Category Archives: History Education Research Journal

UCL Press is delighted to share a call for papers for a forthcoming special series in the International Journal of Development Education and Global Learning (IJDEGL): ‘Reimagining teachers’ work and teacher education for our futures – Global perspectives at the intersection of change, hope and crisis.’ Find out more in the full call.

Edited by Arto Kallioniemi, Hannele Niemi and Marianna Vivitsou, this series will explore how teacher education can respond to the profound challenges of our time—climate change, geopolitical instability, technological transformation—while fostering hope and agency for a sustainable future.

Building on UNESCO’s landmark report Reimagining our futures together: A new social contract for education (2021) and the ‘Reimagining Teachers and Teacher Education’ conference (June 2024), the series invites contributions that examine how education can repair injustices and transform learning ecosystems. The Editors welcome theoretical and empirical research addressing questions including:

• What do teaching/learning environments and ecosystems that support engagement with global issues look like?
• What pedagogical thinking best serves engagement with global issues in formal and informal teaching/learning environments and ecosystems?
• What methods and practices best support the purposes of global teaching and learning ecosystems?
• What pedagogical methods and practices best support the purposes of global teaching and learning ecosystems (e.g., pedagogies for relationality, pedagogies of love, liberation pedagogies, wild pedagogies, speculative pedagogies and so on).
• What principles and elements frame processes of co-creation? What are the roles of learners, communities, and other stakeholders in processes of co-creation?
• What is the new role of technology in teaching and learning about global issues?
• In what ways can inclusiveness and disability studies serve the purposes of teaching and learning about global issues? What approaches, methods and practices should be developed for inclusiveness and disability studies?
• What approaches would best serve the purposes of teaching and learning of global and local realities?

Key dates:

• Expressions of interest (300–500 word abstract): 17 October 2025
• Full paper submission: 9 January 2026

Submissions should include an abstract, up to six references, and a short biographical statement for each author. Please send expressions of interest to:

• Arto Kallioniemi (arto.j.kallioniemi@helsinki.fi)
• Hannele Niemi (hannele.niemi@helsinki.fi)
• Marianna Vivitsou (marianna.vivitsou@helsinki.fi)

This is an exciting opportunity to contribute to a global conversation on the future of education. For full details, visit the full call for proposals.

In a world shaped by competing narratives and rapid change, how we understand and teach history has never been more important. History Education Research Journal (HERJ) invites scholars, educators, and researchers to contribute to a new open access special series set for publication from mid-2026: Narrative Competence, History & Responsibility. All articles will be Diamond open access, and will not attract APCs.

Why Narrative Competence Matters

We live in a “multi-storied” world, where young people encounter diverse and often conflicting narratives about the past, present, and future. In this context, developing narrative competence—the ability to critically engage with, construct, and deconstruct historical narratives—is essential for fostering democratic values, addressing injustices, and resisting extremist ideologies.

This special series seeks to reimagine how history education can cultivate narrative competence, drawing on rich traditions in history didactics and educational theory. It aims to move beyond viewing history as a static story or purely as an epistemological exercise, and instead explore how historical narratives shape civic life, identity, and agency.

Themes and Questions

Contributors are invited to engage with a wide range of questions, including:

• What kinds of engagement with the past can help to foster an open democratic political culture, address enduring injustices, and / or counter ultra nationalist, neo-fascist and other extremist political tendencies?
• What kinds of historical narrations or other types of historical representation can be considered responsible and irresponsible in epistemological, ethical, ontological and other respects.
• How history education can contribute to refiguring historical agency, and its representation in temporal and other narrative respects?
• How history education can contribute to the refiguration and use of historical narratives, as practical resources in the everyday life of our democracies?
• How narratives are appropriated and used in various socio-cultural and political contexts and how new media of narrative generation and dissemination (including AI) may be impacting our societies, cultures and polities?
• What can cognitive and sociocultural research in History Education tell us about the learning processes – and barriers to learning – impacting critical narrative sense-making, and the processes of meaning construction, deconstruction and reconstruction that it involves.
• The uses and limitations of critical historical knowledge and understanding as tools for informing civic and other forms of action in the present.

