Historical and Moral Consciousness in Education : Learning Ethics for Democratic Citizenship Education

Historical and Moral Consciousness highlights how ethics can be understood in the context of History education. It analyses the qualitative differences in how young people respond to historical and moral dilemmas of relevance to democratic values and human rights education.

Drawing on a four-year international project, the book offers nuanced discussion and new scholarly understanding of the intersections between historical consciousness and moral consciousness within research. It develops new theoretical tools for history teaching and learning that can support teachers as they endeavor to educate for democratic citizenship. The book includes a meta-analysis of research within history Didaktik and around historical events with a moral bearing, and presents a comparative study of Australian, Finnish, and Swedish high school students’ moral understandings of historical dilemmas.

Raising important questions about how our learning from the past is intertwined with our present and future interpretations and judgements, this book will be of great interest to academics, scholars, teachers, and post graduate students in the fields of history education, democratic education, human rights education, and citizenship education.