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Perceived inconsistencies in history teachers’ epistemological beliefs have been a recurring theme in research on epistemic cognition. In this article, we explore how teachers discuss history's epistemology when presented with different scenarios where epistemology might be an issue. A study design aimed at capturing teachers thinking in different contexts was adopted, and through semi-structured interviews with history teachers in Quebec and Sweden we could follow changes in nuance by analyzing teacher statements in relation to their ideas about the relationship between the past itself and the (teachable) history about the past, when discussing these issues in relation to different scenarios. The results point to teachers articulating rather well-adjusted and consistent epistemological beliefs when discussing the matter at a theoretical level while tending to adapt these beliefs — probably for pedagogical and practical reasons — when they discuss their own teaching and specific classroom situations. We argue that the teachers rarely seem to be notice the changes in their epistemological reasoning, but changes tend to go from complicated thought to more straightforward when complexity in context increases.

This introduction establishes the framework of the book. It introduces some basic concepts of epistemology in history and history teaching, a brief overview of the field, and the problems that are faced at the present, including the difficulties in establishing consistent views, the ‘wobbling’ of teachers on epistemic issues, and what this means for the field in general and for the idea of teachers’ epistemological views creating opportunities or obstacles in the teaching of history to students. The chapter is also an outline of the entire book, describing the parts of the book, as well as each individual chapter.

This introduction to the Historical Encounters-special issue, "Revisiting history and its epistemology", elaborates upon five main themes that emerge across the various papers presented in the issue and speak to tensions within the field of epistemic cognition in history. Of interest, these themes tackle similar questions and pressures on teachers, student teachers, and learners when it comes to the construction and transmission of historical knowledge. Sometimes these themes problematize the whole history teaching project and its reliance on people’s penetrating understandings of history as discipline and its criterialist manner for constructing knowledge. Sometimes these themes seek to better understand what is going on, to then find ways to improve how things are understood or done. Some of the authors in the special issue implicitly, or even explicitly, question the whole history teaching project, while others seek to build on what we have gained as collective knowledge, hoping to take these results further.

This edited book explores conceptual as well as empirical approaches to epistemic beliefs that teachers of history might hold. In many parts of the world, history teachers are tasked with both upholding historical national myths and at the same time giving students the tools needed to deconstruct history and think critically. This ambiguity embedded in the combination of reconstruction and deconstruction is a difficult landscape for teachers to navigate. The chapters of this book therefore explore how teachers reason regarding the epistemic nature of history and how this impacts their teaching, interpretation of curricula and relationship to their students. Contributions consider the implications for prospective history teachers and in-service training, challenges to the field and point to ways forward. The book will be of interest to academics and students of history education, as well as practising teachers and museum curators.

Controversial issues are often regarded as abundant in history education. Most topics can be regarded as controversial in one way or another. The purpose of this article is to analyse the way history teachers in Swedish lower secondary schools relate controversial issues to a particular view of the nature of the subject of history. By analysing statements from six teacher interviews which centred on the risks and opportunities associated with teaching about controversial issues, the authors were able to see a clear relation between views on controversial issues and views on the nature of history as such. The teachers’ reactions to the introduction of controversial issues, whether introduced by the teacher or by the students, was in many cases directly related to a specific view of the subject itself and its epistemological nature.

Over the last 50 years, the school subject of history has increasingly been described as a subject about interpretation and multi-perspectivism. Discussing the subject this way might require a specific view of the subject’s nature. This study investigates the genre position and epistemic cognition of Swedish upper secondary school history teachers. The study uses a questionnaire to which 375 teachers responded and the results show that in relation to the theoretical framework, more than one half of the teachers demonstrate epistemic inconsistency, putting teachers’ ability to voice their epistemic views and/or theoretical assumptions into question. The age of teachers is the only studied structural category that appear to impact the teachers’ views of the subject, with older teachers being more optimistic about a true correspondence between the past and history, than younger teachers. The study also shows that there is not a straightforward relationship between genre position and epistemic cognition.

This article looks at upper secondary school history teachers’ understandings of how historical knowledge is constructed and at the impact this might have on their classroom practice. The article has two objectives: (1) to examine how teachers view the relationship between the past and history – as a basic entry point peek into their epistemic thinking; and (2) to explore their reflexiveness regarding epistemic issues and what their view might mean for their perspectives and their teaching of history, and by extension, whether they see themselves as being political in the process or not. As part of an international, comparative study on history teachers and their epistemic positioning in the teaching of rival histories, we use a mixed-methods approach to present empirical data from Quebec and Sweden. Forming a cross-cultural dialogue, this comparative focus permits us to identify and discuss nuances that emerge in teachers’ thinking in two completely different societies that nevertheless share similar democratic and political outlooks when it comes to the teaching of school history. In discussing the relationship between the past and history, it appears that teachers have different understandings of what historical knowledge is, how it is constructed, and the implications these meanings have for their practice. The findings demonstrate that there is a main difference and an important similarity between both sites. The difference is one where Swedish teachers are more inclined to make a clear distinction between the past and history, than their Quebecois counterparts who tend to be less prone to making this distinction clear. The similarity, in turn, refers to a majority of participants who are located in between these two extremities – objectivist and critical – and who demonstrate a case of epistemic “wobbling”. In describing the reasons for this difference, namely Quebec’s overt quest for nation-building among its various historical communities, the political nature of history teaching comes to light. In digging deeper in this difference to better qualify the emergent wobbling, the results furthermore illustrate a strong connection between criticality and reflexivity in teachers’ thinking and practice. More specifically, those who clearly distinguish between the past and history demonstrate an ability to account for history’s subjectiveness and are therefore more attuned to questioning their own role in the whole teaching process.

This article analyses Swedish upper secondary school history teachers’ views regarding teaching the ‘uses of history’ and the potential connections between those views and views regarding the epistemological nature of history in general. In the Swedish syllabus for history, in both compulsory schools and upper secondary schools, ‘uses of history’ is a more or less integrated topic. However, the constructionist view of history that can be seen as at least implicitly embedded in the concept of ‘uses of history’ is perhaps not shared by all teachers. Therefore, this article explores teachers’ views on teaching uses of history in connection to general assumptions about the nature of history. Primarily utilising qualitative content analysis of free-text answers in a questionnaire answered by 375 history teachers in Swedish upper secondary schools, this analysis shows that when discussing uses of history in history teaching many of the arguments are in fact based in epistemological conceptualisations of the subject. Most of the teachers find uses of history interesting, especially ‘misuse’ of history, but they often see it as an add on, as a domain of its own, detached from ‘historical facts’, and they sometimes do not prioritise it. Some teachers, however, see uses of history as the very core of the subject, offering an opportunity to really show their students how history is always an interpretational endeavour and how historical knowledge is always detached from past reality. There was also a smaller group of teachers who turned their back on teaching uses of history on more explicit epistemological grounds because they argue that it takes away from ‘real’ history, which they saw as ‘historical facts’ about what ‘really happened’.