Submission Details

• Expressions of interest due: 31 August 2025
• Full paper submissions due: 27 February 2026

To express interest, please submit a 300–500 word abstract, up to six references, and a 50-word biographical statement for each author. Submissions should be sent via email to the series editors:

• Arthur Chapman (arthur.chapman@ucl.ac.uk)
• Marília Gago (mgago@ie.uminho.pt)
• Stéphane Lévesque (stephane.levesque@uottawa.ca)
• Kenneth Nordgren (kenneth.nordgren@kau.se)
• Flávia Varella (flavia.varella@ufsc.br)

About the Journal

History Education Research Journal (HERJ) is a leading international, fully open-access, peer-reviewed journal that focuses on the global significance and impact of history education. It provides a platform for scholarly discourse on contemporary issues, policies, and practices in history education, drawing on a wide range of research methodologies. For more information on submission guidelines and to read the full call for proposals, please visit the HERJ website.

As January comes to a close, the UCL Press journals team is delighted to highlight a collection of popular and highly cited articles from journals including London Review of Education, International Journal of Social Pedagogy, History Education Research Journal and UCL Open Environment.

As a mission oriented not-for-profit university press that publishes across the academic spectrum, we uphold our commitment to open science and scholarship by making all of our journals’ high-quality research as freely available. Our journals do not levy any publication fees; we believe that global access to knowledge should be shared, read and cited by all. In addition, the journals use a diamond Open Access publication model that removes the financial barriers for both readers and authors, further broadening the promotion of research, knowledge sharing, and dissemination of impactful articles.

This post celebrates some of our journals programme’s most popular and highly cited publications and is testament to the rigorous efforts of our editors’, reviewers’, and authors’ contribution to their fields.

London Review of Education

Decolonisation of curriculum: the case of language education policy in Nepal
While decolonisation is usually discussed in relation to countries that were formally colonised, countries that have not been formally colonised have also faced challenges related to colonialism. In this case, it is worth considering whether decolonial theory has more widespread applicability to respond to global challenges faced in the postcolonial era. This article documents the historical trajectories of colonisation and decolonisation of the school curriculum in Nepal.

Research-informed teacher education, teacher autonomy and teacher agency: the example of Finland
This article highlights how Finland’s rigorous, research-based teacher education system fosters autonomous and agentic teachers, contributing to the country’s strong performance in international assessments like PISA. This article argues that the rigorous research focus of Finnish teacher education cultivates autonomous and agentic teachers.

Education, decolonisation and international development at the Institute of Education (London): a historical analysis
This article reviews the process of building relationships around education and international development at the IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society. Looking at how hierarchies linked to colonialism were inscribed in initial structures and unevenly and disparately contested by students, staff and a range of interlocutors around the world over one hundred years, authors ask, how does this history shape practice in the present and perspectives on the future?

Read more about the London Review of Education.

International Journal of Social Pedagogy

German social pedagogy and social work: the academic discourses mapping a changing historical relationship
The term ‘social pedagogy’ was coined in Germany, a country which also provided fertile ground for the early development of social work. This article reconstructs the evolution of the two disciplines, which existed alongside one another for much of the twentieth century.

Citizenship to (counter)terrorism: the need to de-securitise the Norwegian education system and create space for democratic resilience
Education for citizenship has been the subject of growing policy and research attention since the beginning of the twenty-first century. Yet, alongside conventional assumptions that school can help young learners develop socio-political attitudes that support democratic attitudes and behaviours, there are growing political expectations that educators will actively prevent terrorism. This article examines how precautionary counterterrorism logic can cause harmful and exclusionary pedagogical practices.

Read more about the International Journal of Social Pedagogy

Research for All

Collaboration between doctoral researchers and patient research partners: reflections and considerations
A key principle of working in collaboration with patient research partners (patients contributing to research projects as team members, rather than as participants) is that they should be equal partners with researchers and health professionals. This presents a challenge in doctoral research, where students are expected to own their research decisions. This paper provides practical suggestions for working effectively with patient partners throughout the doctoral process and offers suggestions for formalising the process to support both parties to ensure that patient partners’ involvements are not tokenistic.

