There is a broad consensus among history educators that uses of history (Swedish historiebruk) are linked to historical consciousness and historical culture. (Nordgren, 2016; Olofsson, 2011, 2019) However, there is a lack of classroom studies on what such a relationship might look like in history teaching. (Eliasson et al., 2012; Thorp, 2018)  

This paper presents parts of my dissertation that aims to investigate how high school students learn and understand the phenomenon of uses of the history. The thesis is methodologically framed as an instrumental case study and, it is inspired by Educational Design Research. One class from theory-oriented and one class from practice-oriented program in Upper secondary school participated in the study. The intervention study consisted of six lessons revolving around the concept of uses of history and Black Lives Matter. The empirical data was collected in Autumn 2021 to Spring 2022, in form of students’ group interviews, individual teachers’ interviews and classroom observations. The overall data consists of five interviews, fifty assignments, audio recordings of the group discussions and teacher’s lectures, and five to six weeks fieldwork with each class. Moreover, the analysis is conducted abductively.  

Preliminary results from observations and interviews suggest that when studying uses of history through inquiry-learning, some conditions emerge helping students understand that history is both a social phenomenon and a discipline. The empirical analysis from the practice-oriented program suggests that students' understanding of uses of history has a spectrum of variation for example, boys and girls diverge in understanding both aspects of history. In addition, most of the boys were more inclined to understand perspectives that were closer to their European identity, but struggled to grasp the Afro-American’s perspectives.