History and Super Diversity

Abstract

Abstract:The article looks at the perspectives on history amongst adolescent children of different backgrounds living in inner-cities in England and builds on previous research in this area. The current article presents exploratory research which focuses on the views of particular groups of adolescents, namely those from long established settled immigrant communities; those from more recently arrived migrant and immigrant communities; and those from white indigenous communities. An inclusive, perspectival and dynamic approach towards history education is outlined and the underlying view of knowledge and implications for pedagogy of this approach discussed alongside comparisons with other approaches towards the subject. The exploratory work and analysis is used to generate a research agenda through which history for a super diverse society can be developed. Although the research was conducted in the English context, the issues it raises are pertinent elsewhere.

Whose history is this anyway? Social justice and a history curriculum

“…By contrast, the struggles of the white working class in furthering the cause of civil rights were absent from the curriculum, at least in the schools visited in this research (Hawkey, 2012). Ahonen (2005) discusses a similar issue when she examines how the new reform curricula in Estonia and Germany responded to the collapse of communism around 1990.…”

“…In terms of what is taught in classrooms, the evidence of the data collected in two small-scale studies (Hawkey and Prior, 2011;Hawkey, 2012) suggests that what is taught, or at least remembered by students, has changed. While children's overall understanding of the purposes of the history curriculum tends to be shaky (Haydn and Harris, 2010), the historical characters they identify or remember from their classroom experiences suggest that a theme of civil rights is focused on.…”

“…(Hawkey, 2012: 170) In terms of history's contribution to a sense of identity, there is evidence that this is different among different groups of students, with BME students expressing this link much more than their white indigenous peers do. In Hawkey's (2012) research, many, but not all, BME students made links between history and a sense of identity. Abdi, from Somalia, was not unusual in wanting to study the history of 'my people'.…”

“…Our school is such a different range of people and history helps us to all get on. (Hawkey, 2012) Similarly, Ahmed, in the same school, points to the value of studying history when he suggests that When you don't learn about stuff like history you tend to be narrow-minded -and only have one point of view -history teaches you to have many points of views. It should be compulsory -we would all have a broader view of the world.…”

“…It should be compulsory -we would all have a broader view of the world. (Hawkey, 2012) The research also asked students about the history that was learnt at home. In general terms, students from white indigenous backgrounds had little to say about the history they had learnt from home.…”