European Association of History Educators

History in general and history education in particular has been traditionally a topic subjected to fierce political interference, propaganda, and indoctrination. No other school subject leads to such emotional debates in society, in politics and in the media. There are unfortunately many recent examples of how history can be misused and abuse for petty political objectives. However, in the last decades there have been many interesting experiments in the field of history education to promote innovation and reform. The reform initiatives aim to make the subject attractive and challenging to the experience and reality of the generation that is growing up in the 21st century. A great deal of resources, both human and financial have been invested in these reform initiatives over the last 20 years These new approaches are based on multi-perspective historical narratives, empowering dialogue in education, and culture of democracy in order to promote the use of history education as an instrument for peace and reconciliation. These new developments in the discipline of history replace the traditional concept of history education based on a positivistic approach towards the discipline of history, on a hierarchic, and top-down attitude towards education, and on one-sided patriotic and proud attitude towards the national past.

The Advisory Panel for the EUROCLIO research project "What is The Impact of pioneering reform initiatives in history education?" has received much interest from experts in history education and research from all over the world. Currently, panel members from the USA, The Netherlands, the UK, Israel and Germany make up a team of world-renowned experts in history, social sciences and citizenship education who will assist as advisors to the project, led by Professor Eyal Naveh of the Unviersty of Tel-Aviv, Senior fellow at the Israel Democracy Institute and The Kibbutzim College of Education in Israel.

Click here to download a full list of experts on the panel, complete with short biographies and more information on the project can be found here.

Source: Haaretz.com

"Present three factors that contributed to the growth of the nationalist movements in the 19th century." "Present the characteristics of Hellenistic culture."

These questions and others on the history matriculation exam three weeks ago led three history professors to write an open letter criticizing the fact that the exam's questions have not changed in the past 20 or 30 years.

The questions "should express what society expects - knowledge, skills, thinking and values. But disappointingly, [the questions test] neither skill nor thought, values nor appraisals. The exam limits itself to a few questions whose answers require only memorization," wrote Professor Eyal Naveh of Tel Aviv University, Dr. Gadi Rauner of Tel Aviv University and the Open University, and Aryeh Kizel of the University of Haifa and Oranim Academic College.

Students must pass at least two units of history in order to receive a matriculation certificate. In recent years, the average grade on the exam has been around 75. Very few students choose to take the five-unit exam; in 2007 only about 1,180 students did.

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