The purpose of this thesis is to investigate interculturality in history as an idea and practice. Two overarching research questions are raised, each concerning the theoretical and practical levels: How can history, as a field of knowledge and teaching, be related to intercultural learning as a normative practice? What obstacles and opportunities for teaching and learning emerge when intercultural historical learning is the goal? 

This thesis comprises four published studies. Through a hermeneutic process, the aspects of interculturality and history are investigated as interplays between theory and empirics and between generic outcomes and specific cases. Cases from three Swedish upper secondary history classrooms provide data. They are analysed narratively, using both analytical tools based on the theories of historical consciousness and historical thinking, as well as the framework of threshold concepts. 

Utilising the theory of powerful knowledge, interculturality, as a normative and extrinsic goal, is brought together with history as a dynamic body of knowledge. In the thesis, I argue that interculturality in history teaching is best understood as a shift in perspectives, adopting a specific gaze on historical narratives. The identified obstacles relate to the normativity of interculturality, the methodological nationalism of history and the pedagogical risk of fragmentation and deconstruction. A major result is the potential to construct complex, multidirectional narratives centred on cultural encounters and migration processes, which combine temporal and spatial layers to open the past for intercultural connections. There also seem to be specifically productive learning situations and liminal spaces in which students acquire new subject understandings. Finally, in a systematic approach, a didactic model of intercultural historical learning is presented, constituting the final, but still provisional, hermeneutic loop of the research project.

Elever i dagens skola lever i en tid präglad av kulturell mångfald och rörelser av människor, vilket ställer samhället inför utmaningar. Denna avhandling menar att historia som skolämne har något värdefullt att tillföra för att rusta elever att förstå och orientera sig i en mångkulturell värld. Samtidigt finns inneboende spänningar i historieämnets möte med det mångkulturella samhället som blockerar denna potential. Tidigare berättelser om vad det innebär att leva i samhället tycks inte längre spegla den verklighet vi lever i. I avhandlingen undersöks vad interkulturalitet i historia kan vara som idé och praktik genom fyra studier. Studierna följer på varandra i en hermeneutisk process där teoriutveckling samspelar med praktiknära fallstudier från historieundervisningens klassrum.

Avhandlingen argumenterar för att interkulturalitet i historieundervisning bäst förstås som en perspektivförskjutning, ett erövrande av en specifik blick där interkulturalitet och historia ger varandra färg och olika tidsliga och rumsliga lager möts och kan öppna det förflutna för interkulturella kopplingar. Hur detta kan möjliggöras, liksom vilka svårigheter som kan uppstå, diskuteras i bokens kapitel. Slutligen föreslås för läraren en praktisk didaktisk modell för interkulturell historieundervisning.

FDU är en strukturerad metod att konstruera och kombinera frågor, uppgifter och källor. Den utgår från en angelägen fråga med såväl relevans för elever som betydelse för ämnet. Eleverna tar sig an frågan genom ett antal stödfrågor, som besvaras genom formativa upp- gifter och källor. Genom att arbeta igenom stödfrågorna en i taget får eleverna kunskaper och verktyg att diskutera den angelägna frågan på ett informerat och väl underbyggt sätt. En unik aspekt av FDU är en så kallad “blueprint”, en gra sk översikt (en A4-sida med alla  bärande komponenter) som hjälper lärare att konstruera en FDU. 

This is a mainly conceptual and argumentative article which presents a model for enquiry-based teaching (Swedish acronym FDU - frågedrivenundervisning). The purpose is to suggest and discuss how enquiry-based teaching can contribute to organising qualified subject teaching in history, religious education and social studies. This is dealt with through two sections. The first section presents a structure for enquiry-based teaching through tested teaching designs in the three subjects, and the second section discusses certain qualities of enquiry-based teaching that we argue should be maintained. Based on actual teaching and teachers' experiences of designing enquiry-based teaching, the article positions FDU as a subject didactic teaching model. Hordern's (2022) framework for normative knowledge practices forms the theoretical starting point for discussing FDU as a subject didactic model that can help teachers in designing, planning, implementing and evaluating qualified subject teaching.The article argues that FDU can be regarded as a normative knowledge practice that is characterised by the qualities of being enquiry-based, prospective, consistent, assessment-oriented, and continuous. 

The aim of the research project (financed by Swedish Institute for Educational Research) is to develop the enquiry method as an educational approach for teachers to develop students’ critical abilities. Enquiry is a student-active method with the potential to enhance students’ learning under the guidance and instruction from proficient teachers. Therefore, it requires high demands on teachers' academic and subject didactical knowledge. The project is a researcher-teacher collaborative study where around thirty teachers from three school subjects (history, religious education and social studies) have designed and tested enquiries. During the three-year project (2020-2023) three research questions will be addressed: 1) how the method works as a knowledge-generating approach for students in a Swedish school context, 2) what characterizes teachers’ competence to construct and teach enquiries, and 3) how this competence can be advanced within the framework of a professional learning community.

