Learning to Remember Slavery

Abstract

Drawing on the fields of education, memory, and cultural studies, this article argues that as important cultural memory products, government-sponsored museum education initiatives require the same attention that history textbooks receive. It investigates the performance of recent shifts in historical consciousness in the context of museum field trip sessions developed in England in tandem with the 2007 bicentenary of the abolition of the slave trade. Analysis of fieldwork data is presented in order to illustrate some of the complexities inherent in the way difficult histories are represented and taught to young people in the twenty-first century, particularly in relation to citizenship education.

Instructing students in history museums: A systematic literature review

“…Museum educators played central roles, but actively involved students as well through methods such as guided questioning, immersive sensory experiences, role plays or dress-ups. Other studies also observed combinations, most frequently socratic questioning methods and (sometimes informal) bidirectional interactions between learner and instructor (Ferrer-Fons & Rovira-Martínez, 2021;Spalding, 2011;Trofanenko, 2006Trofanenko, , 2014Uppin & Timoštšuk 2019;Wallace-Casey, 2016). Tigert et al (2021) added to this observation that the occurrence of learner-instructor interaction and learners' active participation in the instructional discourse was rather triggered if the instructor mainly used open questions, possibly preceded by closed questions as a 'lead-in' activity.…”

“…Harker and Badger (2015) and McCully, Weiglhofer and Bates (2021) examined the design of an exhibition and how its educational resources created learning opportunities, contextualising these through interviews with teachers and museum educators. Regarding the enactment of physical instruction, several studies observed learning sessions led by museum educators (Keenan, 2019;Savenije & de Bruijn, 2017), experienced teachers (Trofanenko, 2006(Trofanenko, , 2014 or by both together (Ferrer-Fons & Rovira-Martínez, 2021;Spalding, 2011;Wallace-Casey, 2016).…”

“…Four studies put central the consideration of multiple perspectives on national and colonial pasts, including affectiveemotional and subaltern perspectives (Keenan, 2019;Meeus et al, 2021;Trofanenko, 2014;McCully et al, 2021). Three studies examined how students were engaged in deconstructing historical narratives, such as stereotypical historical representations about slavery (Spalding, 2011), or the underlying master narrative in the museum (Trofanenko, 2006;Wallace-Casey, 2016). One study focused on how disciplinary goals (in this case historical empathy, the relationship between history and memory and multiple perspectives) related to civic educational goals, such as forming students into active, responsible and engaged citizens (Ferrer-Fons & Rovira-Martínez, 2021).…”

“…Extensive affective engagement and a major focus on the present can, according to various studies, lead to decontextualization, homogenization and oversimplification. Certainly sensitive historical topics, that evoke strong emotions and parallel contemporary events, risk to hinder a cognitive approach and understanding of the past event at stake (Spalding, 2011;Uppin & Timoštšuk, 2019). To effectively balance cognition and affect in relation to disciplinary thinking, scholars claim that an explicit emphasis on the distance between past and present in instructional practices enables students to make qualified claims about the present (or about contemporary issues) while making use of informed and contextualized historical narratives.…”

School trips to historical sites: students’ cognitive, affective and physical experiences from visits to Auschwitz

“…It has been suggested that the emotional experiences that accompany visits to such sites can hinder students' learning; however, the interplay between the cognitive, affective and physical dimensions of students' historical experiences in authentic learning contexts has not been explored fully yet (Flennegård and Mattsson, 2021;Nesfield, 2015). In research investigating visits to museums and historical sites, as well as the role that these sites play in teaching, questions about students' varying historical experiences are featured more prominently (see Marcus, 2007;Rohlf, 2015;Savenije et al, 2014;Spalding, 2011). It has been noted that the character of the narratives that students encounter during these visits is important, particularly the extent to which the narratives are either 'open' or 'closed'; that is, the extent to which they give students the opportunity to relate to them.…”