What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

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Considerations and recommendations 211 3. relate to progression in students’ learning 4. help students make the most of engagement with Holocaust survivors 5. deal with complex issues. 1. Improve students’ knowledge and understanding It is strikingly evident that students of all ages do not have a secure understanding of the answers to many of the key questions which frame a study of the Holocaust (including: Who was responsible? Why did they do it? Who were the victims? Why were they murdered and persecuted? Why were the Jews specifically targeted? How did they respond? When and where did the Holocaust happen? What was Britain’s role? What is the significance of the Holocaust?). Furthermore, as this new research has confirmed, a considerable gap still exists between the findings of current academic scholarship and what is often taught in the classroom. There is consequently a need for professional development courses that will help teachers improve their content knowledge and subject expertise. Crucially, CPD course providers must find innovative and pedagogically compelling ways to make complex historical scholarship accessible to teachers and students. The UCL Centre for Holocaust Education has pioneered several CPD initiatives to help teachers develop their content knowledge and pedagogical expertise, and these courses have had considerable impact on the teachers who have participated in them. But if teachers are to be meaningfully supported nationwide, much more investment into programmes of this nature are required and school leaders need to be encouraged to make teaching and learning about the Holocaust a curriculum priority, enabling their teachers to attend such programmes.. 2. Challenge accepted representations of the Holocaust As has been reported throughout this study, the Holocaust enters students’ consciousness in myriad ways outside the classroom, and this deeply affects their broader conceptions of the Holocaust. There is consequently a need for CPD programmes to provide clear guidance to teachers on how to challenge and critically evaluate representations and appropriations of the Holocaust in popular culture and the media – in art, theatre, TV, cinema, literature, films, newspaper articles, the Internet, blogs and social media. A good example of the need for critical engagement is the impact of the book and film, The Boy in Striped Pyjamas. Rather than condemning and just dismissing them, it is potentially important for teachers to engage with the story as a cultural phenomenon, to critique it, discuss and assess its accuracy and, despite its failings, consider why it has become so popular. In other words, more attention needs to be paid to helping teachers mediate and critically engage with many of the powerful cultural forces that appear to be shaping students’ understanding of the Holocaust. Equipping teachers with the skills and expertise to support young people as they engage with this traumatic history and the associated atrocity images that are often encountered on the Internet is also of vital importance. It entails combining what we understand about young people and their moral and spiritual development with intelligent, sensitive and pedagogically appropriate ways of representing the experiences and catastrophic losses of the victims of the Holocaust. It also demands a recognition that, as Chapter 4 notes, given appropriate opportunity and support, students are able and willing to confront complex moral, philosophical and intellectual questions regarding issues of ‘representation’, ‘memory’ and the ‘truthfulness’ of competing accounts. 3. Relate to progression in students’ learning This study has shown that students encounter the Holocaust in a number of subject areas (e.g. religious education, English, citizenship) and across a range of age groups. It is therefore vital that teachers working in all relevant contexts should consider how to plan and develop their teaching to ensure that new learning builds on students’ existing knowledge and understanding. This is complex but important terrain and requires teachers to consider a more coherent approach to teaching about the Holocaust across their school. Meaningful CPD would, therefore, oblige teachers to think carefully about aims, content and assessment, and pedagogical practice. It would also demand that subject teachers consider, from their own disciplinary perspective, the particular and distinctive contribution that their subject can bring to the study of the Holocaust. Effective CPD would in turn compel teachers to contemplate how different subject specialisms might work together to deepen understandings and what progress might look like across the school at various key stages. 4. Help students make the most of engagement with Holocaust survivors Our research indicates that hearing testimony from Holocaust survivors often proves a uniquely affecting experience for young people which can facilitate distinctive ways of ‘understanding’ and of drawing www.ioe.ac.uk/holocaust
212 Considerations and recommendations personal meaning from this history. Students spoke of the inspiration they drew from hearing a survivor speak. They also spoke of the sense of awe they felt when listening to survivors as they candidly related their darkest moments and lingering struggles. Students also commented on the indomitable spirit and resilience of the survivors and the powerful impact of hearing them give their testimony. Unquestionably, the experience of meeting a survivor and hearing his or her testimony proved a deeply affective experience for most young people and suggests that teachers also need to very seriously consider the ethical and emotional challenges that such encounters provoke. Unquestionably, these rare encounters with those who had survived the Holocaust were deeply empowering for young people and strongly suggest that while survivors are still here to do this extraordinary work, they should, where possible, be given the opportunity to meet a survivor and witness them give their testimony. This is all the more important given that the current generation of young people is perhaps the last who will be able to meet and hear from survivors in person. It also raises the increasingly important educational role that written and/or recorded testimony is likely to take on in the future. The development of new technologies that capture Holocaust testimony in innovative and dynamic ways provides both opportunities and challenges for classroom practice. CPD programmes must help teachers develop their pedagogical expertise in using various forms of testimony in sensitive, respectful and historically appropriate ways. Critically, teachers should be asked to reflect upon their specific rationales and expectations of working with survivors and with survivor testimony within schools. 