E. Doyle Stevick

Europeanization in the ‘other’ Europe: writing the nation into ‘Europe’ education in Slovakia and Estonia

How is the tension between renewed nationalist and European narratives of belonging being unfolded in the curricula, discourse, and practice of civic education in Slovakia and Estonia. As two post‐socialist territories that were ‘reborn’ as independent nation‐states in the 1990s, Slovakia and Estonia were confronted with pressure to ‘Europeanize’. ‘Europeanization’ is intended to challenge doctrines of ethno‐cultural citizenship, and is expected to play a significant role within civic education. One might expect nationalists in these contexts to reject Europeanization and those with a more tolerant or cosmopolitan bent to embrace it. These different case studies show, however, that educators, curriculum developers, and textbook authors at the national level do not simply dismiss conceptions of Europe. Rather, two trends emerge: First, Europe is redefined geographically, allowing Estonia and Slovakia to assert that they are inherently European (as the borderland and the centre, respectively). Second, the meaning of Europe is contested through counter‐narratives about what constitutes Europeanness, and the concept of Europe is sometimes appropriated not to advance civic citizenship, but rather for exclusionary and nationalist ends.

Empirical and Normative Foundations of Holocaust education: Bringing research and advocacy into dialogue

A scenario of Holocaust education gone awry, which was constructed from a real event in one author’s experience, and a 2010 critique of Holocaust education by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, are used to explore key issues and dilemmas for Holocaust education. The authors argue that we should pursue clarity about the empirical and moral bases for advocacy, research, and teaching, which will protect the field from unrealistic expectations that are counterproductive for the subject. Bringing advocacy and research into dialogue will contribute to achieving clarity about both the purposes and the effects of Holocaust education. This article explores these tensions and suggests critical areas for further Holocaust education research, particularly regarding children’s emotional experience in Holocaust education; the practical tools educators need to respond effectively to inappropriate or problematic comments; how we can speak about groups without reinforcing totalizing and homogenizing identities that ideologues attempt to promote; and the ways that children in different cultural contexts construct meaning from the Holocaust. The article draws connections among the articles for this special double-issue.

The Globalizing Labor Market in Education: Teachers as Cultural Ambassadors or Agents of Institutional Isomorphism?.

Institutional isomorphists and other proponents of world culture theory argue that schools around the world are converging in many ways, whereas anthropologists and others question this conclusion, often arguing that local cultural differences belie superficial similarities. These viewpoints are not merely academic explanations of the spread and apparent convergence of education policies and practices around the world but are often present in policy and practice. The authors seek both to shed new light on these often-entrenched positions and to refocus the debate by considering the presence and influence of such views in the policies and practices of international teacher exchanges. In the context of the expanding global labor market for teachers, the authors consider the implicit theories underpinning international exchange policies and the ways in which the exchange teachers themselves make sense of these policies. In particular, we recognize that although extensive work has been done on the dynamics of policy borrowing, little attention has been paid to international exchange teachers as potential agents of isomorphism, adopting and disseminating practices at the local level. Paradoxically, the exchange policies construct a universal teacher who is interchangeable across national (and cultural) contexts, a view resonant with institutional isomorphists, while justifying the exchanges rhetorically on the basis of their value as a cultural exchange, a view more consistent with the culturalists. The teachers who participate, however—and who effectively self-select by their beliefs that such exchanges are possible—accept the interchangeability thesis and view such exchanges as a professional development opportunity.

Compliant Policy and Multiple Meanings: Conflicting Holocaust Discourses in Estonia

This chapter uses a sociocultural approach to analyse the formation and implementation of policy around Estonia’s Holocaust Day, a day of both commemoration for victims of the Holocaust and other crimes against humanity, and education about the Holocaust. It investigates both the multi-level development of the policy in light of external pressure (from foreign advocates and transnational groups including NATO and the Council of Europe) and the ways in which policy as normative discourse was constructed and its meanings negotiated between international sources, the national government, and educators. It draws attention to the multifaceted nature of discourse in a post-authoritarian context where power disparities further complicate an already complex transnational policy environment.

Epistemological Aspects of Holocaust Education: Between Ideologies and Interpretations

This chapter analyses the role of epistemology within the scholarship on Holocaust education. Epistemology deals with questions of what knowledge is, what counts as knowledge, the sources of knowledge, the different kinds of knowledge, and what we can know, or the boundaries of knowledge. It argues that researchers and practitioners of Holocaust education should engage with epistemological questions and their implications for teaching and learning about the Holocaust.

‘Can I borrow your glasses?’: a prescription for learning to see the cultural roots of identity terms and implicit categories through others’ lenses

Abstract Why is there so much confusion and conflict around common identity labels, a problem that extends well beyond any stereotypes that they may evoke? How do we escape the seeming paradox that we reject racism but still speak frequently of black and white? Who claims the power to determine or name others’ identities? The confusion and conflict about identity that play out on a surface level are often caused by starkly different but implicit understandings that operate beneath the surface. For example, terms like black, Jewish and Muslim may invoke several of our deeper conceptions or categories like race, culture, religion and ethnicity, and to varying degrees in different places. Critically, these categories themselves are culturally rooted. This article shows how our implicit categories can lead to both cross-cultural confusion and problematic misunderstandings in course content. Helping students to recognise and to understand the cultural roots of our implicit categories should be a deliberate learning outcome. This type of cultural understanding can be advanced significantly through guided reflection on experience and explicit instruction; in addition, some subjects and approaches – intercultural education, study abroad and Holocaust education among them – show particular promise for achieving this aim.

Internationalising Colleges of Education through the Dialectic of the Global and the Local? A Perspective and Possible Pathways from the American South.

Abstract Most schooling disproportionately emphasises national affairs at the expense of more global and local phenomena. Students’ resulting nation bias can be resituated both internationally and more locally by integrating internationalisation policies with place-based education approaches, which help to illuminate these different levels and, particularly, the extensive and complex interconnections between them. This task is particularly critical for colleges of education, where higher education internationalisation policies have the greatest potential to expand the perspectives of public school students. This article uses three cases drawn from the authors’ teaching and local service initiatives to illustrate the educational potential for future teachers and school administrators of working to broaden students’ perspectives through a ‘dialectic of the global and the local’.

Holocaust Education in the 21st Century: Curriculum, Policy and Practice

This chapter provides an overview of the contributions to the book, which marks the most extensive collection of Holocaust education research from around the world. The chapter highlights some important trends in Holocaust education, particularly its global expansion and the passing of the generation that witnessed the Shoah. Research is expanding, but little is documented about the work of major Holocaust education organizations, and more work across languages is needed. Expectations are exceptionally high, but are not rooted in empirical results. Rather, the seemingly powerful potential of Holocaust education begs for further study. Studies about the contested meanings of the Holocaust are particularly helpful.