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Book cover for Holocaust Education open access

Publication date: 6 July 2020

DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/111.9781787355699

Number of pages: 238

Number of illustrations: 8

Holocaust Education

Contemporary challenges and controversies

Stuart Foster (Editor),  Andy Pearce (Editor),  Alice Pettigrew (Editor)

Teaching and learning about the Holocaust is central to school curriculums in many parts of the world. As a field for discourse and a body of practice, it is rich, multidimensional and innovative. But the history of the Holocaust is complex and challenging, and can render teaching it a complex and daunting area of work.

Drawing on landmark research into teaching practices and students’ knowledge in English secondary schools, Holocaust Education: Contemporary challenges and controversies provides important knowledge about and insights into classroom teaching and learning. It sheds light on key challenges in Holocaust education, including the impact of misconceptions and misinformation, the dilemmas of using atrocity images in the classroom, and teaching in ethnically diverse environments. Overviews of the most significant debates in Holocaust education provide wider context for the classroom evidence, and contribute to a book that will act as a guide through some of the most vexed areas of Holocaust pedagogy for teachers, teacher educators, researchers and policymakers.

Praise for Holocaust Education

‘This book will stimulate educators’ thinking about the challenges of teaching the Holocaust. …I would recommend [Stuart Foster’s] chapter [as] required reading for student history teachers, and teachers of the Holocaust. …Karayianni’s chapter on teaching about the Holocaust in the primary school provides empirical research in an under-researched area. …Lenga’s words of caution are accompanied by considered practical recommendations to support teachers in their duty of care to their pupils. These will be welcomed by educators of the Holocaust, Human Rights and Genocide alike.’
Educational Review

‘… A commanding exploration of the complex issues surrounding Holocaust education in the twentieth-century.’Holocaust Studies: A Journal of culture and History

Teaching and learning about the Holocaust is central to school curriculums in many parts of the world. As a field for discourse and a body of practice, it is rich, multidimensional and innovative. But the history of the Holocaust is complex and challenging, and can render teaching it a complex and daunting area of work.

Drawing on landmark research into teaching practices and students’ knowledge in English secondary schools, Holocaust Education: Contemporary challenges and controversies provides important knowledge about and insights into classroom teaching and learning. It sheds light on key challenges in Holocaust education, including the impact of misconceptions and misinformation, the dilemmas of using atrocity images in the classroom, and teaching in ethnically diverse environments. Overviews of the most significant debates in Holocaust education provide wider context for the classroom evidence, and contribute to a book that will act as a guide through some of the most vexed areas of Holocaust pedagogy for teachers, teacher educators, researchers and policymakers.

List of figures
Preface
Acknowledgements

1. Challenges, issues and controversies: The shapes of ‘Holocaust education’ in the early twenty-first century
Andy Pearce

2. To what extent does the acquisition of historical knowledge really matter when studying the Holocaust?
Stuart Foster

3. Learning the lessons of the Holocaust: A critical exploration
Arthur Chapman

4. ‘They were just following orders’: Relationships between Milgram’s obedience experiments and conceptions of Holocaust perpetration
Rebecca Hale

5. Look before you leap: Teaching about the Holocaust in primary schools
Eleni Karayianni

6. British Responses to the Holocaust: Student and teacher perspectives on the development of a new classroom resource
Tom Haward

7. ‘I know it’s not really true, but it might just tell us …’ The troubled relationship between The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas and understanding about the Holocaust
Darius Jackson

8. Antisemitism and Holocaust education
Andy Pearce, Stuart Foster and Alice Pettigrew

9. Muslim students and the Holocaust in England’s secondary schools: ‘Reluctant learners’ or constructed controversies?
Alice Pettigrew

10. Seeing things differently: The use of atrocity images in teaching about the Holocaust
Ruth-Anne Lenga

Index

DOI: 10.14324/111.9781787355699

Number of pages: 238

Number of illustrations: 8

Publication date: 06 July 2020

PDF ISBN: 9781787355699

EPUB ISBN: 9781787357983

Hardback ISBN: 9781787357976

Paperback ISBN: 9781787357969

‘… A commanding exploration of the complex issues surrounding Holocaust education in the twentieth-century.’
Holocaust Studies: A Journal of culture and History

‘This book will stimulate educators’ thinking about the challenges of teaching the Holocaust. …I would recommend [Stuart Foster’s] chapter [as] required reading for student history teachers, and teachers of the Holocaust. …Karayianni’s chapter on teaching about the Holocaust in the primary school provides empirical research in an under-researched area. …Lenga’s words of caution are accompanied by considered practical recommendations to support teachers in their duty of care to their pupils. These will be welcomed by educators of the Holocaust, Human Rights and Genocide alike.’
Educational Review

Listen to the authors of Holocaust Education

Alice Pettigrew discusses Holocaust Education on the Research for the Real World podcast


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