News

History education in Portugal

Posted by Mariana Lagarto on 2024-12-12

This article is part of the special series History education in historical perspective that explores different national contexts of history education. The article provides historical insight of this research field in Portugal and it was grounded on data collected and analysed from a literature review and interviews with Isabel Barca (pioneer of history education in Portugal), Helena Pinto and [...]

Comparative portrayals of the British Empire in history textbooks, 1920s–2020s

Posted by Catriona McDermid and Stuart Foster on 2024-12-06

For this special series of HERJ on History Education in Historical Perspective, we wanted to link the theme of the series with our current research exploring how the British Empire, migration and belonging are taught in English secondary schools (see portraitemb.co.uk). We compared how histories of the British Empire were narrated in English history textbooks from the 1920s and 1930s with how [...]

History Education in Historical Perspective

Posted by HERJ Editorial Office on 2024-11-06

The History Education Research Journal is excited to share the launch and publication of a new special series on ‘History Education in Historical Perspective’. Edited by Dr Tyson Retz (University of Stavanger, Norway) and Prof Terry Haydn (University of East Anglia, UK), this open access special series brings together a collection of high-quality articles that explore different national [...]

Learning from history – how could it work?

Posted by Maren Tribukait on 2024-10-25

There has been a lot of discussion on whether it is possible to learn from history – especially from the abysses of the 20th century. In the current political situation, this question seems to be more relevant than ever as quite a few people seem to have forgotten about the era of National Socialism and fascism. Although there might be a lot of reasons for this, I wondered whether the pedagogical [...]

Peer review week 2024 – HERJ Editors Q&A

Posted by HERJ Editorial Office on 2024-09-25

For Peer Review Week 2024 Sunbul Akhtar, the Journal Development Editor at UCL Press, spoke with editors of History Education Research Journal. In this Q&A blog they discuss the thought processes involved in peer review, the challenges behind the scenes and AI, providing an insight into a function of academic publishing that has become a cornerstone of research integrity. In this [...]

Do they know national history?

Posted by Ana Isabel Moreira and Isabel Barca on 2024-09-12

Our article in History Education Research Journal brought together Portuguese students from two different educational levels (6th and 9th grade) and based on their written narratives, we tried to understand how they use historical knowledge on a specific subject. In this case, each student told the History of Portugal that they knew, and the content of these texts allowed us to study two main [...]

Rethinking history assessment

Posted by Sarah Holland on 2024-08-14

My article Rethinking Assessment explores the potential of innovative and creative assessments in history and the importance of diversifying assessment. Assessment forms an integral part of history education at all levels but how often do we stop and reflect on how and why we assess history and consider alternative approaches? The aim of my article is to share my insights into alternative forms [...]

Teaching History in the climate crisis

Posted by Amanda Power and Alison Kitson on 2024-06-26

Our article addresses the role of school history in helping young people to navigate their future at a time of climate crisis. As we know, global heating, biodiversity collapse and environmental pollution are already affecting daily life everywhere, including in the UK. Their impacts will only intensify in the coming decades. One consequence of the failure of adults to act on the warnings of [...]

A New Pedagogical Tool for Teaching with Historical Empathy

Posted by Sara Karn on 2024-06-10

My article, Designing historical empathy learning experiences: a pedagogical tool for history teachers, explores the pedagogies that history teachers use to foster historical empathy—a cognitive (thinking) and affective (feeling) process of attempting to understand the thoughts, feelings, experiences, decisions, and actions of people from the past, within their historical contexts. For this [...]

Designing history lessons: a four-point guide to improve students’ learning of historical concepts

Posted by Wouter Smets on 2024-05-23

My article, published in History Education Research Journal, draws on theory from cognitive developmental psychology and presents four design principles to reinforce substantive historical concepts in history teaching and to foster historical thinking in history students. Teaching of concepts is traditionally regarded as one of the elementary goals of the humanities and social sciences. [...]

The possibilities of school trips: what can study visits to historical sites like Auschwitz-Birkenau contribute to history education?

Posted by Mikael Berg and Martin Stolare on 2024-05-21

In our article for History Education Research Journal, we examine what possibilities exist for students to learn through encounters with historical sites, such as the Holocaust camps in Auschwitz-Birkenau. We investigated this issue through the pre- and post-visit work of a group of Swedish students who took a school trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau. The empirical analysis of the students' responses in [...]

Calls for papers

Posted by HERJ Editorial Office on 2024-02-29

Throughout the year, History Education Research Journal launches a number of thematic special series exploring the journals aims and scope. Details of each special series and its calls for papers can be found in the below links. This page is kept up-to-date with all current special series calls for papers.Investigating the relationship between generative artificial intelligence and history [...]