Education as site of memory: developing a research agenda. Issue 4 (1st October 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Paulson, Julia; Abiti, Nelson; Bermeo Osorio, Julian; Charria Hernández, Carlos Arturo; Keo, Duong; Manning, Peter; Milligan, Lizzi O.; Moles, Kate; Pennell, Catriona; Salih, Sangar; Shanks, Kelsey
• Is Part Of: International studies in sociology of education. Volume 29:Issue 4(2020)
• Page Start: 429
• Page End: 451
• Publication Date: 2020-10-01
• Subjects: Memory studies -- history teaching -- difficult histories -- education and conflict -- historical memory; Educational sociology -- Periodicals; 306.43
• DOI: 10.1080/09620214.2020.1743198
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0962-0214

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The field of memory studies tends to focus attention on the '3Ms' – museums, monuments, memorials – as sites where memories are constructed, communicated, and contested. Where education is identified as a site for memory, the focus is often narrowly on what is or is not communicated within curricula or textbooks, assuming that schools simply pass on messages agreed or struggled over elsewhere. This article explores the possibilities opened when educative processes are not taken as stable and authoritative sites for transmitting historical narratives, but instead as spaces of contestation, negotiation and cultural production. With a focus on 'difficult histories' of recent conflict and historical injustice, we develop a research agenda for education as a site of memory and show how this can illuminate struggles over dominant historical narratives at various scales, highlighting agencies that educational actors bring to making sense of the past.