Teaching Divided Histories (TDH) is a series of digital textbooks, workbooks and creative media tools that introduce new approaches to the study of conflict into the secondary school curricula in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. Building on the experience of Northern Ireland as a post-conflict society, the project seeks to establish links with other conflict affected societies in terms of how history education can help young people to comprehend the background to violent conflict and societal division. TDH also offers freely available lesson plans, teaching and evaluation materials and has provided training for teachers from the north and south of the island as well as internationally.
The history curriculum is divided into six modules that cover historical events related to the local conflict in Northern Ireland, its civil rights movements and the peace process. It also covers the Battle of the Somme and its impact on the different communities involved as well as conflicts in other regions such as India, Lebanon, Sierra Leone and South Africa. These modules specifically link to key aspects and competences in Ireland and Northern Ireland’s curricula and include cross-curricular tasks incorporating art and design, religious education, citizenship and music.
Approach
TDH’s overarching goal is to develop educational solutions that promote peace, reconciliation and mutual understanding. It seeks to integrate studying the contested nature of political conflict with digital approaches in order to offer students more practical and creative ways of learning about conflict and division. It further aims to provide teachers with the competences and confidence to deal with contentious divided histories more broadly and then to use this experience to teach about the more sensitive and emotionally challenging local conflict. TDH seeks to address the lack of adequate resources and training by providing teachers with a resource that foregrounds multiperspectivity and critical thinking, and consequently to promote a balanced approach to teaching pupils about the contentious local conflict.
Its approach focuses on critically studying diverse media representations of the historical conflict and then using digital tools such as animation, comic book design, music, and image creation to create and re-create media in a way that is conducive to learning. TDH materials are intended to increase accessibility for educators who wish to teach about these topics.
Process
TDH was launched in 2012 as a three-year pilot project which was spearheaded by the Nerve Centre in Northern Ireland in conjunction with the British Council, the Curriculum Development Unit of the City of Dublin Education and Training Board, the Council for the Curriculum, Examinations & Assessment (CCEA) and other education experts. It evolved from a collaboration of history teachers from both sides of the border who co-designed the modules and tested them in their classrooms.
The collaboration between educational authorities in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland also ensured the curriculum’s alignment with statutory history requirements and cross-curricular skills and competences.
The Nerve Centre provided training for teachers in using the TDH curriculum and in technological skills as well as ongoing support for the digital tools on an ad hoc basis.
Reception
An internal evaluation report found that the TDH initiative was successful in bringing together innovative history educators and supporting their efforts to expose young people to sensitive historical issues and to gain insights into the perspectives of the ‘other’ community (Grant et al, 2014). According to that report, teacher feedback was overwhelmingly positive: they stated that TDH allowed their students to explore historical topics from new angles and develop more complex understandings of them. This was confirmed by the results from another survey of secondary school teachers who used the curriculum and who praised the training and support provided, its engaging approach and alluded to the positive responses from their students (Schiaparelli, K., et. Al, 2015). However, teachers noted issues with IT infrastructures in schools which meant that access to some material was blocked and also mentioned that the work at the computer was time-intensive, leaving less time for critical analysis, reflection and discussion (Grant et al, 2014). Finally, the report stated that while teachers found the training with the digital tools excellent, they felt there had been a lack of training about teaching sensitive issues that would have allowed them to explore their own positions before teaching about these difficult histories.
Students reported that TDH opened them to new perspectives and facilitated critical engagement with traditional community narratives about historical events. They also found the digital and creative tools more engaging than textbooks (Grant et al, 2014).
Yet, scholars and evaluators have cautioned that binary representations of conflict parties in some parts of the curriculum could impact on young people’s engagement with identity and complexity (McCully and Reilly, 2017) and that intensive use of digital tools could potentially distract from the goal of critical historical analysis (Grant et al, 2014).
While education authorities have been supportive of the development of TDH, the proposed curriculum has not been integrated into official curricula in Northern Ireland or Ireland. But, according to the Nerve Centre, educators from both sides of the border report using the curriculum and the demand for training is ongoing.
Testimonials:
Teaching Divided Histories Overview, 2014, link to YouTube video
Teaching Divided Histories Cross Community, 2014, testimonials from teachers and students, link to YouTube video
Newspaper article about related short film, 2014, link to Guardian article
Evaluation Reports:
Grant, A. et al. (2014). Teaching Divided Histories. Research document. Nerve Centre. [Document provided by the Nerve Centre]
Related Academic Work:
Schiaparelli, K., Et. Al. (2015). "Divided Society, Divided Schools, Divided Lives: The Role of Education in Creating Social Cohesion in Northern Ireland." Clocks and Clouds, 6(1). Link to open access article
McCully, A. (2017) Teaching History and Educating for Citizenship - Allies or “Uneasy Bedfellows” in a Post-Conflict Context? In: Epstein, T., Peck, C. (eds) Teaching and Learning Difficult Histories in International Contexts. Routledge. Link to Researchgate full text
McCully, A., Reilly, J. (2017). History Teaching to Promote Positive Community Relations in Northern Ireland: Tensions Between Pedagogy, Social Psychological Theory and Professional Practice in Two Recent Projects. In: Psaltis, C., Carretero, M., Čehajić-Clancy, S. (eds) History Education and Conflict Transformation. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-54681-0_12. Link to open access book
Pace, J. L. (2021). Hard questions: Learning to teach controversial issues. Bloomsbury Publishing USA. Link to book
Pace, J. L. (2024) Tensions in teaching balanced controversial history: Competing voices within a student teacher in Northern Ireland, British Educational Research Journal, 50, 1983–2000. doi.org/10.1002/berj.4008. Link to subscription article
