration for her teaching practice with the rich material from EuroClio's project Football Makes History. 

For more on Enrico's lesson plan - along other inspiring stories on how to use football in your teaching practice, join EuroClio online for our thematic webinar series 28 May, 4 & 11 June!

We speak with Prof. Arthur Chapman and Dr. Maria K. Georgiou about the powers of historical knowledge, highlighting the recent book edited by Prof. Chapman: "Knowing History in Schools: Powerful knowledge and the powers of knowledge". The book includes a chapter co-authored by our two guests and we speak with both about its key concepts, the social justice potential of history education and how the ideas of powerful knowledge can make its way into classroom practice. 

The book, published by UCL Press, is open access and is free to download on uclpress.co.uk. 

We discuss the concept of historical canons with EuroClio founder Joke van der Leeuw-Roord and Prof. Karel van Nieuwenhuyse of the KU Leuven. As the Dutch canon has recently been revised and a canon for Flanders is in the works, we look at the controversies surrounding both canons and ask ourselves what role canons can have in history education - if at all! What are their shortcomings? How do they relate to national curricula? What are the implications for history teachers?

We discuss the role of textbooks in history education with a critical reflection on why need them and how we should use them. What makes a good textbook and how can we compliment our teaching with other sources? Podcast hosts Maayke de Vries and Katria Tomko are joined by Dr. Maren Tribukait from the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research in Braunschweig (Germany) and Ann-Laure Liéval, teacher at Lycee Fenelon in Lille and teacher trainer at Sciences Po Lille (France). 

We discuss persecution and censorship, the importance of history and history education in safeguarding and promoting democratic values and ask ourselves why historians are so dangerous to so many different regimes. We highlight the work of Prof. Antoon de Baets, founder of the Network of Concerned Historians , and zoom in on the recent and worrying developments for history education in Brazil under President Jair Bolsonaro with Prof. Arthur Ávila. 

Consult the latest (2020) report of the Network of Concerned Historians here and join their latest campaigns here. 

Our interview with Dr Borunda contained so much interesting insights that we decided to publish it as a bonus episode. In this part of the  interview, Dr Borunda mentions how ethnic studies is on the rise in  the US, which aims to include indigenous knowledge in the curriculum, and challenges the eurocentric perception of knowledge. In the episode, Dr Borunda refers to the website California Indian History Curriculum, which provides educators with a counter-narrative on the history of the Americas: https://www.csus.edu/college/education/engagement/indian-curriculum.html

In this episode we look at how historic events are remembered, celebrated and commemorated. We explore the topic through the lens of the Mayflower 400 events taking place in the Netherlands, the UK and the US this year and commemorating the arrival of the first settlers to the New England colonies from England by way of Leiden in The Netherlands. We speak with Dr Rose Borunda (author of the book What is the Color of your Heart: A Humanist Approach to Diversity”) from Sacremento State University, with Leiden University lecturer Dr Eduard van de Bilt and with Leiden400 coordinator Jonathan Even-Zohar, on counternarratives, the history of remembrance and practical tips for how educators can commemorate contested topics or events in the classroom.

In this episode we talk with Prof. Sam Wineburg (Twitter: @samwineburg), who is head of the Stanford History Education Group. In our episode we focus on “civic online reasoning”, thus skills that everyone should be familiar with in order to find reliable sources on the internet. Professor Wineburg emphasizes the role of history and history educators in providing young people with the skills needed to maneuver a time of mass confusion.

Be sure to visit https://sheg.stanford.edu/ and https://cor.stanford.edu/.for the many great and free resources Stanford has developed for history educators.