Commercialised History: Popular History Magazines in Europe

[EN]This volume of essays is the result of the EU project «EHISTO», which dealt with the mediation of history in popular history magazines and explored how history in the commercialised mass media can be used in history teaching in order to develop the media literacy and the transcultural competences of young people. The volume offers articles which for the first time address the phenomenon of popular history magazines in Europe and their mediating strategies in a foundational way. The articles are intended as introductory material for teachers and student teachers. The topic also offers an innovative approach in terms of making possible a European cross-country comparison, in which results based on qualitative and quantitative methods are presented, related to the content focus areas profiled in the national magazines.This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This publication reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein

Commercialised History: Popular History Magazines in Europe

This volume of essays is the result of the EU project «EHISTO», which dealt with the mediation of history in popular history magazines and explored how history in the commercialised mass media can be used in history teaching in order to develop the media literacy and the transcultural competences of young people. The volume offers articles which for the first time address the phenomenon of popular history magazines in Europe and their mediating strategies in a foundational way. The articles are intended as introductory material for teachers and student teachers. The topic also offers an innovative approach in terms of making possible a European cross-country comparison, in which results based on qualitative and quantitative methods are presented, related to the content focus areas profiled in the national magazines

A case study of the use of popular history magazines in history teaching in England

The paper reports the outcomes of one strand of the EHISTO Project (http://www.european-crossroads.de). The EHISTO Project is an EU funded collaboration which explores the use of popular history magazines in history education in schools with the aim of developing pupils’ critical and media literacy. The baseline study at the start of the project found that although many history teachers in the five countries involved in the project believed that popular history magazines had the potential to be a useful resource for history teaching, only a minority of teachers made regular use of them in their teaching. The paper looks at attempts to use the EHISTO website to encourage teachers and student teachers to explore the use of popular history magazines in their teaching. The outcomes of the study provide some insight into the potential of popular history magazines as a useful resource in history teaching, the ways in which teachers and student teachers made use of the magazines and the EHISTO website in their teaching. The conclusion also reflects on some of the limitations, problems and mistakes which were made in the execution of the project. There is some evidence to suggest that in spite of these problems, many teachers did find popular history magazines and the EHISTO website to be useful resources and there was a substantial increase in the proportion of teachers and student teachers involved in the study who read and made use of the materials, compared to the outcomes of the baseline study conducted at the start of the study