ABSTRACT∞ In recent times, a conception of history education as facilitating truth, remembrance and critical thinking has been positioned as useful for transitional justice in divided societies, but this analysis has not been extended to settler states which are also characterized by prolonged division and state-administered violence. To explore this, the article draws on examples from Australia where scholars have been extending the framework of transitional justice in order to better address the structural nature of injustice in settler states. By investigating the uses of temporality and historicization in history education, it concludes that while disciplinary models might contribute to the popular theses of transitional justice by encouraging students to emulate the skills of the historian, these models would likely work to strengthen rather than challenge the legitimacy of the Australian settler state. Therefore, any attempts to align history education with reconciliation in Australia will require a rethinking of current disciplinary models.

In recent years, movements for historical justice have gained global momentum and prominence as the focus on righting wrongs from the past has become a feature of contemporary politics. This imperative has manifested in globally diverse contexts including societies emerging from a period of recent, violent conflict, but also, established democracies which are increasingly compelled to address the legacies of colonialism, slavery, genocide, institutional abuse, and war crimes, as well as other forms of protracted discord. A diverse suite of redress instruments including -but not limited to -criminal tribunals, truth commissions, reparations, and official apologies, are now regularly deployed in efforts to remedy and overcome historical injustices. Conceptions of historical justice have been embedded in existing legal systems and humanitarian frameworks, including human rights (Teitel 2014), and history increasingly occupies a central position in the mediation and management of the collective past (Olick 2007).Educational initiatives of various kinds are located at the centre of these actions for historical justice. Educating the public, politicians or different categories of professionals by spreading knowledge generated in truth commissions, white paper projects, or criminal tribunals are, alongside different political and compensatory actions, important aspects of such initiatives. Schools, and other institutionalised educational contexts, have become important arenas of dissemination, as have museums and commemorative sites as well as broader governmental campaigns for spreading knowledge of historical injustices to the public. In this context, history education, broadly conceived, has become a focus for researchers and practitioners interested in how contested understandings of, and approaches to studying, the past can incite, exacerbate, and potentially, transform conflict.While there are many books published on the topics of teaching difficult, sensitive, and contested histories (Bentrovato et al. 2016;Elmersjö et al. 2017;Psaltis et al. 2017;Peck and Epstein 2018), scholars have paid relatively less attention to the evolving relationship between historical justice and history education, including the challenges and possibilities this relationship generates for both fields. This volume is thematically located at the intersection of these two fields and is concerned with how the expectations of historical justice movements and processes are directed towards, and taken up, in educational contexts, particularly in history education. By presenting cases from a wide range of national contexts, this collection sets out to explore important empirically grounded and conceptual features of the evolving relations between history education and historical justice, as well as to discuss various problems and possibilities located at those junctures.This book explores distinct but connected domains where agendas of historical justice and history education intersect. It considers the spread and use of knowledge generated fr...

This chapter has two main aims. The first is to establish the close historical and ideological relationship between the construction of nation-states, the development of the profession of history, and the emergence of modern schooling systems, all of which were evolving during the "long nineteenth century" in Europe. The focus is particularly on history education given its citizen-shaping agenda of forging national identity and shaping historical consciousness. The second aim is to reanimate debates about the role of history education today. This proceeds by arguing that a shift in the experience and understanding of temporality which has occurred in the post-Cold War era has triggered a crisis of legitimacy for the nation-state, which has generated two related responses in Western democratic nation-states since 1989: an increased reflection and attachment to national identity and an impetus to reckon with the problematic past. Here, history education has come to be positioned as both a prominent target of memory contests, as well as a solution and tool of justice and reconciliation,

PurposeThis paper introduces key themes and debates in education and educational history that engage education's complicity in injustice and violence, as well as those that continue to position education as a vehicle for positive change and possibility. The paper introduces the papers that comprise the special issue “Challenges of Contested Spaces: Constructing Difference and its Legacies in Educational History”.Design/methodology/approachThe paper canvasses pertinent historiographical, theoretical and methodological debates that shed light on education's dual capacity to empower and oppress.FindingsPapers in this collection reveal the many ways that agendas justified in the name of education, training and reform have often invoked that name as justification for actions that harmed, discriminated or oppressed, and yet also, how despite this, education can still be imagined as a space of possibility and transformation.Originality/valueThe paper offers a summative introduction to the themes and papers of the special issue.

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