‘With these exhibits many interesting things can be learned about past times’: Playmobil’s History Class – representations, reflections and expectations

Abstract

In 2018, the toy manufacturer Playmobil launched a ‘History Class’ as an addition to its ‘Furnished School Building’. The materiality of this toy, and the selection of teaching media represented in coloured plastic (a blackboard with timeline, magnifying glass, parchment roll, stone axe, posters and other sources), convey an idea of history education based on hands-on learning, a variety of methods, original encounters and work with historical sources. This paper presents results of an international research project in which 12 children in Germany and Switzerland were interviewed with the help of this toy as a stimulus. The aim was to find out to what extent children are able to deconstruct the toy as a historical-cultural product. In addition, the interviews were intended to grasp the children’s views on the ideal teaching of history. The data are evaluated using grounded theory methodology. The results show that the pupils express clear wishes as to how history teaching should be structured. A critical distance to the toy was not taken.

Austrian teachers’ understanding and teaching of historical culture: challenges for the implementation of curriculum reforms in Austria

“…In any case, as understood in Austrian curricula, products of historical culture are to be seen as non-academic forms of engagement with the past (for example, films, computer games and comics), for which the curricula use the term 'historical representations' ('Geschichtsdarstellungen') or 'representations' ('Darstellungen'). Thus, in addition to the source-based approach, the curricula are also committed to the critical approach to historical culture that is widespread in German-speaking countries, according to which students should learn to question critically any historical representations which they encounter in their daily lives (Barsch and Mathis, 2020). Although there is also research where products of historical culture can become a source, and differentiation at a high level is no longer so easy, the curricula focus on the fundamental difference between a historical source, which dates from the respective historical period, and interpretations of the past (historical representations), which were created later.…”