• Negotiating the nation: Young people, national narratives and history education

    Negotiating the nation: Young people, national narratives and history education


From the Editorial article (https://www.doi.org/10.18546/LRE.15.2.01): 

'Anxieties about national identity and its strengthening and preservation are common in countries around the world, and it is entirely natural that this should be so in times of great change, challenge and uncertainty’ (Létourneau and Chapman, 2015). These anxieties set the context for many discussions about history education, identity and young people’s knowledge in nations around the world (Taylor and Guyver, 2011). They are often expressed in a persistent perception, common around the world, that young people are ignorant of their country’s past, a perception that is often based on very weak or impressionistic evidence (e.g. Ball, 2013) and that is often repeated, generation after generation (Wineburg, 2004). Scholars in a number of places around the world – including one of the editors of this special issue (Létourneau, 2014) and a research team at the UCL Institute of Education (Foster et al., 2008) – have set about posing positive questions about young people’s knowledge and understanding of the past. The work of James Wertsch has been both ground-breaking and influential in providing conceptual tools for many researchers in this field – in particular, through the concept of ‘schematic narrative templates’ (Wertsch, 2002; 2008: 141-4). Research on these issues has aimed to understand the ways in which young people do think about and know and understand history, and the ways in which they do structure and organize this knowledge and understanding and not simply to identify deficits in young people’s knowledge of isolated facts. These were the areas that we set out to explore through this special issue by focusing on the multiple sources of young people’s historical knowledge, on young people as active builders of historical sense, rather than passive assimilators of materials presented to them, and on the relationships between young people, schools, identity and national, intranational, international and supranational contexts around the world.

Publication date: 01 July 2017. Volume 15, Issue 2. 



Guest Editors

Jocelyn LétourneauUniversité Laval, Quebec City, Canada.
Arthur ChapmanUCL Institute of Education, UCL, UK.



Article list 


Editorial


Negotiating the nation: Young people, national narratives and history education

Jocelyn Létourneau and Arthur Chapman

2017-07-01 Volume 15 • Issue 2 • 2017 • 149–151

Also a part of:

Special feature: Negotiating the nation: Young people, national narratives and history education

Research article


Foreword to the special feature 'Negotiating the nation: Young people, national narratives and history education', edited by Jocelyn Létourneau and Arthur Chapman

James V. Wertsch

2017-07-01 Volume 15 • Issue 2 • 2017 • 152–154

Also a part of:

Special feature: Negotiating the nation: Young people, national narratives and history education

In search of historical consciousness: An investigation into young South Africans' knowledge and understanding of 'their' national histories

Kate Angier

2017-07-01 Volume 15 • Issue 2 • 2017 • 155–173

Also a part of:

Special feature: Negotiating the nation: Young people, national narratives and history education

Making narrative connections? Exploring how late teens relate their own lives to the historically significant past

Elizabeth Dawes Duraisingh

2017-07-01 Volume 15 • Issue 2 • 2017 • 174–193

Also a part of:

Special feature: Negotiating the nation: Young people, national narratives and history education

The useful past in negotiation: Adolescents' use of history in negotiation of inter-group conflict

Tsafrir Goldberg

2017-07-01 Volume 15 • Issue 2 • 2017 • 194–211

Also a part of:

Special feature: Negotiating the nation: Young people, national narratives and history education

'I was born in the reign …': Historical orientation in Ugandan students' national narratives

Ulrik Holmberg

2017-07-01 Volume 15 • Issue 2 • 2017 • 212–226

Also a part of:

Special feature: Negotiating the nation: Young people, national narratives and history education

History as a 'GPS': On the uses of historical narrative for French Canadian students' life orientation and identity

Stéphane Lévesque

2017-07-01 Volume 15 • Issue 2 • 2017 • 227–242

Also a part of:

Special feature: Negotiating the nation: Young people, national narratives and history education

'We need to remember they died for us': How young people in New Zealand make meaning of war remembrance and commemoration of the First World War

Mark Sheehan and Martyn Davison

2017-07-01 Volume 15 • Issue 2 • 2017 • 259–271

Also a part of:

Special feature: Negotiating the nation: Young people, national narratives and history education

Flemish students' historical reference knowledge and narratives of the Belgian national past at the end of secondary education

Timo Van Havere, Kaat Wils, Fien Depaepe, Lieven Verschaffel and Karel Van Nieuwenhuyse

2017-07-01 Volume 15 • Issue 2 • 2017 • 272–285

Also a part of:

Special feature: Negotiating the nation: Young people, national narratives and history education

Why national narratives are perpetuated: A literature review on new insights from history textbook research

Maria Grever and Tina van der Vlies

2017-07-01 Volume 15 • Issue 2 • 2017 • 286–301

Also a part of:

Special feature: Negotiating the nation: Young people, national narratives and history education