Teaching and Learning War Research Network: Education and Modern Conflict in an International Comparative Perspective

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The Teaching and Learning War research network brings together EU and international researchers and stakeholders, from a range of academic disciplines and professional backgrounds, to explore young people's engagement with and receptivity to the cultural memory messages of the two world wars from an international comparative perspective. At the centenary of the First World War in the UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand young people find themselves 'front and centre' of both state-sponsored and community-level commemorations. As the two world wars fade from living memory, young people across the Commonwealth have been singled out as those who will be carrying the memory of the war forward. Early indications suggest similar emphasis will be placed on young people in the 80th and 90th anniversaries of the Second World War. It is at this juncture, as the commemorative focus in Britain and the Commonwealth shifts from the First to the Second World War, that new questions arise about 1) the ways these cataclysmic events are taught in the 21st century, 2) what cultural memory messages feature in education, and 3) how young people respond to and interpret these messages. While study of memory and war remembrance has intensified in recent years, the way young people engage with the cultural messages about these seminal historical events is largely unexplored. Interrogating the practices of teaching and learning about war remembrance has the potential to illuminate how memories of war are shaped. As Roediger and Wertsch identify, education is one of the 'core disciplines for a new field of memory studies' since 'many of the almost unconscious attitudes that students have about the past' are traceable to elements of 'the educational process'. The two world wars - as crucial moments of crisis where the 'British world' came together as a larger community of common interest - remain significant features of the curriculum, both formal and informal, in Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. At the same time, they raise important questions about the teaching of the history of the British Empire, an area of heated contemporary debate across the Commonwealth. These four case studies share a narrative of white, imperial masculinity and sacrifice for Empire largely compatible with the rise of a sense of national identity, thus allowing for coherent enquiry. However, the distinctiveness (or otherwise) of these case studies needs to be held up against the experiences of indigenous peoples in these white settler colonies as well as the experience of non-white colonies in these conflicts such as Kenya, Jamaica or India. To enable us to develop a larger research project on this theme, networking events will centre on four main questions:1. How do young people think about the past? 2. How have indigenous and/or ethnic minority histories been integrated into the representation and teaching of the two world wars? 3. What role does empathy play in the teaching of the two world wars? 4. How does youth-centered commemorative activity compare across the British world?This research network is distinctive because of the disciplinary boundaries it seeks to break down, particularly between history, memory studies, education and literary studies; its focus on the memory and representation of the two world wars from a comparative perspective; and because of the ways it will foster international collaboration and the development of strong links with overseas researchers and professional stakeholders, particularly in the education sector. It capitalises on and consolidates informal links between a number of existing networks including AHRC-funded projects; IWM; UCL IoE Centre for Holocaust Education; First World War Centenary Battlefield Tours Programme; British Empire at War Research Group; Centre for Research in Memory, Narrative and Histories; Youth Research Group; and Cultural Exchange in a Time of Global Conflict project.