This pilot project focussed on the design and creation of digital teaching materials that address transnational and transregional interrelationships, using specific locations as examples. The project employed innovative approaches and available material on memory culture, and based on oral and local history, to develop participative, multilingual and digital educational materials for use in schools and other institutions. The focus was particularly on source material designed for educational practice that was either multilingual or in the relevant original language. The bilingual teaching materials on the history of diversity created through the pilot project can be used in native language education programmes in Turkish, Polish and Ukrainian, as well as in traditional history lessons or in non-school settings. The three linguistic contexts reflect the two largest migrant groups in Germany as well as current needs arising from recent immigration and memory-culture controversies in the context of current conflicts. German-Turkish materials address diversity stories against the backdrop of the Treaty of Lausanne, which marked its centenary in 2023.
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Aims
The aim of this pilot project was to produce bilingual teaching materials on the history of diversity that can be used in history lessons in German schools as well as in educational programmes in native languages (Polish, Turkish, Ukrainian), and which can stimulate historical learning in non-school education provision. Such bilingual materials could also be used in German schools abroad and their extra-curricular teaching programmes.
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Methodology
The starting point for developing materials in each case was an inventory of curricula and textbook content and of the framework conditions for history teaching in Germany, Poland, Turkey and Ukraine, as well as an overview of promising historic examples of individual stories with real-world references that interweave the historical perspectives. The aim of the inventory was primarily to identify controversies within memory cultures and provide approaches for transnational and transregional European narratives. It also aimed to expose gaps in the narratives with regards to social diversity in the past or present.
In order to embed the approach into educational practice, workshops and training units were provided for teachers and educational media producers. Specific consultations were also offered to educational media publishers in order to share with them the relevant expertise. The GEI employed researchers and experts with relevant linguistic skills and specialist knowledge in the respective regional memory cultures to create teaching materials and provide workshops for education practitioners in Germany, Poland, Ukraine and Turkey. They took advantage of long-standing contacts with people involved in remembrance initiatives and teaching organisations as well as historians and history educators in Germany and the three countries on which the project was focussed.
The project team developed six digital teaching concepts based on the inventory and examination of German, Polish, Turkish and Ukrainian curricula and textbooks as well as on the experiences of local approaches to memory-culture and the history of remembrance. These concepts are available through the websites www.zwischentoene.info (also reflections.eduskills.plus) or hi-storylessons.eu, which are hosted by the GEI and its partners. Three online workshops were also organised in which teachers, historians and representatives from remembrance initiatives took part. The local-history centred approach developed in these workshops and the materials created formed the basis of six training units that were made available to teachers, and authors and editors in educational publishing houses. They could also be used for consultations with publishing houses regarding relevant text passages and textbook units or with other education practitioners. In order to communicate the didactic content created and developed throughout the project to a wider audience the project team also took part in interviews and contributed to articles in newspapers and relevant journals.
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Results
The project team considered iterative evaluation and revision to be an integral part of the project's success. They worked intensively with researchers, practitioners and publishers of educational media in order to optimise their output.
These partnerships and activities included:
Workshops and training seminars with teachers
- 7 September 2023. Imke Rath and Yulia Ostropalchenko organised a teaching materials workshop on language and diversity (Sprache und Diversität: Unterrichtsmaterialien für Vielfalt im Klassenzimmer) in cooperation with the Landesinstitut für Schule, Bremen
- 14 November 2023. Imke Rath and Önder Cetin organised a workshop on multilingualism as a resource (Mehrsprachigkeit als Ressource)in cooperation with the Landesinstitut für Lehrerbildung und Schulentwicklung, Hamburg
- 18-19 November 2023. Katarzyna Jez and Yulia Ostropalchenko took part in a workshop on teaching regional history as part of the ‘Building Bridges for Peace’ event organised jointly by the GEI, International Delphic Council and the Zentrum für Historische Forschung Berlin der Polnischen Akademie der Wissenschaften for German, Polish and Ukrainian teachers
- 17-18 November 2023 Imke Rath and Yuri Shapoval took part in a workshop that examined how Ukrainian history could be taught in German, Poland and other EU countries (Wie kann man ukrainische Geschichte in Deutschland, Polen und anderen Ländern der Europäischen Union unterrichten? Neue transnationale Perspektiven für den Geschichtsunterricht in der Schule) orgainsed with the Ukrainischen Freien Universität München (UFU), the Zentrum für Historische Forschung Berlin der Polnischen Akademie der Wissenschaften Berlin (CBH PAN) and the Viadrina Centre of Polish and Ukrainian Studies at the Europa-Universität Viadrina in Frankfurt/Oder
- 21 November 2023. Katarzyna Jez took part in a German-Polish history workshop for youth workers (Geschichte in Dialog - Deutsch-Polnischer Geschichtsworkshop für Multiplikatoren aus der Jugendarbeit), which was organised by the GEI in cooperation with the EuropaUnion Kassel and the association Warto Być Przyzwoitym and held at the Berlin Polish Institute’s Leipzig branch.
