Teaching The Cold War - Memory Practices in The Classroom

What are school students being taught about the Cold War now? Which patterns of interpretation do they discover in textbooks and hear from teachers' experiences? How do today’s young people, at home in a networked world informed by a diverse range of media, read textbooks? What is the meaning of the Cold War era for them, particularly when they view it in the light of their present? And how do teachers whose formative years were shaped and often politicised in that period approach the period in their history lessons?

These were the questions driving the comparative work of a research team headed by Barbara Christophe and focusing on Germany, Sweden and Switzerland. The GEI’s partners on the project, the Center for History Teaching & Learning and Recalling the Past at the central Switzerland University of Teacher Education in Lucerne and the Educational History and History Education research group at Umeå University, Sweden, are international leaders in the field.

A key result from the project that is of great interest from a memory-theory and history didactics perspective, is the observation that communication between teachers and students in history lessons is stabilised less and less by common assumptions related to cultural background, especially when dealing with socially controversial topics such as the Cold War. The conclusion is that the resulting misunderstandings could potentially be a valuable opportunity to illuminate the implicit assumptions and categorisations that are inscribed in all communication about history.

Among other works, the following dissertation was completed over the course of this project:

Robert Thorp (2016), Uses of history in history education, Umeå studies in history and education 13, Umeå: Umeå univeristet. Available online verfügbar.

You can find the final report here.

  • Aims

    Those involved in the project have forged close links in order to share their diverse range of experiences and competencies in research into practices of memory as they take place in schools, to the ultimate end of establishing a new field of research.


  • Methodology

    The project benefits from a broad range of research methodologies, including textbook analysis, narrative biographical interviews with history teachers, focus groups with pupils and the analysis of video-recordings of selected history lessons.


  • Publications

    • Christophe, B. (accepted): Mapping the Teaching of Transition: Germany. In: A. Formozov, L. Sichtermann, eds.: Teaching the History of Transition: A Handbook for History and Civic Education, Berlin: Austausch, 14-20.
    • Christophe, B. (accepted) (with Veronika Ludwig): Germany – Victims and Perpetrators in the Trials against the so-called Wall-Shooters: How Can a Constitutional State Judge Past Injustices. In: A. Formozov, L. Sichtermann, eds.: Teaching the History of Transition: A Handbook for History and Civic Education, Berlin: Austausch, 154-165.
    • Christophe, B. (accepted): Teaching Transition: Reflections on Challenges, Strategies and Conceptual Approaches. In: In: A. Formozov, L. Sichtermann, eds.: Teaching the History of Transition: A Handbook for History and Civic Education, Berlin: Austausch, 234-249.
    • Christophe, B. (2022): Vertrauen und Misstrauen im Geschichtsunterricht: Empirische Beobachtungen zu einer prekären Balance. In: E. Fuchs, M. Otto, eds.: In Education We trust? Vertrauen in Bildung und Bildungsmedien, Göttingen V&R unipress, 163-180.
    • Christophe, B. (2021) (with Nadine Ritzer): Erinnerung und Geschichtsunterricht in der Kontingenzgesellschaft: Was war der Vietnamkrieg? In: Zeitschrift für die Didaktik der Gesellschaftswissenschaften 12:2, 160-180
    • Christophe, B., Gautschi, P., Thorp, R., eds. (2019): The Cold War in the Classroom. International Perspectives on Textbooks and Memory Practices, (London: Palgrave Macmillan). Public access
    • Christophe, B. 2019. Der Kalte Krieg im Geschichtsunterricht oder die schwindende Selbstverständlichkeit kultureller Rahmungen. In: Monika Waldis/Béatrice Ziegler, eds.: Forschungswerkstatt Geschichtsdidaktik 17 Beiträge zur Tagung »geschichtsdidaktikempirisch 17, HEP:Bern, 160-173.
    • Christophe, B., Halder, L. (2018): Concepts of the Past. Socialism. In: A. Bock, E. Fuchs (eds.) Palgrave Handbook on Textbook Studies (London: Palgrave), 293-304.
    • Christophe, B. (2017) ‘Eigentlich Hingen ja Alle mit drin.‘ Entnazifizierung und Kalter Krieg in Deutschen Schulbüchern und in den Erzählungen von Lehrenden.“ In: F. Flucke, B. Kuhn, U. Pfeil, Ulrich Pfeil (ed.): Das geteilte Deutschland im Schulbuch. Die Darstellung des Kalten Krieges am Beispiel Deutschlands in den (Geschichts-) Schulbüchern von 1945 bis in die Gegenwart (St. Ingbert: Röhrig Universitätsverlag) 147-165.
    • Ahlrichs, J., Baier, K., Christophe, B., Macgilchrist, F., Mielke, P., & Richtera, R. (2015) Memory practices in the classroom: On reproducing, destabilizing and interrupting majority memories. Journal of Educational Media, Memory, and Society, 7(2): 89-109.
    • Christophe, B. (2015) Kulturwissenschaftliche Schulbuchforschung – Trends, Ergebnisse und Potentiale. In: C. Kühberger, P. Mittnik (ed.), Empirische Geschichtsschulbuchforschung in Österreich (Innsbruck: Studien Verlag), 35–47.

Project Team

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