Moving in liminal space: A case study of intercultural historical learning in Swedish secondary school

Abstract

The aim of this article is to explore the processes of learning when students are engaged in intercultural historical learning (IHL), specifically how spaces of learning were, or were not, opened by students’ struggle to construct meaning. Since IHL is complex, involving both intrinsic disciplinary and extrinsic curricular goals, it is vital to understand this process in detail. The research questions address which aspects seem to activate intercultural learning, and which ones hinder or complicate it. The methodological approach employed was an instrumental, multisite case study where three teaching–learning sequences from two secondary classrooms were investigated. Here, the concepts of ‘decentring’ and ‘perspective recognition’, as aspects of IHL, were seen as threshold concepts. The threshold concepts framework – and specifically the idea of ‘liminal space’, a ‘place of potential learning’, the in-between moments in the learning process where students find themselves before ‘getting it’ – was applied as an analytical tool to uncover and describe specific moments in the selected teaching–learning sequences. Several liminal spaces were unpacked, and it transpired that ‘troublesomeness’ is an integral, potentially productive component when students navigate liminal space as a place for intercultural learning. ‘Barriers’ that obstructed learning, as well as possible ‘entry points’ where a student steps into a productive liminal space, were identified, as well as some major enabling breakthrough moments – ‘junctures’ – for IHL.