Controversy in the classroom: how history teachers in the Western Balkans approach difficult topics?

ABSTRACT

In the context of legacies of mass violence and political oppression during the recent past in the Western Balkans (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia), history teaching is seen as an important factor in building sustainable peace and democracy. Caught between various national and international policy actors, history teaching has been subject to frequently overlapping and inconsistent reforms. Despite prolific research on history education in the Western Balkans teachers’ experiences of history education and its transformation have largely remained unexamined. This paper explores history teachers’ perceptions of and approaches to the topics they find difficult to teach. The paper draws on data gathered through an online survey that yielded 793 responses from history teachers and 14 regional history education expert interviews. The results show which topics teachers consider difficult to teach in six Western Balkan countries, and how certain individual characteristics (e.g. religiousness and level of education) and school characteristics (e.g. urban or rural and a monocultural or multicultural environment) link to the roles teachers assume when teaching controversial topics.

KEYWORDS:

• History education
• Western Balkans
• Difficult history
• Difficult knowledge

Acknowledgments

We would like to show our gratitude to all history teachers and history education experts who shared their insights as well as European Association of History Educators (EUROCLIO), Centre for Democracy and Reconciliation in Southeastern Europe (CDRSEE) and the national history teachers’ associations that supported data collection through the project “ePact – Education Partnership for Advocacy, Capacity-Building and Transformation”.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplemental Material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here.

Notes

1. This designation is without prejudice to positions on status, and is in line with UNSC 1244 and the ICJ Opinion on the Kosovo declaration of independence.

2. Developed and implemented by the European Association of History Educators (EUROCLIO) and Centre for Democracy and Reconciliation in South-eastern Europe (CDRSEE), funded by the Austrian Development Cooperation.

3. History Teachers Association of Montenegro (HIPMONT), History Teachers Association of Kosovo (SHMHK), History Teachers Association of Macedonia (ANIM), Association for Social History of Serbia (UDI), Albanian History Teachers Association (ALBNA), History Teachers Association of Bosnia and Herzegovina (EUROCLIO HIP BiH).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement Nº 665959.

Notes on contributors

Rodoljub Jovanović

Rodoljub Jovanović is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND PhD candidate at the Centre for Applied Ethics, University of DEUSTO where he is developing his PhD project dealing with history education and its contribution to building culture of peace. He holds a degree in psychology from the Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade and the MA in Interdisciplinary Research and Studies on Eastern Europe (MIREES) from the University of Bologna and University of Ljubljana. His main interest is in combining social psychology and educational science to understanding group processes in post-conflict societies, with an emphasis on the role of education in peace and reconciliation processes in South Eastern Europe.

Dea Marić

Dea Marić holds an MA in History and Sociology. She teaches various courses related to History Teaching at Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb. She is currently enrolled in doctoral programme in Modern and Contemporary Croatian History in European and World Context at the same faculty. Her main research interest is the social role of history education in the context of post-conflict societies. She is a president of Croatian History Teachers Association and an active member of European History Teachers Association (EUROCLIO). In the course of her professional career, she worked on various positions in schools, CSOs and institutions responsible for implementation of European Framework Programmes for Research and Innovation.