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A central goal of civic and multicultural education is preparing young people to participate in deliberatively informed action on important social issues. In order to achieve this goal, educators need to cultivate young people's innate but partial 'sprouts' of benevolence, which are rooted in feelings of empathy and compassion. Without a sense of benevolence, students are unlikely to be motivated to deliberate and take action on the needs of others. Consequently, curriculum related to public issues should begin by engaging students with knowledge of other people's lives and concrete circumstances. By encountering rich and emotionally compelling accounts of the lives of others, students' sense of benevolence can be extended beyond the people and situations they know best. This forms the basis for subsequent curriculum encounters with differing perspectives and worldviews, as well as with structural causes of social issues and potential implications of civic action taken to address them.

This paper addresses the role of history education in developing a shared sense of identity in modern democracies. It does so by presenting findings from research into children's ideas about history in the United States and Northern Ireland, two settings that share important political and social characteristics with Canada and other pluralist countries. In the United States, the history curriculum revolves around developing a unified national identity, and it provides few opportunities for students to examine diversity within or outside the country. In Northern Ireland, schools avoid issues of identity and thus do little to help students move beyond the bonds of their own political/religious communities. A more productive way of incorporating identity into the history curriculum would involve attention to those events in a nation's past that have promoted pluralism and democracy.

Background: Research on historical understanding has sometimes depicted adolescents and adults as either appropriating or resisting particular narrative accounts, and resistance seems to be especially common when school-based narratives differ from those encountered outside school. In Northern Ireland, however, school history does not present an alternative narrative to community-based histories, but takes a different approach altogether; school history represents an evidence-based, analytic subject that emphasizes multiple perspectives and avoids connections to contemporary identifications or political positions. Purpose: In this study, we sought to understand both how young people in Northern Ireland approached historical information in school and how they made sense of conflicting perspectives on the past. Research Design and Participants: Using qualitative, task-based interviews, we interviewed 253 secondary students, approximately equal numbers of whom had completed each of the 3 required years of historical study; these interviews included students of both genders and from differing school types in a variety of regions within Northern Ireland. Findings: We found that these students had experienced history in more complicated ways than has been evident in most previous research. They had learned about the past in a variety of formal and informal settings, and they navigated among these multiple sources in a conscious attempt to refine and extend their historical understanding as they followed up on interests initiated in one setting by seeking out information elsewhere. Although some students simply assimilated this information into dominant community narratives, most were aware that such narratives can be used for contemporary political purposes, and they appreciated that school history encouraged a more complete and balanced historical perspective, particularly by exposing them to the motivations and experiences of the other community. Even as they sought expanded historical viewpoints, however, they were unwilling to abandon the political commitments of their communities, and they sought greater contemporary relevance for history than they were likely to encounter in school. Conclusions: These students thus were not simply appropriating or resisting particular historical narratives; they were engaged in a more complex process that involved developing internally persuasive discourse as they drew from multiple historical discourses in an attempt to form their own point of view on the region's troubled past. Implications: This research suggests that students in Northern Ireland and elsewhere might benefit from a curriculum that attends more directly to their active construction of historical meaning and supports them in constructing critical perspectives on the contemporary relevance of the past.

Background/Context: Over the past quarter-century, many historians, politicians, and educators have argued for an increase in the amount of history taught in schools, for a clear separation of history and social studies, and for an emphasis on disciplinary structures and norms as the proper focus for the subject. Unfortunately, discussions of history education too often rest on the problematic belief that the academic discipline can provide direction for the nature of the subject in general education. Description of Prior Research: Throughout much of the 20th century, U.S. history educators made common cause with other social educators to promote principled and critical understandings of society. Both groups stood in opposition to calls for more nationalist views of history education. In the mid-1980s, however, this situation began to change, as a coalition of historians, educational researchers, and political pressure groups promoted history as a subject distinct from and independent of the larger realm of the social studies. This new coalition has been unable to avoid conflicts over the selection of content, however, and approaches favored by nationalists often clash with the more critical and inclusive perspectives of historians. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: In this article, we trace the relationship between historians and other social educators during the 20th century and explore how the forces favoring a realignment of history and social studies coalesced in the mid-1980s. We argue that this coalition has led to an unproductive emphasis on history as a "separate subject" and a resulting lack of attention to the goals of history in general education. Research Design: This analytic essay draws on curriculum theory, historical sources, and contemporary cognitive research to outline the changing relationships between historians and other social educators and to examine the limitations of a purportedly disciplinary curriculum. Conclusions/Recommendations: The academic discipline of history cannot, by itself, provide guidance for content selection because educators face restrictions of time and coverage that are not relevant in the context of academic historical research. In addition, educators must concern themselves with developing students' conceptual understanding, and this necessarily requires drawing on other social science disciplines. If students are to develop the insights that historians have most often promoted for the subject, historians must return to their place within the conversation of social studies education.

Home geography was the principal means by which primary students in the United States learned about the social world from the 1890s through the 1920s. This subject was rooted in the German subject of Heimatkunde, and it reflected the changing nature of the academic discipline of geography in the late nineteenth century. Its content focused on basic human activities, starting with the experiences closest to students and gradually expanding outward. This curriculum was fundamentally similar to that which would later be known as "expanding horizons," and an analysis of its development calls into question several assumptions about the history of social studies and its relationship to other subjects. Most notably, it demonstrates that the elementary curriculum did not have a single invention or founding but evolved gradually out of previous patterns and was influenced by developments both in the United States and Europe. In addition, the relationship between home geography and the university discipline makes it clear that at the primary level, the transition to "social studies" did not involve replacing earlier, disciplinary content with the integrated study of the social world, but merely reflected a new name for a curriculum that was already well in place. (Contains 11 notes.)