- 28 November 2023. Imke Rath and Önder Cetin Imke Rath and Önder Cetin organised a workshop on multilingualism as a resource (Mehrsprachigkeit als Ressource) in cooperation with Regionalen Fortbildung Berlin at the Senatsverwaltung für Bildung, Jugend und Familie, the Institut für Qualitätsentwicklung, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern and the Institut für Qualitätsentwicklung an den Schulen Schleswig-Holstein
- 15 May 2024. Önder Cetin organised a workshop on multilingualism and heritage language education (HSU) (Mehrsprachigkeit als Ressource: HSU zur Förderung von Diversity-Kompetenzen) in cooperation with Bildungscampus Saarland, Saarland Ministry for Education and Culture.
- 14 March 2025. Önder Cetin is organising a workshop in Turkish for heritage language teachers called ‘Revisiting HSU as a Means of Fostering Diversity Education and Multilingualism as a Resource’, as part of the second online meeting of HSU-Interregio.
Meetings with publishing houses and authors
- 7 February, 21 November and 31 May 2024. Series of meetings between the project team and editors from the Klett publishing house.
- 25 September 2023. Meeting between Önder Cetin and Tolga Çelik, editor at Anadolu publishers.
- 24 April 2024. Meeting between Önder Cetin and Prof. Yüksel Ekinci, author of the ‘Benim Türkçem‘ series produced by Önel publishers.
Meetings with other researchers.
- 15-16 September 2022. Yuri Shapoval took part in the podium discussion ‘Forgotten Central Europe? How should Ukrainian history be taught in EU countries and European history in Ukraine today?’ at the 2nd EFREC conference ‘Learning from the past for the future: What history textbook does Europe need in the 21st century?’ organised in cooperation with the Centre Scientifique Académie Polonais des Sciences and the Polnischen Akademie der Wissenschaften.
- 28-29 September 2022. Yuri Shapoval delivers the keynote speech ‘What sources help in researching the Holodomor?’ at the international conference ‘Holodomor in a global perspective’ at the University of Cambridge.
- 15 September 2023. Yuri Shapoval took part in the round table discussion ‘The Last Soviet Famine, 1946-1947’ at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, EHESS.
- 9-10 November 2023. Önder Cetin gave a presentation on the project at the first annual meeting of the HSU-Interregio research network (Interdisciplinary and interregional research, development and networking in heritage language education), coordinated by the University of Duisburg-Essen.
- 28-30 November 2023. Önder Cetin introduced the project to a group of Polish researchers visiting the GEI from the Institute for history at the University of Opole (Pracownia Badań nad Podręcznikami Historii).
- 10-11 Oktober 2024. Önder Cetin presented and discussed findings from the project at a BarCamp session at the second annual meeting of the HSU-Interregio at the University of Duisburg-Essen that examined the potential and challenges for HSU as a means to promote diversity education.
- 28 Oktober 2024. Imke Rath and Yulia Ostropalchenko presented and discussed the Ukranian modules developed by the project with a group of lecturers and students from Bila Tserkva National Agrarian University, Ukraine, whose visit to the GEI was organised by MOCT - Brücke der Freundschaft eV.
Public events
- 12 December 2023. Katarzyna Jez and Önder Cetin joined the GEI team an, to present the project to representatives of regional government as part of the ‘Leibniz im Landtag’ event.
- 30 May 2024. Önder Cetin and Yulia Ostropalchenko gave a presentation on the project at the GEI open day.
- 11 June 2024. Katarzyna Jez gave a presentation on the project at the federal parliament as part of the ‘Leibniz im Bundestag’ programme.
Publications
- 2023. Önder Cetin published the article ‘Deconstructing the Turkish Jewish identity of Çanakkale between Silence and Speaking out: Nostalgia as an Exit-Strategy’ in Memory Studies, Vol. 17, Ausgabe 4 (online 17 February 2023). The article discusses one of the cases presented in the teaching modules.
- 2024. Project brochures, in five languages, were written by Önder Cetin and designed by Julia Franzmeier from the Academic Communication team, ready for publication in February 2024.
- 2024. Details oft he project are published in the GEI Annual Report for 2023.
- 2025. ‘Revisiting HSU as a means for diversity education: “Vielfaltsgeschichten” as a pilot project’ written by Önder Cetin will appear as a chapter in the edited volume produced by the HSU-Interregio-Projekts in December 2025 and published by Waxmann Verlag.
