Reproduction of Conflict in History Teaching in Ukraine: A Social Identity Theory Analysis

Abstract

Based on 60 semistructured interviews with history teachers in Ukraine, the ways in which social identity impacts reproduction of intergroup prejudice and conflict on the level of secondary education are explored. This involves an analysis regarding how salience and meaning of social identity of the teachers affect how they present the in-group and other groups to school pupils. The analysis reveals how teachers create conflict narratives in their classrooms by altering the teaching program and textbooks to promote their vision of a nation and the rights of specific groups to participate in nation-building processes and to define enemies and allies. The major channels of this influence are specific concepts of national identity (ethnic, multicultural, and civic), social boundaries, and collective axiology.

Notes

¹Taras Hryhorovich Shevchenko, 19th century Ukrainian poet, artist, and thinker.

²The term Holodomor refers specifically to the brutal artificial famine imposed by Stalin's regime on Soviet Ukraine in 1932–33.