Although the social realist position is grounded in the fundamentally important observation that schools must engage students with knowledge that deepens and extends their understanding, rather than simply reproduce what they learn in everyday life, this approach commits a fatal flaw by equating such 'powerful knowledge' with the work of academic disciplines—a position also taken by many scholars working outside the social realist tradition. The social realist and related disciplinary approaches mischaracterize the cohesiveness and boundedness of disciplines; they evade the culturally, historically, and institutionally situated nature of disciplines and dismiss the extensive knowledge produced outside them; and they ignore the societal purposes of knowledge within general education, which necessarily differ from those of academic disciplines. In a world beset by social, political, and environmental crises, schools must engage students with systematic knowledge, but that knowledge must be selected and organized on some basis other than a simplified portrait of imagined academic disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes the case for including critical harmony as a complement to justice within civic education. The concept of harmony is significant for civic education because it acknowledges the crucial role that relationships play in society—an important moral, ethical, and social ideal in many cultures around the world. Harmony must also incorporate a critical dimension, however, by embracing conflict and tension, valuing difference and diversity, and striving for balance among divergent voices. By using examples of public issues such as housing and gender identity to illustrate the relational dimension of public policy, this paper argues that the concept of critical harmony can contribute to a more comprehensive foundation for students' deliberation of civic issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Civic education historically has focused primarily on preparing students to influence politics and government policy. Less attention has been paid to the curricular implications of civil society, even though it is a crucial site for deliberatively informed action and one of the primary ways in which students will enter the public sphere. This article highlights the importance of civil society as a component of civic education and critically examines why it has been neglected or disparaged by many civic educators. The article also emphasizes the role of formal curricula in systematically preparing students to critically engage in civil society as they work toward social justice; this preparation involves acquainting students with the knowledge necessary to evaluate the work of such organizations, as well providing students with experience in the kinds of collaborative deliberation that takes place there. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central goal of civic and multicultural education is preparing young people to participate in deliberatively informed action on important social issues. In order to achieve this goal, educators need to cultivate young people's innate but partial 'sprouts' of benevolence, which are rooted in feelings of empathy and compassion. Without a sense of benevolence, students are unlikely to be motivated to deliberate and take action on the needs of others. Consequently, curriculum related to public issues should begin by engaging students with knowledge of other people's lives and concrete circumstances. By encountering rich and emotionally compelling accounts of the lives of others, students' sense of benevolence can be extended beyond the people and situations they know best. This forms the basis for subsequent curriculum encounters with differing perspectives and worldviews, as well as with structural causes of social issues and potential implications of civic action taken to address them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Home geography was the principal means by which primary students in the United States learned about the social world from the 1890s through the 1920s. This subject was rooted in the German subject of Heimatkunde, and it reflected the changing nature of the academic discipline of geography in the late nineteenth century. Its content focused on basic human activities, starting with the experiences closest to students and gradually expanding outward. This curriculum was fundamentally similar to that which would later be known as "expanding horizons," and an analysis of its development calls into question several assumptions about the history of social studies and its relationship to other subjects. Most notably, it demonstrates that the elementary curriculum did not have a single invention or founding but evolved gradually out of previous patterns and was influenced by developments both in the United States and Europe. In addition, the relationship between home geography and the university discipline makes it clear that at the primary level, the transition to "social studies" did not involve replacing earlier, disciplinary content with the integrated study of the social world, but merely reflected a new name for a curriculum that was already well in place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study reports results of an empirical investigation of secondary students' conceptions of history and identity in Northern Ireland. Interviews with 253 students from a variety of backgrounds indicate that they initially identify with a wide range of historical themes, but that these identifications narrow as they study the required national curriculum during the first 3 years of secondary school. Often, they draw selectively from the formal curriculum in order to support their developing identification with the history of their own political/religious communities. This process is most apparent among boys, at predominantly Protestant schools, and in schools located in areas of conflict. These findings suggest that to address history's role in ongoing community conflict, educators may need to challenge more directly the beliefs and assumptions held by students of varied backgrounds, as well as to provide a clearer alternative to the partisan histories encountered elsewhere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports findings from a study of elementary children's understanding of historical time. The research, conducted in Northern Ireland, involved interviews with 117 students (most in pairs), ages 6-12, in which they were asked to arrange historical pictures in chronological order and to explain their arrangements. Children were familiar with key aspects of historical time and were able to draw on a range of relevant background knowledge, but their understanding was not based on chronological historical narratives, nor did it depend on acquaintance with conventional dating systems. Instead, students relied on 2 effective cultural tools (use of factual information about material history, and their own experiences) and 2 ineffective ones (looking for examples of progress or development, and anchoring and adjustment). These findings suggest that educators should not wait for students to "develop" an understanding of historical time but should give children the chance to learn about life during a variety of historical periods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents several essays that analyzed the relationships among research, instruction and public policy regarding the history curriculum. The essay "Contested Terrain: Public Policy Research, and the History Curriculum" points to issues for policy makers, researcher, and teacher educators. In "Negotiating History Landscape," the students are encouraged to question historical interpretations long held sacrosanct.