What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

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Introduction 17 has been placed on the duties of memory and of commemoration, and some students react negatively to this. Even if one aim … is to keep alive the memory of the victims, commemoration does not have the same meaning for everyone; for some it means holding onto the memory of the death, and preserving one’s group identity, while for others it means taking responsibility for one’s own history. My intent is not to oppose memory and history, nor to choose between them, but rather to emphasize the need to distinguish between them, and to focus on both, according to the educational context. But what is the implication of arguments such as these for the current study? Our contention earlier in this chapter was that all knowledge and understanding is socially situated and, as a consequence, that the survey responses and interview contributions given by students were likely to reflect wider sociocultural and political frames. Our argument here, then, is that the contemporary emphasis on memory and commemoration – and of simplified, universal ‘lessons’ for the present – is an important part of the context against which the research findings reported in the following chapters should be understood. What distinguishes the current study from previous empirical research? In preparation for this study, a catalogue of almost 350 individual references to journal articles, books, chapters, research reports, summaries, conference papers and unpublished doctoral theses was compiled. These were identified through academic databases, including the British Educational Index, the International Bibliography of the Social Sciences and the Education Research Information Centre, using key-word searches on terms such as ‘Holocaust’ and/or ‘Shoah’ with ‘education’, ‘knowledge’, ‘learn(ing)’, ‘teach(ing)’ and/or ‘schools’. Only materials published in English or available in English translation were reviewed. Of these, 125 reported original empirical research. This included: ■■ analysis of textbooks and/or policy frameworks (for example, Schar and Sperison 2010; Bromley and Russell 2010; Stevick 2010; Boersema and Schimmel 2008) ■■ interpretive analysis of visual materials and museum exhibits (Adams 1999, 2008; Clark 2007a; Lisle 2006) ■■ classroom-based ethnographies (for example, Meseth and Proske 2010; Zembylas and Bekerman 2008, 2011; Jennings 2010; Misco 2008, 2010; Schweber 2008a, 2008b) ■■ studies based on qualitative interviews with students (Rutland 2010; Short 1991, 1997, 2005; Carrington and Short 1997) and their teachers (Bekerman and Zembylas 2010a; 2010b; Russell 2005; Short 2001; Hector 2000; Supple 1992) ■■ formal evaluations and impact studies of specific educational programmes (for example, Cowan and Maitles 2005, 2007, 2011; Bastel et al. 2010; Spalding et al. 2007; Maitles and Cowan 2004; Barr 2010; Schultz et al. 2001) ■■ variously conceived situated studies of both teachers’ and students’ experience of and attitudes towards educational encounters with the Holocaust in schools (for example, Richardson 2012; Meliza 2011, Kuehner and Langer 2010; Clements 2007; Cowan and Maitles 1999; Burke 1998, 2003). It is not possible to provide a comprehensive commentary on the many and varied significant findings, theoretical frameworks or methodological approaches reflected in this body of scholarship. Instead we will reflect upon some of the more distinctive and distinguishing features of the Centre for Holocaust Education’s research focus and approach. Scale One immediately striking feature of the current study is its unprecedented scale. With more than 8,000 students participating in the final survey and focus groups, we believe this to be the largest single-nation study in this field. The closest available international comparisons include: ■■ a survey of over 5,000 Swedish teachers’ experiences and perceptions of teaching about the Holocaust (Lange 2008) ■■ a study of the links between knowledge of the Holocaust and ‘democratic attitudes’ among 1,242 Belgian secondary school-aged students (Kavadias 2004) ■■ a comparative study of 1,120 German and 1,137 Israeli school students, which again focused upon both knowledge and understanding, and social and political attitudes (Bar-On et al. 1993) ■■ a study of social influences upon Holocaust knowledge which drew on the responses of 1,003 university students in America (Bischoping 1996). In the UK context, the largest-scale existing relevant empirical studies were: ■■ the Centre’s own research with more than 2,000 English secondary school teachers, (Pettigrew et al. 2009) www.ioe.ac.uk/holocaust
18 Introduction ■■ the inclusion of 978 British adult respondents within a seven-nation comparative study undertaken on behalf of the American Jewish Committee (Smith 2005) ■■ a survey of 1,200 English secondary school students conducted for the London Jewish Cultural Centre in 2009. Focus on knowledge and understanding Among all 125 research studies referenced, only a small minority were explicitly focused on knowledge and/or understanding of the Holocaust. In addition to those already listed, these included Gray (2014a), Shamai et al. (2004), Ivanova (2004) and Lazar et al. (2004). More commonly, a measurement for ‘knowledge’ was included as a potential variable to be examined alongside and/or correlated with others including: ■■ levels of antisemitism (for example, Gordon et al. 2004) ■■ attitudes towards others (Shamai et al. 2004) ■■ attitudes to ‘diversity’ (Jedwab 2010) ■■ dimensions of identity (Auron et al. 1994). Several studies focused exclusively on issues related to the impact of teaching and/or learning about the Holocaust upon attitudes and/or beliefs (for example, Rosen and Salomon 2011; Rutland 2010; Cowan and Maitless 2007; Burke 2003). Only a small minority of studies framed their research primarily in terms of ‘understanding’ (see for example Lazar et al. 2004, 2009; Ivanova 2004), but both knowledge and understanding were highlighted within those studies whose explicit focus was teaching and/or learning in schools (for example Richardson 2012; Meliza 2011 and Clements 2007). Measurement of ‘knowledge’ and its rationale Among those studies with an