History Teaching and the Use of History in a Linguistic Minority Context. Minority Schools in Denmark, Germany and Finland as a Field of Research on Education for Identity Construction

Apart from subject knowledge and historical thinking skills, didactical theories generally consider identity as an important issue for history education. The article discusses history teaching and its function in identity construction in schools for language minority groups. It focuses on identity formation processes in three kinds of minority schools: upper secondary schools for the German minority in Southern Denmark, upper secondary schools for the Danish minority in the Northern part of Germany, and upper secondary schools for the Swedish-speaking population in Finland. The content and the educational aims of the school subject history are compared in these minority school systems and conclusions are drawn in relation to a theoretical model of the use of history. It is concluded that history is used in a political-educational and existential way in the Danish minority schools, with a strong focus on minority issues, while the German minority schools have a more neutral and "Danish" approach to German history in Denmark, with some elements of non-use of history (i.e. discreet treatment of the German occupation during the WW II). As Swedish is equal to Finnish as a national language, the Swedish schools in Finland could be expected to have the same approach in history teaching as the Finnish schools – the curriculum has the same content and aims in both cases – but there is an explicit ambition in the Swedish schools to use history in a more existential and ideological way in relation to Finland’s shared history with Sweden. The comparison of history teaching in minority schools turned out to improve the didactical understanding of the use of history in history teaching.