Historieundervisningens existentialiserande potential

Abstract

This article presents a study of how history education can be understood as a practice directed towards existentialisation. Through classroom observation, teacher interviews and focus group interviews with students in grade 9 in Swedish lower secondary school, a complex teaching practice is uncovered where history teachers have to deal with matters pertaining to disseminating a meaningful narrative of the past, a critical approach to these narratives and an awareness of historicity and its implications for how we approach and understand the past. These results are then discussed from the perspectives of how history education can promote existentialisation among students, and what challenges and opportunities this may present to history teachers.