We present the theoretical context for a professional development seminar series called Doing Enquiry, and empirical samples and experiences from its implementation including enquiries designed and performed by the history teachers. Starting from the IDM-framework (Swan, Lee, & Grant, 2018), this seminar series focuses on the collaborative construction of enquiries. A hypothesis for the seminar series was that it would be crucial to provide an opportunity to take the role of the teacher as well as being positioned as a pupil in the construction phase of an enquiry. So far, preliminary results will reflect on the second and third question. The results indicate that some elements in history teachers’ competences, that professional development can enhance, are particularly important, e.g., a systematic approach to the planning, implementation and teaching of an enquiry; using a shared subject didactic knowledge within a professional community; and, deep academic knowledge. 

The aim of this article is to explore the processes of learning when students are engaged in intercultural historical learning (IHL), specifically how spaces of learning were, or were not, opened by students’ struggle to construct meaning. Since IHL is complex, involving both intrinsic disciplinary and extrinsic curricular goals, it is vital to understand this process in detail. The research questions address which aspects seem to activate intercultural learning, and which ones hinder or complicate it. The methodological approach employed was an instrumental, multisite case study where three teaching–learning sequences from two secondary classrooms were investigated. Here, the concepts of ‘decentring’ and ‘perspective recognition’, as aspects of IHL, were seen as threshold concepts. The threshold concepts framework – and specifically the idea of ‘liminal space’, a ‘place of potential learning’, the in-between moments in the learning process where students find themselves before ‘getting it’ – was applied as an analytical tool to uncover and describe specific moments in the selected teaching– learning sequences. Several liminal spaces were unpacked, and it transpired that ‘troublesomeness’ is an integral, potentially productive component when students navigate liminal space as a place for intercultural learning. ‘Barriers’ that obstructed learning, as well as possible ‘entry points’ where a student steps into a productive liminal space, were identified, as well as some major enabling breakthrough moments – ‘junctures’ – for IHL.

This paper outlines a conceptual framework in order to systematically discuss themeaning of intercultural learning in history education and how it could be advanced. Wedo so by bringing together theories of historical consciousness, intercultural competenceand postcolonial thinking. By combining these theories into one framework, we identifysome specific and critical aspects of historical learning that are relevant for today. Wehave constructed a matrix with three rows of narrative abilities intersecting with threecolumns of intercultural dimensions. This generates a matrix that consists of nine cells.By formulating a set of questions and answers for each cell, we outline learning applica-tions and demonstrate how the historical and intercultural concepts are mutually enrich-ing. The framework addresses two issues: firstly, the intercultural historical competencethat may result; and secondly, how it can be developed. This can be used by researchersto analyse the intercultural elements of historical learning, in schools and in society, andby educators to construct relevant learning activities.

Abstract

Title: History teaching and intercultural competence

This study takes as its starting point the relationship between the multicultural and globalised society and history as a school subject, and explores it theoretically as well as empirically. 

Intercultural historical competence, which is the main theoretical and analytical concept of the study, is developed from theories of narrative competence and theories of intercultural competence, and is positioned in the intersection between the two. Narrative competence describes historical consciousness as being characterised by three distinct sub-competencies, the competence of experience, the competence of interpretation and the competence of orientation. Historical learning is seen as the qualification of these competencies to be able to tell meaningful stories about our lives. 

The empirical case study explores how intercultural historical competence as a learning objective is interpreted and enacted in one history classroom. The enacted object of learning is regarded as a co-construction between the teacher, the pupils and historical narratives. This study explores how experiences and interpretations of the past are made and used in the work in the classroom. The question of what constitutes each narrative sub-competence is addressed and discussed in three empirical chapters respectively. The source material mainly consists of observations from a sequel of 25 history lessons in an upper secondary school

The empirical results show how different dimensions of each sub-competence contribute to what is possible to learn in relation to intercultural historical competence. One important dimension of the competence of experience is the employment of strategies of pluralism, deconstruction and counter-narratives to open up closed narratives. The competence of interpretation is strengthened by the use of second-order concepts as tools to qualify historical thinking. Furthermore, it is demonstrated how it is possible to practise the competence of orientation by giving pupils the opportunity to use historical narratives and historical tools to make sense of the present and to think about the future. One additional conclusion is that the planning process, when the learning objective is interpreted and framed into lessons and exercises, is decisive for what is possible for pupils to learn. Finally, it is stated that history as a school subject has the capacity to develop knowledge, skills and attitudes that are relevant in a multicultural and globalised society.

Key words: history teaching, historical learning, history education, intercultural competence, intercultural education, historical consciousness, upper secondary school, class room study, object of learning, learning objective, historical narrative.