How can impact strategies be developed that better support universities to address twenty-first-century challenges?
To better address twenty-first-century challenges, research institutions often develop and publish research impact strategies but, as a tool, impact strategies are poorly understood. This study provides the first formal analysis of impact strategies from the UK, Canada, Australia, Denmark, New Zealand and Hong Kong, China, and from independent research institutes.

Read more about Research for All.

History Education Research Journal

Teaching and learning the legacy of residential schools for remembering and reconciliation in Canada
In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada released a Final Report containing 94 Calls to Action. Operating in parallel to these reforms, social studies curricula across Canada have undergone substantial revisions. As a result, historical thinking is now firmly embedded within the curricula of most provinces and territories. This article represents an exploration of an emerging field of debate around whether historical thinking and Reconciliation are compatible.

Why is ‘powerful knowledge’ failing to forge a path to the future of history education?
The concept of ‘powerful knowledge’ has become extremely influential in discussions about curriculum in England over the last ten years. However, the concept seems to have done little to revolutionise curriculum design and, in some cases, it has led to curricular narrowing and a focus on an increasingly nationalistic narrative in history. This paper explores these claims and finds that key voices in education in England and history education, specifically, have misunderstood and misapplied the concept of powerful knowledge.

Read more about the History Education Research Journal.

UCL Open Environment

A short history of the successes and failures of the international climate change negotiations
Over the last 35 years, international negotiations have sought to address climate change, leading to notable successes, including the 2015 Paris Agreement to limit global temperature rise to well below 2°C and pursue efforts to stay below 1.5°C. This article reviews past progress and future goals for the UNFCCC/COP meetings.

Rethinking entrenched narratives about protected areas and human wellbeing in the Global South
Attempts to link human development and biodiversity conservation goals remain a constant feature of policy and practice related to protected areas. Underlying these approaches are narratives that simplify assumptions, shaping how interventions are designed and implemented. This paper examines evidence for five key narratives.

Read more highly cited articles from UCL Open Environment

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A full version of this article originally published on the UCL Press journals website.

To celebrate International Day of Education 2025, UCL Press’s journals team share a range of essential articles on this year’s theme: AI in education. This article originally appeared on the UCL Press journals site.

With Google searches for ‘AI’ skyrocketing in 2023 and the global AI market size projected to reach US$243.70bn in 2025, artificial intelligence has officially entered the zeitgeist of the 2020s. AI is reshaping how human society fundamentally functions, and the role of AI across industries will only continue to expand as AI-driven systems become increasingly sophisticated. It’s no surprise, then, that UNESCO has dedicated the International Day of Education 2025 to AI, inspiring reflections on the possibilities, challenges, and ethical responsibilities that this technology elicits in the schooling of children, youth, and adults worldwide.

The United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 24 January as International Day of Education to celebrate quality education as a conduit for peace, equality, and wellbeing for every community, everywhere. UNESCO recognises education as a human right and public responsibility, and International Day of Education is an opportunity to engage with education frameworks as a collective and mobilise resources to drive the charge toward educational equity. In the spirit of knowledge sharing, UCL Press’s journals team presents a range of articles on AI in education, along with supplementary materials to enrich your understanding of education policy.

Understanding AI and Automation in Education

From alleviating administrative duties and tailoring curriculums to computerising admission processes and informing resource allocation, AI can be – and is – used in learning spaces to enhance the educational experience in a way that still honours the unique and essential input of human educators. Uses of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning in Systematic Reviews of Education Research by Henrik Karlstrøm in the London Review of Education explores how AI and machine learning can improve systematic reviews in education research. By automating processes like literature retrieval, content analysis, and bibliometric mapping, AI can help manage the growing volume and complexity of academic publications.

Karlstrøm also acknowledges that while these technologies enhance efficiency, careful validation and understanding are crucial to address challenges related to transparency, reliability, and potential over-reliance on automated systems. A special feature in the same journal, ‘AI in Education’, brings together articles featuring a diverse perspective on issues related to adjusting to the challenges and opportunities brought by AI in the field of education. Leaton Gray’s article Artificial Intelligence in Schools: Towards a Democratic Future further highlights the need for greater transparency, regulatory frameworks, and collaborative development to ensure AI systems empower students and educators rather than reinforcing commercial interests and systemic biases. These insights underscore the need for balance and ethical analysis in the adoption of AI-enabled machines.

