Teaching Transnational Histories: Germany – Poland - Ukraine

Transnational reconciliation processes have historically formed an essential basis for European cooperation. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has underlined the importance of such understandings, and although it has not caused them, it has made existing shortcomings strikingly apparent. Educational media are a central building block for teaching an awareness of historical transitional processes. The aim of the ‘Teaching Transnational Histories‘ project is to develop high-quality educational materials based on existing research. These materials will be designed for transnationally-oriented history teaching and will focus on open and cordial relationships between neighbouring peoples who have been closely intertwined throughout history

Valuable insights into developing transnational educational media were gained during the development of the German-Polish history textbook ‘Europe – Our History’ (Europa – Unsere Geschichte/Europa. Nasza historia) which was coordinated by the Joint German-Polish Textbook Commission between 2007 and 2020. This new project will build on that experience and expertise and, working closely with Ukrainian, Polish and German sociologists, historians and political scientists, will apply it to the Polish-Ukrainian dialogue regarding educational media for history teaching. Working closely together, the Institute of Political Studies – Polish Academy of Sciences (ISP PAN) and the Leibniz Institute for Educational Media – Georg Eckert Institute (GEI) will produce recommendations for a joint Polish-Ukrainian history textbook and will prepare examples of teaching materials addressing these countries’ complex interrelated history. These findings should serve as the basis for a joint history textbook after the conclusion of the project.