Learning Legacies: The role of history education in transitional justice and the "culture wars"

作为一名教育人类学家，我感兴趣的是人们如何学会利用历史来理解他们的社会。在冲突后社会-如南非-这是一个特别有趣的问题，在那里，对过去及其遗留问题的态度可能导致社会和政治冲突。然而，它在英国等国家也越来越受关注，在英国，殖民主义的遗产与关于英国在英国退欧后世界中的地位的两极化辩论有关。在这样的背景下，历史教育应该扮演什么样的角色？我将利用这个奖学金，追求这个问题在两个重叠的阶段-分析和出版数据完成实地调查（巩固），并从事历史教师的反思，知识交流和专业发展的机会（新的工作）。巩固我以前的研究得出了几个发现，具有重要意义的历史教育和过渡司法领域。我打算在这个奖学金的过程中发展和出版这些发现，提交四篇学术文章和一本专著，将提交给学术界。特别是，我希望进一步探讨一个人对过去的当代影响（即“历史遗产”）的信念与对历史“事实”的理解不同的发现。我的博士论文证明，开普敦的九年级学生学习了同样的种族隔离历史，却对种族隔离对当代南非的影响得出了截然不同的结论。他们得出的结论受到种族身份的影响，所有学生都同意种族隔离时期存在严重的不公正现象，但他们对这些不公正现象在当今的持续程度存在分歧。这导致了在冲突后社会应该如何处理过去的问题上产生了强烈的--而且往往是种族化的--分歧。我和德莱顿-彼得森教授的研究--利用1998年和2019年的实地调查数据--得出了类似的结论。1998年，开普敦的历史教师利用历史课帮助学生理解种族化的贫困是种族隔离的遗产，需要集体行动。然而，在2019年，同样的历史在同样的学校被用来促进个人主义叙事，其中贫困是“忘恩负义”的后种族隔离一代的后果。我利用这项研究表明，在“历史”和“遗产”之间进行概念上的区分对于理解历史教育在两极分化社会中的作用，以及帮助历史教师驾驭有争议的课程。新的工作我计划利用这项研究促进南非和英国历史教师之间的知识交流研讨会。我得到了牛津大学教育系的资助，对10个向罗兹雕像调查提交意见的人进行了一项试点研究，以及他们自己对历史遗产的看法与他们所知道的“历史事实”之间的关系。本研究旨在探讨师范生对历史遗产的看法。除了我的上述研究，这项研究将通知一系列的历史教师研讨会，与副教授烧伤（牛津大学）和博士安吉尔（开普敦大学）的协助下开发。这些讲习班将促进来自开普敦和牛津的历史教师之间的对话，共同质疑英国是否也应该被视为“冲突后”国家。研讨会将旨在促进对两极化历史的性质和方法及其与现在的关系的反思。研讨会的讨论将发展成两种背景下历史教师的专业发展播客。

As an anthropologist of education, I am interested in how people learn to use history to make sense of their societies. This is a particularly interesting question in post-conflict societies - such as South Africa - where attitudes towards thepast and its legacies can result in social and political conflict. Yet it is also of increasing interest in countries like the UK, where the legacies of colonialism are implicated in polarizing debates about Britain's place in the post-Brexit world. In these contexts, what role should history education play?I will use this fellowship to pursue this question in two overlapping stages - analyzing and publishing data from completed fieldwork (consolidation), and engaging history teachers with opportunities for reflection, knowledgeexchange, and professional development (new work).ConsolidationMy previous research has drawn several findings which have important implications for the field of history education and transitional justice. I intend to develop and publish these findings over the course of this fellowship, submittingfour academic articles and a monograph which will be submitted to Routledge.In particular, I wish to further explore the finding that one's beliefs about the contemporary influences of the past (i.e. "historical legacies") are distinct from ones understanding of historical "facts". My DPhil demonstrated that Grade 9students in Cape Town who studied the same history of apartheid, drew very different conclusions about the influence that apartheid had on contemporary South Africa. The conclusions they drew were mediated by their racial identities.All students agreed that grave injustices took place during apartheid, but they disagreed on the extent to which these injustices endured in the present. This led to strong - and often racialized - disagreement on how the past should beaddressed in a post-conflict society.My research with Professor Dryden-Peterson - drawing on fieldwork data from 1998 and 2019 - drew a similar conclusion. History teachers in Cape Town in 1998 used history class to help their students understand how racialized poverty was a legacy of apartheid and required collective action. In 2019 however, the same history was used in the same schools to promote an individualistic narrative, in which poverty was the consequence of the "ungrateful" postapartheid generation.I draw on this research to suggest that making a conceptual distinction between 'history' and 'legacies' is valuable both for understanding the role of history education in polarized societies, and for helping history teachers to navigatecontroversial curricula.New workI plan to use this research to facilitate knowledge-exchange workshops between history teachers in South Africa and the United Kingdom. I have received funding from the University of Oxford Department of Education to undertake a pilot study of ten people who made submissions to the Rhodes statue inquiry, and the elationship between their own views about historical legacies and the "historical facts" that they know. I intend to develop this study to investigate teacher trainees' views about historical legacies. Alongside my research described above, this study will inform a series of history teacher workshops, developed with the assistance of Associate Professor Burn (Oxford University) and Dr Angier (University of Cape Town). These workshops will facilitate dialogue between history teachers from Cape Town and Oxford provocatively questioning whether Britain should also be considered "post-conflict". The workshops willbe designed to promote reflection on the nature and approach to polarizing histories, and their relationship to the present. Discussions from the workshops will be developed into professional development podcasts for historyteachers in both contexts.