News

The climate crisis has a history: do Finnish textbooks teach it?

Posted by Liina-Maria Nevalainen on 2026-10-01

It matters whether history is part of how we teach about the climate crisis: shaped by human actions over time, it is fundamentally a historical phenomenon. That is why students need more than numerical data showing how the climate is changing; they need understanding of how humans have driven those changes. To participate in debates about the climate crisis, they need opportunities to examine [...]

What do teachers actually do with GenAI in the history classroom?

Posted by Marcel Mierwald and Denise Hoins on 2026-09-16

Generative AI (GenAI) has arrived in schools quite quickly. But what does this actually mean for history teachers and their teaching practices in the classroom? This was the starting point for our exploratory study. Rather than prescribing what history teachers should do with GenAI, we wanted to understand what they actually do when it becomes part of everyday history lessons. We have therefore [...]

When students give the ‘right’ answer, how do they really understand history?

Posted by Wang Ying on 2026-09-07

In history classrooms, we often judge learning in fairly straightforward ways: What do students remember? Can they reproduce the interpretations presented in their textbooks? Can they give the ‘right’ answer in an exam? But there is another question worth asking: Does giving the right answer necessarily tell us how students actually understand the past? This question was the starting point for [...]

When History Comes in Panels

Posted by Radu Harald Dinu and Joakim Öberg on 2026-09-01

Comics are everywhere in popular culture, but they still have a somewhat uncertain place in history education. They are often seen as entertaining additions to a lesson, or as an easier alternative to traditional texts. In our study, we wanted to look beyond these assumptions and ask how teachers with experience teaching with comics actually use them in history education, and what they think [...]

What European history teachers think about inclusion – and why it matters

Posted by Jan-Christian Wilkening, Tanja Kohvakka, Maria Paula O’Donohoe Villota on 2026-07-29

Across school systems worldwide, questions concerning how to provide the best possible inclusive education have become increasingly important. Yet despite the undeniable relevance that the topic has gained, particularly since the adoption of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (2007), research efforts within the field of academic history education have remained rather [...]

History Education Research Journal receives its first CiteScore

Posted by HERJ Editorial Office on 2026-07-10

History Education Research Journal is pleased to announce a CiteScore of 1.3 in 2025 following indexing in Scopus. Researchers publishing in the journal will be indexed automatically in Scopus, in addition to the list of other indexers. Scopus, a leading abstract and citation database by Elsevier, serves as a key indicator of a journal’s quality and impact within the academic community. In 2025 [...]

AI-mediated Holocaust survivor testimony and historical consciousness

Posted by Elsie Leask and David Nally on 2026-07-03

The increasing use of Holocaust survivor testimony mediated by artificial intelligence (AI) reflects a fundamental shift in how audiences engage with testimony. Dimensions in Testimony (DiT) was pioneered by the USC Shoah Foundation in 2014, where survivors are filmed as they respond to approximately 1000 questions. Natural Language Processing AI supports semantic matching so that—ideally— a user [...]

Designing a professional development programme to promote historical reasoning in primary schools

Posted by Yolande Potjer, Marjolein Dobber and Carla van Boxtel on 2026-06-11

Professional development (PD) is essential for teachers to keep their teaching up to date. Research shows that PD programmes are more likely to have durable effects when they are grounded in relevant content, span a longer period, involve collaboration, and are embedded in teachers' actual school context. Hands-on inquiry activities using primary historical sources are important in a PD programme [...]

AI Images of the Past: Fast Outputs, Flawed Judgement

Posted by Heinrich Ammerer on 2026-06-03

History education research on AI is somewhat like the race between the hare and the hedgehog: in the one or two years between designing a study and publishing its findings, many empirical results are already overtaken by rapid technological developments. Models become more powerful, agents and multimodal systems emerge, applications become more accessible, and previously poorly understood [...]

Insights into the 'engine' of historical thinking

Posted by Jonas Schobinger and Martin Nitsche on 2026-05-20

Although we often say in history education that historical questioning is the 'engine' of historical thinking (van Drie and van Boxtel, 2008, 2018), surprisingly little research has explored how people actually develop historical questions. While teachers encourage students to ask questions about the past, relatively little is known about the cognitive operations involved and how the questioning [...]

What does AI really mean for history teachers?

Posted by Rachel Moylan on 2026-05-12

Our ongoing unregulated massive public experiment with generative artificial intelligence began in earnest in November 2022. While forms of AI had been increasingly integrated into our everyday lives for decades, OpenAI’s public release of ChatGPT marked the first time many people had access to a technology that could imitate human writing in such an uncanny way. Panic set in, and questions [...]

Why Study History? Listening to Undergraduate Students

Posted by Christopher W. Berg on 2026-04-01

In the summer of 1813, John Adams wrote to Thomas Jefferson reflecting on lives lived through consequential times. His observation, that they had passed their lives in serious times, resonates across the centuries. History students today face their own serious times, and the question of why history matters has never felt more urgent or more contested. In the United States, history majors are [...]

Exploring Epistemic Rhythms in Lesson Assignments: Implications for Research, Teaching, and Learning

Posted by Mikael Berg on 2026-03-06

In my article published in the History Education Research Journal, I examine how lesson assignments on historical and contemporary societal issues are designed in schools, with a focus on the kinds of knowledge students need to answer the questions. The study explores which didactic functions teachers can achieve by linking different forms of knowledge in school tasks. The analysis is based on [...]

What is a climate justice approach to teaching history and social studies?

Posted by Heather E. McGregor and Rebecca S. Evans on 2026-02-13

It is our view that all teachers have a role to play in preparing young people for a climate-unstable present and future. But taking on that role is not easy. Teachers encounter a wide range of demands, like focusing on solutions rather than only on describing the problems, engaging in action while avoiding partisanship, emphasising local priorities such as food sovereignty, or teaching [...]

From “wow” to “aha” encounters: pupils, historical consciousness and the magic of museum objects

Posted by Victoria Sofie Percy-Smith on 2026-02-03

What happens when pupils step into a museum and encounter the materiality of the past during an educational visit? Museum education holds many possibilities and outcomes – but not all of them are necessarily “measurable”. So, what happens when we focus on the relation between pupil and object? What emerges when we pay attention to the pupils’ experiences? How might what pupils feel, notice, [...]