Alan Sears University of New Brunswick asears@unb

1. Reimagining Communities: Meeting the Challenge of Fostering National Belonging in a Globalized World Alan Sears University of New Brunswick asears@unb.ca

2. The Cohesion Crisis ‘We have to face uncomfortable facts that while the British response to July 7th was remarkable, they were British citizens, British born apparently integrated into our communities who were prepared to maim and kill fellow British citizens irrespective of their own religion.’ Gordon Brown

3. The Cohesion Crisis Almost all democratic societies are faced with concerns about citizens who have not integrated well into either the generic processes of democracy or their particular national expressions of it

4. The Cohesion Crisis ‘Multiculturalism is not a Quebec value. It may be a Canadian one but it is not a Quebec one.’ Louise Beaudoin Parti Québécois Critic for Secularism January 2011

5. Responses • Netherlands – strengthening of compulsory history requirements in school around a new cannon of Dutch history • China – the rehabilitation of traditional Chinese values: Confucius comes to Tiananmen • England – the teaching of ‘Britishness’ ‘Young people understand less then they should about how our democracy works, the forces which have shaped it and its values, history and heritage; in short, what we understand by “Britishness” in the contemporary world.’ Ofsted, 2007

6. The Challenge ‘We face a challenge unprecedented in our history: creation of a powerful political ethic of solidarity self-consciously grounded on the presence and acceptance of very different views.’ Charles Taylor, 2010 The Globe and Mail

7. Imagining and Reimagining Community

8. Central Arguments • We have abused national history as a vehicle for imagining the nation in inherently conservative and assimilationist ways. • In our retreat from assimilationist approaches to history education we have created a generic citizenship education that pays insufficient attention to national context. • The nation state remains a central context for civic identity and action and therefore attention to it is essential in civic education. • New work in both history and citizenship education points a way forward for an inclusive reimainging of national communities.

9. Creating Canadians • ‘The aim of public schools in English Canada was to create a homogeneous nation built on a common English language, a common culture, a common identification with the British Empire and an acceptance of British institutions and practices.’ Rosa Bruno-Joffre • ‘Practically all students I tested, from Grade 11 to the university level, used a narrative that is, in a way, traditional. It refers to the timeless quest of Québécois, poor alienated people, for emancipation from their oppressors.’Jocelyn Létourneau

10. Creating Canadians • Conquering Pioneers • The Bilingual-Bicultural Reality • The Pluralist Ideal Alan Sears Canadian history has been a British and French Fabric that has been permitted to be decorated with diversity. We need a reweaving of the fabric -- not the addition of new decoration. Roberta Jamieson CEO, National Aboriginal Achievement Foundation

11. Creating Canadians • Bad history, badly taught Students were ‘bench bound listeners’ learning a ‘bland consensus version of history.’ A.B. Hodgetts ‘The proper role for historians, Howard rightly says, is to challenge and even explode national myths.’ Margaret MacMillan

12. Nothingness: Generic Approaches to Citizenship Education ‘Central to this is an activist conception of citizenship in which every citizen, or group of citizens, will have the knowledge, skills and dispositions needed to participate in the civic life of the country and feel welcome to do so. It is important to note, that what citizens are being included in is not citizenship in the ethnic or sociological sense of belonging to a community but, rather, they are being included in the community of those who participate, who join in a process.’ Alan Sears, Ian Davies and Alan Reid

13. The Failure of Nothingness ‘Major international events, such as 11 September 2001 and the London bombings in July 2005, have contributed to the debate on community cohesion and shared values. In the wake of these events, community cohesion is a key focus for the Government’ Diversity and Citizenship Curriculum Review, England, 2007

14. The Educational Challenge • How can education foster a sense of national belonging and social cohesion without reverting to the assimilationist approaches of the past?

15. The False Dichotomy “Since its inception in school curriculum in the late 19th century, history education has served two very differentpurposes. On the one hand, it has served to form and sustain a cohesive sense of national identity and affiliation in the citizens of the nation-states. On the other hand, it has served to foster in citizens acritical understanding of their society’s past and present.” Mario Carretero,Universidad Autónoma de Madrid

16. A Way Forward • We Must Pay Attention to the National Context • ‘While there are common or generic aspects to democratic citizenship that exist across jurisdictions, it is most often lived out on the ground in specific contexts that give it both form and function.’ • Nation states ‘remain key sites for the formation of identity and the exercise of citizenship.’ Theodore Christou and Alan Sears

17. A Way Forward • There must be a rapprochement between history and citizenship education. ‘The war between history and citizenship education is in many ways a false one. . . it is in every way counterproductive to developing substantive and demonstrably sound approaches to social education.’ Alan Sears

18. Reimagining Community Together • We must engage students as co-authors of the imagined nation. ‘We advocate involving students in the process of constructing the meaning of democratic ideas for their own time and place. In other words, not telling them what it means to be Australian, Canadian or English but introducing them, in an informed way, to the discussion of what those identities have been, are, and might be in the future.” Theodore Christou and Alan Sears

19. Reimagining Community Together ‘Students overwhelmingly appreciated the opportunity to study history that was contested, changeable, and not restricted to core national knowledge.’ Anna Clark

20. What Makes Our Time Different? • The Scope of Consensus • Research Base: Cognitive Change; History Education; Citizenship Education • Clear Delineation of Conceptual and Procedural Knowledge • Development of Quality Materials to Support Good Teaching • The Development of Substantive Assessment Strategies • Development of Cross Boundary Collaborative Partnerships

21. The Research Base • How children and young people understand the history of their nations or communities – Levstik, Barton, Létourneau, Clark • How teachers construct the nation – Fadden • How students’ identities shape their understandings of their nations’ histories – Peck, Osler

22. Tools for Reimagining: Well Delineated Concepts and Processes Drawn from the work of Peter Seixas, Carla Peck, Penney Clark, Mike Denos and Roland Case

23. Tools for Reimagining: Well Delineated Concepts and Processes

24. Tools for Reimagining: Substantive and Useable Teaching Materials

25. Tools for Reimagining: Teaching Approaches Focused on Cognitive Change

26. Tools for Reimagining: Teaching Approaches Focused on Cognitive Change http://historybenchmarks.ca/

27. Tools for Reimagining: Substantive Assessments Stanford History Education Group

28. Tools for Reimagining: Collaborative Partnerships http://www.thenhier.ca/

29. Thank You