Ensuring the responsible use of AI in education is a self-sustaining cycle. Developing a mass awareness of AI’s value and limitations depends on learning pathways that teach AI as a supplementary tool and not a definitive solution. Foregrounding trusted research is crucial for facilitating informed discussions and critically examining the profound impact of AI on the future of education.

Looking Beyond AI: Other Educational Resources

Although the spotlight is on AI this International Day of Education, considering other pedagogical themes is essential to developing a nuanced understanding of empowered education systems. Articles from the International Journal of Social Pedagogy and the International Journal of Development Education and Global Learning explore how education can tackle broader societal challenges. Felton et al.’s Civic Action on Social Media demonstrates how fostering digital media literacy can prepare students for civic engagement in a digital age. Similarly, Wimpenny et al.’s work investigates how collaborative online international learning can deepen students’ understanding of global citizenship education.

History Education Research Journal examines the obligation institutions have to decolonise their teaching practices and socially support young people, such as preparing school students to respond to climate crises, engaging with Indigenous scholarship to enhance history education, and embracing scaffolding and translanguaging as pedagogical approaches in teaching history. UCL Open Environment also features research on environmental education, providing a platform for student perspectives on climate change and sustainability education in England and reflecting on the important contribution that all subjects can make towards developing interdisciplinary, complex understandings of the environmental emergency.

Finally, the Architecture_MPS journal offers a critical perspective on higher education. The Death and Life of UK Universities and the Cultural Spaces They Consume critiques how neoliberalism and corporatisation have shaped British universities, urging educators to reclaim these institutions as spaces for cultural and academic growth.

Join the Conversation

Thank you for celebrating International Day of Education with us! Explore these featured articles to learn more about preserving human agency in education in a technologically advancing world.

From December 2025, History Education Research Journal will begin publishing a new thematic area investigating the relationship between generative artificial intelligence and history education. This new theme aims to investigate what the widespread use of generative AI means for history education.

Assessment forms an integral part of history education at all levels, throughout school, college and university. The process of assessing and being assessed occupies much time and attention of staff and students alike. In a recent article in History Education Research Journal, Sarah Holland uses practitioner research to advocate rethinking assessment in history, and asks how ‘creative’ or ‘innovative’ approaches to assessment can make this a more effective and meaningful process. In this post, she explains more.

My article Rethinking Assessment explores the potential of innovative and creative assessments in history and the importance of diversifying assessment. Assessment forms an integral part of history education at all levels but how often do we stop and reflect on how and why we assess history and consider alternative approaches? The aim of my article is to share my insights into alternative forms of history assessment and encourage others to rethink assessment. It adds a subject specific perspective to the research on alternative forms of assessment. The focus is history assessment in UK Higher Education, but the context, discussion and recommendations have wider relevance extending beyond disciplinary, educational sector and geographical boundaries. It should be relevant to anyone involved with history assessment and those interested in making assessment a more meaningful process.

I argue that alternative forms of assessment matter, especially in text-heavy subjects such as history, as they provide a different way to assess historical skills and assess different ways to communicate historical research. The article begins by establishing the rationale for rethinking assessment, including history specific perspectives. It then focuses on a case study of creative and public history assessments in Higher Education using practitioner research. This includes student perceptions and experiences of these assessments within a history degree. It concludes by exploring the wider implications of the research. Alternative and innovative approaches can make assessment a more effective and meaningful process within a subject specific context, helping to develop historical knowledge, understanding and skills, transferable skills and different ways of communicating historical research. The evidence demonstrates students value having different ways to be assessed, enabling them to develop or demonstrate the same core historical skills as other assessments, together with transferable skills and attributes. Many students reflected that this assessment enabled them to better understand the module content, be more engaged and demonstrate what they knew and understood more effectively.

