Historical Thinking and Controversial Issues in Social Studies Education

Effects of a teacher training programme on historical awareness skills, controversial issues and gender in secondary education

“…Historical awareness as an interpretative filter [11] or temporal compass [12] is an interesting strategy in teacher education to address controversial issues, allowing the possibility of avoiding surprises and dealing with them appropriately when they arise spontaneously in the classroom or are deliberately raised on the basis of curriculum development [25,36] . In all of these topics, gender and its diversity, conflicts or symbolic and physical violence are issues inherent to all historical societies, which is why they must be visible and intentionally dealt with in the teaching of social sciences from interdisciplinary integrated models and perspectives [27,[32][33][34] . In this sense, in order to avoid "exclusionary impartiality", "exclusionary neutrality" or "impartial neutrality", we believe it is advisable to adopt the position of "committed impartiality", operationalizing historical thinking and multi-perspective in the teaching-learning process.…”

“…Social and historical problems, present in all societies, can be characterized locally and globally from political, economic, social and cultural dimensions. From this perspective, ignoring conflict and not facing these problems undermines the sense of democracy [32,33] . Another pressing problem is the loss of teachers' autonomy to work on controversial issues [34] .…”

The conceptions of Spanish and Colombian students regarding processes of historical reconciliation

“…Along these lines, it has been established that history learning in education systems, rather than developing a univocal and one-sided identity grounded in a historical narrative defined exclusively by notions of triumph and grandeur, should prepare children and young people to make a critical reading of the past, the present and the future. According to different authors, to achieve this educational objective in schools would imply: (1) Questioning discourse and teaching and learning practices which directly or indirectly promote the exclusion, denial, segregation, annihilation and devaluation of others and their historical narratives (Han et al, 2012;Pudar et al, 2020;Miralles and Ibagón, 2022); (2) Rethinking the elements which give shape to the notion of an us (particularly in national terms) (Kokkinos, 2011;Bentrovato et al, 2016;Miles, 2018;Wallace-Casey, 2022); (3) Promoting the identification and analysis of multiple perspectives around historical experiences of a controversial and difficult nature (Ahonen, 2014;Maric, 2016;Goldberg, 2017;López-García, 2022); (4) Recognizing the influence that different spheres of socialization outside of schools have on students' ideas of history (McCully, 2012;Najbert, 2020).…”