Diversity of Students and History Education : Review of Studies on S tudents’ Historical Identity and Historical Consciousness and a Plural History Approach

Abstract

This paper examines empirical studies of students from various ethnic backgrounds in Europe and North America, analyzing their historical identity and thinking about how to consider student diversity in history education. Many empirical studies conducted in the 1990s and early 2000s have examined and analyzed the relationship between the student’s historical identity and the student’s racial and ethnic backgrounds and found that the “given situation” of the student’s race, ethnicity, religion, gender influence the students’ selection of historical interpretation and narratives and their historical identities. However, recent studies have emphasized that not only students’ “given situation” but also their social awareness of social problems are important factors influencing their selections of historical significance and construction of their historical identities. Therefore, in historical education, the diversity of students needs to be redefined not only by the given situation of the student’s race, ethnicity, religion, gender but also crossing artificial compartments of such conditions.