Providing space to rethink assessment in subject specific contexts is crucial. Alternative assessment won’t be everyone’s preferred choice and nor should it simply replace existing assessment types to become the dominant mode of assessment. However, as part of a varied assessment diet, these assessments can foster curiosity and develop a wide range of historical competencies and transferable skills.

Publishing my research in the History Education Research Journal was an opportunity to provide space to rethink assessment and encourage conversations between universities and schools to shape the future of history assessment. As an open access journal focused on history education with an international readership, HERJ provides an excellent opportunity to engage with practitioners in different contexts.

Rethinking assessment: the potential of ‘innovative’ or ‘creative’ assessments in history by Sarah Holland (University of Nottingham, UK) is published in History Education Research journal, volume 21.

About the author

Sarah Holland is Associate Professor in History at the University of Nottingham. She is a Senior Fellow of Advance HE and Co-Convenor of History UK. Sarah is currently leading two History UK working groups: Assessment and Collaborations between schools and universities, and the History UK Disability and History project.

This post originally appeared on the History Education Research Journal blog, and can be read here.

Maren Tribukait’s recent article in History Education Research Journal asks how the topic of contemporary right-wing extremism is approached in German educational media, and how it is linked to the Nazi era. In this post, she explains what she learnt.

There has been a lot of discussion on whether it is possible to learn from history – especially from the abysses of the 20th century. In the current political situation, this question seems to be more relevant than ever as quite a few people seem to have forgotten about the era of National Socialism and fascism. Although there might be a lot of reasons for this, I wondered whether the pedagogical approaches in history education could also be problematic and if there might still be ways to learn from history. Therefore, I investigated the connections that are drawn between the Nazi era and contemporary right-wing extremism in current history education in Germany. In my paper, I looked at history textbooks, but I also discovered a digital game, Hidden Codes, that approaches the topic in an innovative way.

Concerning the structure of textbooks, I found out that only 16 out of 28 history textbook series for the lower secondary level covered the topic of contemporary right-wing extremism; and almost all of these 16 textbooks placed the topic at the end of the chapter about National Socialism, usually presenting it as a lasting legacy. This textbook structure may have two effects: first, when today’s right-wing extremism is locked away as a problem of the Nazi past, it cannot be explained and understood in the context of contemporary history. And, second, it contributes to a ‘polished’ narrative about unified Germany as the topic does not resurface again in the respective chapter.

As to the pedagogical approaches to the topic, I identified predominantly two, the moral response and the analytical approach. The moral response approach tends to simplify today’s right-wing extremism as a phenomenon of the fringes, it also prescribes students how to think and judge about it. The analytic approach, on the other hand, characterizes right-wing extremism in a more nuanced way as an anti-democratic, illiberal and violent political movement with a modern face while giving students more room to explore the phenomenon by themselves. Interestingly, the game Hidden Codes followed an entirely different approach by focusing on problem-solving: as girl or boy at a new school the player has to decide how to react when one girl turns out to be right-wing extremist. The game aims to convey a complex picture of right-wing extremism through its story and offers empowering subject positions to the players.

Teaching about the Nazi era and the Holocaust will remain important. But we have known for some time that it does not work directly as prevention of right-wing extremism. Since the Nazi past is moving further away for the younger generations, we need to pay more attention to the present and the lifeworlds of the students, which are not only shaped by the ‘Age of Extremes’ (Eric Hobsbawm), but also by the immediate, post-1989 past.

This article originally appeared on the History Education Research Journal blog. History education as prevention: the topic of right-wing extremism in German educational media by Maren Tribukait (Leibniz Institute for Educational Media, Georg Eckert Institute, Braunschweig, Germany) is published in History Education Research Journal, volume 21.

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Maren Tribukait joined the Leibniz Institute for Educational Media at the Georg Eckert Institute in Braunschweig, Germany in 2013 and works in research  and knowledge transfer. She leads the Teaching in a Mediatised World research team and conducts research into the changes occurring in schools as a result of digital networks and increasing political polarisation. She also coordinates the Digital Lab, where researchers, education practitioners and media developers can meet to exchange ideas, analyse digital practices and test innovative didactic approaches.