Towards a pedagogy for difficult histories: Insights from Holocaust education, 13 Mar (online)

Wednesday 13th March 2024, 14:00-15:30 (online)

What are "difficult histories" and how do we teach about them? Challenging pasts can be found across our education system - in school curricula and within higher education - and they can take all manner of forms; sometimes characterised by latency, and on other occasions clear and explicit. So how do we confront these in appropriate and meaningful ways? This event will explore these issues through the lenses of teaching and learning about the Holocaust; an endeavour that takes place formally and informally in our schools, colleges, universities, and cultural spaces. It will be suggested that looking through the prism of 'Holocaust education' offers an opportunity to move towards a pedagogy for engaging with difficult histories. 

In this session, Andy Pearce and Helen Knowler will engage in a discussion with the theme ‘Towards a pedagogy for difficult histories: Insights from Holocaust education’. Andy is an Associate Professor in Holocaust & History Education at the UCL Centre for Holocaust Education. Helen is an Associate Professor and the academic lead for the Eugenics Legacy Education Project (ELEP). 

Event background

The event is organised by UCL’s Eugenics Legacy Education Project (ELEP), a programme of education activity to help address UCL's harmful historical links to eugenics. 
 
ELEP is theoretically anchored within the field of difficult knowledge studies. Britzman (1998) developed the concept of ‘difficult knowledge’ to investigate the ways that experiences of education and learning can be problematic, uncomfortable, and even harmful when encountering complex curriculum areas. ELEP supports educational projects that encourage engagement with core issues in social justice-oriented approaches to education, such as difficult knowledge.