Teaching History in a multicultural society

Meeting the history and heritage of the majority culture in a pluralist society might, at worst, mean giving up the control of one’s own past and assimilating into a new ’master narrative’. By re-defining history as a school subject, putting at its core not a set narrative of the past but the cognitive process of thinking about the past, the very process of knowing and understanding might form a ground for a shared experience of history while at the same time allow for the co-existence of different narratives. History curricula in the Nordic countries have for the last two decades gradually moved in this direction. Whether classroom work has done so as well remains less certain. Recent studies suggest that History teachers acknowledge that teaching and learning must adjust to the reality of pluralism but are less confident about how to meet the challenge in concrete terms.