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      The Great Irish Famine in Irish and UK history textbooks, 2010–2020

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          Abstract

          This article considers the representation of the controversial issue of the Great Irish Famine (1845–50) in 27 recent Irish and UK history textbooks for the secondary level. Key contested issues – imports and exports, the British government’s laissez-faire economic policy, providentialist interpretations, and victim–perpetrator discourses – have long formed part of the narrative repertoire of Famine history; their representation and narrativisation in textbooks is analysed through narrative and content analysis. Historical contextualisation and perspective taking are considered key skills for students studying history; these skills become even more important when dealing with controversial issues. The questions central to this research are: How do secondary-level history textbooks from Ireland and the UK represent the key contested elements regarding the Famine? Do they provide sufficiently complex accounts, thereby facilitating historical contextualisation and perspective taking? While some Irish and UK textbooks offer learners complex representations of the Famine, several others provide students with insufficient opportunity for perspective taking, and for developing a thorough understanding of the historical context. Specifically, the majority of the textbooks provide simplistic victim–perpetrator discourses. As such issues complicate historical contextualisation, perspective taking and, relatedly, empathy formation, the article suggests including more complex subject positions in textbook discussions of the Famine.

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          Voices of Collective Remembering

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            Teaching History for the Common Good

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              History, identity, and the school curriculum in Northern Ireland: an empirical study of secondary students' ideas and perspectives

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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Hist_Educ_Res_J
                History Education Research Journal
                Hist_Educ_Res_J
                UCL Press
                2631-9713
                13 April 2023
                : 20
                : 1
                : 2
                Affiliations
                [1 ]Faculty of Arts, Department of Modern Languages and Cultures/Radboud Institute for Culture and History (RICH), Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands
                Author notes
                [* ]Correspondence: lindsay.janssen@ 123456ru.nl
                Author information
                https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0098-7939
                Article
                Hist_Educ_Res_J-20-2
                10.14324/HERJ.20.1.02
                e461c6ac-34e1-4442-b1e1-4809bc90cbab
                2023, Lindsay Janssen.

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (CC BY) 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited • DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/HERJ.20.1.02.

                History
                : 03 June 2022
                : 01 February 2023
                Page count
                Pages: 17
                Funding
                Funded by: Dutch Research Council
                Award ID: NWA.1160.18.197
                The research for this article was made possible by funding from the Dutch Research Council (NWO; project number NWA.1160.18.197).
                Categories
                Research article
                Custom metadata
                Janssen, L. (2023) ‘The Great Irish Famine in Irish and UK history textbooks, 2010–2020’. History Education Research Journal, 20 (1), 02. DOI: https://doi.org/10.14324/HERJ.20.1.02.

                Educational research & Statistics,General education,History
                imports and exports,historical contextualisation,perpetrators,victims,Great Irish Famine,history textbooks,providentialism,laissez-faire,historical perspective,historical empathy

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