5. Deal with complex issues This is arguably the most important area for CPD. It entails helping teachers find ways to deal with the most profoundly difficult and uncomfortable questions that the Holocaust raises about the human condition. It necessitates carefully constructed CPD that will allow teachers and students to understand and explain how it was that, not so long ago and not far from where we live, ordinary people across Europe became complicit in the murder of their neighbours. Thought-provoking CPD must help to equip teachers with the confidence, resources, skills and expertise to prompt students to wrestle with these complex issues of responsibility and complicity. It should provide teachers with guidance on how to use questioning, discussion and other effective pedagogical practices to foster critical and independent thinking. Holocaust education is often so focused on condemning the perpetrators and distancing ourselves from their position and acts that scant attention is paid to the deeply important question of whether or not, in a particular context or situation ‘we’, could become complicit. Addressing such profound questions has immense significance for citizens in the modern world and should arguably be considered by teachers as part of any professional development programme. This is a crucial step towards moving beyond the perpetuation of simple moral lessons. The challenges posed by these five areas are exacerbated by two key issues. First, there is the matter of access. In the current climate schools are increasingly reluctant to release teachers to attend external CPD courses due to the cost of ‘covering’ their teaching. As a result, even though our 2009 study of teachers demonstrated that many teachers are keen to develop their expertise and improve their practice, too often they find it difficult to be released to attend such courses (even though most of them are offered free of charge by leading national organisations). The second issue relates to quality of CPD provision. Currently, no regulations or framework exist to monitor the quality of CPD courses offered by Holocaust education organisations. In other words, outside of the university sector which operates in a closely regulated environment (through Ofsted inspections or nationally recognised quality assurance standards), no organisation is required to meet any nationally agreed standards. Consequently, there is no guarantee of the quality of CPD provision in Holocaust education across the country, and practice is understandably variable. These issues of access and quality are of serious concern and, if Holocaust education is to improve in this country, they require urgent attention. Clearly the five areas and two key issues outlined here must be addressed. CPD programmes need to be constructed in intelligent and effective ways. The UCL Centre for Holocaust Education is uniquely equipped to respond to the challenges by expanding and tailoring its CPD provision accordingly. For the first time, anywhere, the Centre offers a comprehensive programme in which applied research and academic scholarship directly informs CPD provision. A cornerstone of the Centre’s work is its innovative and ground-breaking approach to teachers’ professional development and ongoing evaluation of its practice. The work of the Centre is nationally acclaimed. In January 2015, the Prime Minister’s Holocaust Commission report (Cabinet Office 2015: 46) recognised the Centre’s ‘world class research, teacher education, MA, PhD and Beacon Schools
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CENTRE FOR HOLOCAUST EDUCATION What
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What do students know and understan
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iv About the UCL Centre for Holocau
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vi Foreword by Sir Peter Bazalgette
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viii Foreword by Professor Yehuda B
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2 Executive summary ■■ Many stu
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Olivia Hemingway, 2014
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8 Introduction ■■ What forms of
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10 Introduction the fate of the Jew
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12 Introduction two reasons here in
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14 Introduction Figure 1.1 Variatio
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16 Introduction Holocaust are never
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18 Introduction ■■ the inclusio
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20 Introduction ■■ The chapter
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24 Methodology Of particular note w
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26 Methodology were asked questions
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28 Methodology Vocabulary test We e
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30 Methodology Table 2.2 Breakdown
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32 Methodology Focus group details
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34 Methodology How were the focus-g
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38 Collective conceptions of the Ho
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108 Who were the victims? Figure 5.
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Page 236 and 237: Appendix 1: The Survey 225 Appendix
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Page 246 and 247: Appendix 1: The Survey 235 42. Who
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References 261 Carr, E.H. (1964) Wh
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References 263 Emler, N. and Ohana,
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References 265 Howitt, D. and Crame
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References 267 Levstik, L.S. (2000)
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References 269 Resnick, L.B. (1989)
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References 271 Snyder, T. (2009)
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References 273 Yeager, E., Anderson
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Centre for Holocaust Education UCL
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What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

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