explicit focus on knowledge content, the most common methodology employed, especially among the larger-scale studies, was a multiple-choice survey instrument (see, for example, Lange 2008; Romi and Lev 2007; Kavadias 2004; Smith 2005; Gordon et al. 2004; Shamai et al. 2004). Significantly, in all except two of these studies, answers given by individuals to knowledge-based multiple-choice questions were combined, for analysis, to create a single, aggregate score to represent their knowledge across all the questions and subjects covered. In other words, these researchers appeared to be interested only in comparing total levels of knowledge rather than specific content. Critically, there was seldom any explicit discussion of the rationale behind the inclusion of individual questions. Notable exceptions were Gray (2014a) and Lange (2008). This is an important distinction in the focus and framing of the Centre for Holocaust Education’s research. In our own reporting, where knowledge-related survey data is presented, it is prefaced by a clear explanation and commentary on why this specific knowledge-content was considered an important dimension of the research. It is also notable that only two other studies (Bischoping 1996 and Bar-On et al. 1993) combined a large-scale quantitative analysis with in-depth qualitative work. As a consequence, the contextualised and problematised framing of ‘knowledge’ with which we opened the current chapter is missing from much of this research (for a similar criticism, see Jedwab 2010 and Bischoping 1998). Alternative methods used to examine knowledge and, in particular, understanding, included invitations for respondents to provide free-text descriptions of – or associations with – the Holocaust (see, for example, Lazar et al. 2009; Ivanova 2004; Bischoping 1996). The practicalities of robustly analysing free-text, qualitative responses meant that these studies tended to be much smaller in terms of scale than those reliant on questions that could be answered through multiple choice. Limitations of the current study and intentions for future research Many of the most informative insights and conceptually rich analyses offered within previous studies were drawn from long-term ethnographic fieldwork and other qualitative research involving much smaller numbers of students, teachers or schools (see, for example, Richardson 2012; Meseth and Proske 2010; Misco 2008; Schweber 2008a, 2008b). This is clearly the most appropriate methodology to use in studies explicitly designed to fully probe and critically consider the socially situated and context-dependent manners in which meaning of and from the Holocaust is made. Our own remit was to offer a nationwide analysis of student knowledge and understanding so it was neither possible, nor appropriate, to employ such long-term and tightly focused ethnographic techniques. However, we consider that a number of the findings and arguments advanced in the following chapters could offer an instructive basis from which to build future, smaller-scale but embedded classroom studies of this sort. We also acknowledge the very important contributions made by scholars whose focus is not on historical-content knowledge but who offer alternative disciplinary framings or focus upon the
Page 1 and 2: CENTRE FOR HOLOCAUST EDUCATION What
Page 3 and 4: What do students know and understan
Page 5 and 6: iv About the UCL Centre for Holocau
Page 7 and 8: vi Foreword by Sir Peter Bazalgette
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Page 13 and 14: 2 Executive summary ■■ Many stu
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Page 17 and 18: Olivia Hemingway, 2014
Page 19 and 20: 8 Introduction ■■ What forms of
Page 21 and 22: 10 Introduction the fate of the Jew
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Page 41 and 42: 30 Methodology Table 2.2 Breakdown
Page 43 and 44: 32 Methodology Focus group details
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Page 49 and 50: 38 Collective conceptions of the Ho
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68 Collective conceptions of the Ho
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Olivia Hemingway, 2014
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72 Encountering representations of
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102 Preface often socially construc
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Emile Holba, 2014
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106 Who were the victims? students
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108 Who were the victims? Figure 5.
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204 Considerations and recommendati
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Appendix 1: The Survey 225 Appendix
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Appendix 1: The Survey 227 How do y
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Appendix 1: The Survey 229 Word qui
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Appendix 1: The Survey 231 Explorin
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Appendix 1: The Survey 233 Do you r
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Appendix 1: The Survey 235 42. Who
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Appendix 1: The Survey 237 The Nazi
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Appendix 1: The Survey 239 64. What
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Appendix 1: The Survey 241 71. If y
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Appendix 1: The Survey 245 87. Have
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Appendix 2: Attitudinal scales used
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Appendix 3: Coding frameworks for f
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Appendix 4: Schools that participat
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Appendix 6: Multiple regression ana
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References 259 Assmann, A. (2010)
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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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What do students know and understand about the Holocaust?

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