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In this study, 110 Swedish upper secondary students use a historical database designed for research. We analyze how they perceive the use of this digital tool in teaching and if they are able to use historical thinking and historical empathy in their historical writing and presentations. Using case-study methodology including questionnaires, observations, interviews and text analysis we find this to be a complex task for students. Our results highlight technological problems and problems in contextualizing historical evidence. However, students show interest in using primary sources and ability to use historical thinking and historical empathy, especially older students in more advanced courses when they have time to reflect upon the historical material.

This study shows that upper secondary students’ historical writing maybe influenced by their use of sources from traditional archives versus theiruse of digital sources in databases. A qualitative approach, theoreticalperspectives, and historical empathy seem to be stimulated primarily byusing traditional archives and print sources, while digital archives andsources, in contrast, stimulate the use of quantitative data and a moresocial scientific approach. The results indicate a historiographical shift instudents’ historical thinking, which researchers of history education needto consider in a digital era. The results of this study call for reflections inhistory teaching to make it possible for students to learn and experiencethe double nature of history as part of the humanities and social sciences

A current Swedish review of digital history claims that research in digital history in Sweden is almost absent.[1] This statement must naturally be considered in the light of how the field is defined, and in this article we choose a broad definition consisting of the aggregate domain of studies in which digital material and tools are used to study the past. Digital history is without a doubt a more active field in English-speaking academic settings, but there are a number of well-established projects and initiatives in Sweden. The case studies presented in this article are cross-disciplinary and might therefore not define themselves as strictly (or solely) digital history. This may, however, be irrelevant in the post-disciplinary context.

The digitization of historical source material has increasingly compelled Swedish historians to navigate in digital environments. This increased accessibility and the capacity for digitally processing historical material hold great potential for empowering research. While on the one hand, considerable growth can be expected in the coming years as technology becomes more accessible, user-friendly and domain science orientated [2], on the other hand, the expansion of digital archives and the development of digital tools are already posing new challenges for historians. Knowledge and understanding of digital media needs to be augmented considerably in order to fully take advantage of contemporary research opportunities and challenges. This essay will discuss how the creation of data and the use of new digital tools might support a variety of types of historical research, primarily by looking at developments in digital humanities (hereon DH) and digital archaeology. The variegated realm of DH practices, with their background in humanities computing and computing linguistics, will be used as a point of departure. Internationally, DH often uses the concept of labs to describe environments designed for the use of data and tools in interdisciplinary research.[3] Centres of DH have primarily been created in the USA and, more recently, in Europe.

While on-going research in multiple fields, using digital data and tools, is contributing important new knowledge and developing infrastructures which are advancing the study of history; there is, of course, considerable room for improvement, both in terms of the efficiency of the tools and the scope of their application. This article will present two Swedish examples of interdisciplinary and collaborative lab spaces which are currently involved in research on the past. The more disciplinary practices of digital archaeology and digital history will also be examined in order to flag out current historically orientated research which may fall under the umbrella of DH. The essay will conclude by discussing some potential future directions.

This article presents problems and possibilities associated with incorporating into history teaching a digital demographic database made for professional historians. We detect and discuss the outcome of how students in Swedish upper secondary schools respond to a teaching approach involving digitized registers comprising 19th century individuals and populations. Even though our results demonstrate that students experience the use of this digital database as messy, stressful, complicated, even meaningless and frustrating, they also perceive working with it as most interesting. We discuss this twofold outcome, its reasons and lessons to learn from it. When technology is functioning and the task is specialized and sufficiently guided by the teacher, which is not always the case, our results propose that digital databases can stimulate young people’s interest and historical thinking. Knowledge construction based upon historical thinking is evident in the students’ examination papers in which they present and debate their findings. These papers indicate that students can use a digital database and write history based upon empirical evidence, source criticism and historical empathy, just as professional historians do.

This quantitative and qualitative analysis of syllabuses indicates difficulties in the relation between history teaching in upper secondary schools and in higher education. Using analytical tools stemming from research of education and history didactics we highlight problematic differences between universities. It is evident that history education in many ways lacks a progression from upper secondary school to higher education. Judging from the formulations in the syllabuses, the grading demands on the students in upper secondary schools are in some cases even higher than in the universities. The results from this study suggest a need for further analysis of the teaching of history, and other subjects, in higher education in relation to teaching in upper secondary schools.

In the Swedish media during 2010 a proposal for a new syllabus for history was criticized for emphasizing contemporary history at the expense of ancient history. The present study shows how UNESCO and the Council of Europe’s guidelines, like the national curriculum and guidelines and students’ work since the 1950s, have increasingly focused on contemporary history. In the 1930s graduating students chose to focus mainly on the early modern era, but from 1950 contemporary history became more and more dominant in students’ work. Even though history and civics were given separate status as school subjects in 1961, students’ work in history continued to focus contemporary subjects. This study shows that the dominance of contemporary history in students’ history is by no means a new phenomenon.

In this study the guidelines of the League of Nations, UNESCO and the Council of Europe are investigated in relation to Swedish national curricula, teachers’ perceptions of and students’ work in history, from 1927 to 2002.

Inspired by John I Goodlad’s notions of curricula and implementation, the formulation of history is studied. The ideological curricula are analyzed via the international guidelines directed to Swedish history teaching. The formal curricula are examined in national guidelines and also how history is formulated in final examinations and inspectors’ reports. The perceived curricula are studied in teachers’ debates and interviews with experienced teachers. The experiential curricula are examined through looking at students’ choices of topics in final exams, 1,680 titles of students’ individual projects in history and an in-depth analysis of 145 individual projects written between 1969 and 2002.

The study shows that the means and goals of history education have been formulated in both different and similar ways within and between curricular levels.  On all the curricular levels studied the history subject has become more internationally oriented. After World War II national history landed in the background and the world history, favored by UNESCO, became dominant in Sweden from the 1950s onwards. Despite the fact that the Council of Europe’s Euro-centrism became more prominent in the 1994 syllabus in history, students still preferred world history over European history. International and national guidelines also stressed the value of paying heed to marginalized groups, local cultural heritage and contemporary history.  These orientations were also represented in the teachers’ views of history teaching and in the students’ work in history.

The results of the study suggest that the implementation of the international guidelines were more than a top-down process. During the entire period studied, guidelines have been formulated and transacted, but also reinterpreted and in some cases, ignored. Teachers and students seem to have been co-creators in the transformation of history education.

History as a subject, according to the study, encompassed an ever expanding geographical area and more and more perspectives. Not least on the student level, the subject was formulated and dealt with in manifold ways, often oriented towards contemporary world history. Students’ history had great similarities with the international notion of history education in the service of mankind. Students expressed a rejection of war, an understanding of minorities and a wish to safeguard the local cultural heritage. Even if there were exceptions, students’ history appears to have been influenced by international understanding during a century filled with conflicts.

This study shows how the international efforts for reforming history teaching, by the League of Nations, UNESCO and the Council of Europe, were both neglected and implemented, prior to and after the Second World War. International intentions towards international understanding and away from nationalism, were transferred, interpreted and also influenced by teachers’ and students’ views of history. International understanding and non-European history–but not intercultural history–became a dominant line in the Swedish curriculum in a complex top-down and bottom-up process.

In this study, international recommendations for history education issued by UNESCO and the Council of Europe are compared with the construing of history in national guidelines, teachers’ perceptions and the results of students’ work in history in Sweden. The study shows how history education from the 1960s onwards could be critical and oriented towards minorities in a global world, clearly in line with the recommendations of UNESCO. International understanding, unity in diversity and safeguarding the local heritage in many ways became part of students’ historical consciousness.