Suchergebnisse

In September, 2014, the University of Ottawa Education Research Unit, Making History / Faire l'histoire, hosted Canadian History at the Crossroads, a SSHRC-funded symposium in collaboration with the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Québec. The symposium brought together multiple stakeholders, historians, history and museum educators, classroom teachers—including Governor General's award winners as well as teacher education and graduate students—to stimulate further public dialogue on pedagogies of history and the politics of remembrance. Building on some of the symposium's original contributions as well as other submissions, this Canadian Journal of Education Special Capsule advances current debates in history education, historical thinking, and historical consciousness, and forges new directions for collective understandings of the past, by connecting with everyday lived experiences in the present. The contributions range from discussions of how young people themselves understand their past to the link- ages between forms of remembering and conceptions of the nation itself.

This paper examined the contributions of historical consciousness to the development of the Nigerian political terrain. Using the Nigerian example, it posits that a distinguishing feature of historical consciousness is in its quest to promote a sense of history among members of a given group or society. This enables it to play a significant role in the task of national development. It proceeded to demonstrate that promoting historical awareness could lead to greater political stability. Having demonstrated the role of historical consciousness to national development, the paper concluded that since development is a product of change, and the subject matter of history focuses on continuity and change, it follows that development can only be understood and appreciated within the context of history. It is this strategic role of history in facilitating development that makes historical societies incubators of development.

This special issue is the result of the workshop, Towards an integrated theory of historical and moral consciousness , supported by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (The Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences) and Suomen kasvatuksen ja koulutuksen historian seura (The Finnish Society for the History of Education) and held at the University of Helsinki, in 2015. History teaching and social studies education are increasingly expected to develop, among other things, students' historical consciousness. This goal is highly relevant for students' ability to deal constructively with controversial issues of history which is an important civic competence in the situation where in many societies' political arguments concerning, for example, citizenship rights, ethnic and cultural diversity, and democracy are only too often fuelled by simplistic narratives of historical change and continuity. However, there is a blank spot in the existing research on historical consciousness in that intersections between historical and moral consciousness remain very much unexplored. This special issue seeks to identify promising theoretical and conceptual points of convergence for future interdisciplinary studies of historical and moral consciousness. Contributors are from the fields of history, educational research, social psychology, and philosophy.