Teaching in the name of justice: empathy and vulnerability as a basis for understanding difficult histories (original) (raw)
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'Stand inside my shoes': developing historical empathy
‘Empathy’ is, of course, a very special word in the world of historical study. In Australia, the national curriculum process has summed up ‘historical empathy’ as ‘the capacity to enter into the world of the past with an informed imagination’ (ACARA 2009:6). More colloquially, it’s often described as ‘standing in someone else’s shoes’ or ‘seeing something through someone else’s eyes’. The aim is to understand how a person in the past might have thought about, felt and experienced their world. This article explores the ways empathy can be developed through the study of history in schools.
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The research explores the understanding of the concept Historical empathy as conceptualised by the two teachers sampled in this study. The article analyses the pedagogical practices of two Grade 12 History teachers who used the theme of the Vietnam War of 1954 to 1975, also known as the Second Indochina War, and in Vietnam as the Resistance War Against America or simply the American War, was a conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This is one of the new themes included in the Curriculum and Assessment Policy Statement (CAPS) to cultivate tenets of Historical empathy in their classrooms. The research utilises a qualitative research paradigm to enable the researchers to interview teachers at their schools and observe them interacting with the phenomenon being investigated in their natural environment in the classrooms. The article uses the dual theoretical framework designed by Barton and Levstik (2004) which embodies both elements of affective and cognitive domains to evaluate the perspectives of two teachers and their pedagogical practices in the classroom. According to the findings, both teachers used suitable and relevant primary and secondary sources during the lesson presentations. Teachers demonstrated characteristics of emotional and cognitive empathy during the interviews and these divergent elements were displayed during the teaching of the Vietnam War. Quite often learners were encouraged by one teacher to sympathise and align with the victims of the war which is caused by their past agony and psychological trauma resulting from the experiences of their communities during the apartheid government and this demonstrated shared normalcy. The second teacher empathised with the Vietnamese soldiers and saw them as gallant soldiers against the strong US troops rather than as victims thereby displaying some elements of cognitive Historical empathy.
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Writing about historical empathy and its place in education in the 1980s, Denis Shemilt pointed out that 'the theory of "empathetic reconstruction" excites the devotion of some and the censure of others. 1 This article discusses the debates that the concept's introduction in the English educational system caused and the key objections against its implementation in history teaching. These objections, which in some cases are voiced even today, have to do with the concept's complex meaning, the idea that understanding people in the past is impossible, and pessimistic views about students' ability to make sense of past behaviour. In order to counter these objections this article discusses the idea of empathy in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of history and suggests a definition of the concept in ways that distinguish between problematic and helpful notions related to the concept. It also discusses available research findings about students' ideas of the concept.
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Uncanny pedagogies: teaching difficult histories at sites of colonial violence
Critical Studies in Education, 2021
In 2022, New Zealand history will shift from an optional to a compulsory subject across all levels of schooling. Teaching about New Zealand's difficult histories has the potential to reconstitute settler-Indigenous relations to show how historical colonial injustice impacts people today, but it raises questions about whose history will be validated and taught and how settler discomfort about breaking the silences surrounding colonial violence might be addressed pedagogically. Building on scholarship in haunting, we introduce the notion of a settler colonial crypt to show how settler memory and forgetting of colonial violence can be challenged and transformed by Māori tribal memories. The introduction of difficult histories at sites of colonial violence is accompanied by the uncanny; intellectual, emotional and embodied experiences that are uncomfortable and frightening, yet stimulating and inspiring, to generate new ways of considering settler-Indigenous relations. Data from a large-scale ethnographic study exploring how different groups in New Zealand remember or forget the New Zealand Wars reveal how secondary school students were directed towards the uncanny during a field trip. The excursion demonstrates the potential for transforming understandings about how invasion and violence accompanied settlement, providing the impetus for something-to-be-done and setting the groundwork for genuine attempts at reconciliation.