This chapter reprises the arguments advanced in the first four chapters of the book, and assesses the question of what “lessons” history can teach on that basis. It argues that the habits and methods of analysis, interpretation, open-ended inquiry, and intellectual flexibility that study in History cultivates are uniquely valuable in the specific circumstances of our own time, at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It argues that it is these habits, rather than any specific political values, that make History uniquely valuable as a form of education for citizenship. It argues, finally, that this is the only approach to the civic value of history education that is compatible with the ethical principles foundational to the discipline of History. In closing, it presents the case for viewing the understanding that history offers us no lessons as the most important lesson history can teach us. This is a lesson that can teach us to think and act with due deliberation, to inquire more deeply before acting, and to act in full confidence that our actions will have unintended consequences.

This chapter defines the field of history by examining both the topics it investigates and some of its long-standing and unique epistemological and methodological assumptions. It points out the unique breadth of the discipline, which has always taken the whole of human experience as its object of study. It emphasizes the holism of the discipline – that is, History’s consistent interest not in particular parts or aspects of that experience, but in the interactions between different aspects of human societies. It examines the historicist tradition within the discipline – the fundamental assumption that every aspect of human life is conditioned by its broad historical context. And it explores the way in which that fundamental assumption has contributed to a primarily idiographic epistemological position – an interest in the analysis of the particular and specific, rather than the general or universal.

As a field of knowledge History is exceptionally interested in the particular and specific rather than the universal and general – it is primarily idiographic rather than nomothetic. It is also centrally concerned with change over time. These two characteristics make History fundamentally a storytelling discipline. Its findings are most often presented in narrative form. Of course, many books do not follow one narrative from cover to cover. But research findings are most often presented as stories – not as reports of particular key results (as, for example, in a scientific lab report) or as the results of statistical analysis. Nomothetic disciplines tend toward examining a relatively narrow set of features of multiple cases in order to create generalizing theories and establish laws of regularity that define what will happen under a given set of circumstances at any and all times and places. History instead usually aims to organize into a coherent interpretation many features of a single case, exploring in detail what happened at a particular time, in a particular place. It often also aims to give us a complex, multifactor causal explanation of why it happened as it did, but usually that causal explanation is embedded in the narrative.

This chapter reviews the literature on the teaching of history, and defines the purpose of this book: to offer a clearer definition of the aims and benefits of the study of History at the college and university level. Two principles are at the heart of that conception. One is that long-standing methodological and epistemological divisions within the discipline are a source of its unique pedagogical value. The other is that History assumes a particular ethical posture relative to its subjects – the people it studies – and that this too is a source of its unique pedagogical value.

This chapter addresses some of the classic problems of historical analysis, focusing on the ways in which the intellectual options that the complex history of the discipline can help historians address the challenges those problems pose. It presents a discussion of the problems of objectivity, bias, and judgment in history. It focuses on historians’ necessarily paradoxical yet coherent conception of their own relationship to history – of which they are, according to the logic of the discipline itself, both students and products. It suggests that postmodern theory about the nature of historical knowledge both recapitulates and deepens this fundamental historicist position. It discusses the standards of evidentiary support and of logical argumentation that historians use to evaluate the plausibility and productivity of historical interpretations. Finally, this chapter explores once again the unique pedagogical usefulness of History as a discipline that is irreducibly and necessarily perspectival, interpretive, and focused on standards of inquiry rather than on the production of actionable outcomes.

This chapter argues for an approach to teaching History rooted in the ethical position foundational to the discipline. That approach is based on respect for our students and for the discipline; in it instructors encounter and learn from their students in the same way that they encounter and learn from historical subjects, and instruction in History, just like research in History, focuses not on controlling outcomes but on engaging in an ethically authentic process. It offers six approaches to instruction that can help build this kind of relationship between instructors and students, and between students and the discipline. These include consulting our students regarding their interests and aims; building instruction around the process of inquiry; making pedagogical use both of the breadth of the discipline and of its complexity, diversity, and epistemological and methodological divisions; focusing on teaching analysis, critical thinking, and interpretation; and bringing students to see their engagement with History not only as a process by which they master specific bodies of knowledge and methods of thinking but also as an open-ended intellectual adventure.

Thanks in part to a fee-free basic education policy, school enrolment in Rwanda has surged. More children, particularly those from poor families, now have access to more years within the public education system. At the same time, completion rates remain low and repetition rates remain high. This chapter looks at the ‘hidden costs’ of fee-free schooling in Rwanda. It pairs policy analysis with qualitative data gathering with children, families, teachers, and local and national decision-makers to consider why completion and transition rates aren’t as high as expected in the context of fee-free school. Findings suggest children continue to contend with a range of school-related costs that impact attendance, performance and completion. Examination fees, afterschool coaching, school feeding and ‘voluntary’ parent–teacher association dues shape children’s full participation in school. These ‘hidden costs’ are a key factor for why children do not complete their schooling. The notion of ‘culture’ or ‘backwards mindset’ as the primary reasons why families may choose not to send their children to school is challenged; instead there may be direct and indirect costs that are not accounted for, even in the context of a policy that appears to align with the Education for All agenda.

This chapter examines how teachers in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, overcome economic adversity owing to the high cost of living in urban areas and low official compensation for teachers. Focusing on ten schools in Bishkek, this study investigates the mechanisms employed by teachers, principals, and school administrators across the city to counter a single teacher salary reform introduced in 2011 and maintain the status quo. The study illustrates the endurance of longstanding norms and social hierarchies within the teaching workforce in post-Soviet Kyrgyzstan. It identifies a number of mechanisms employed by teachers and administrators to overcome their disadvantaged position in the labor market. This includes utilizing agency and drawing on social capital to forge ties between teachers and principals (as well as policymakers) in order to maximize formal earnings and to normalize the practice of unofficial school fee collection from parents. The chapter illustrates ways in which teachers and schools have the capacity to ignore, modify, and altogether undo centrally mandated education reforms.

This chapter takes as its starting point the features identified as critical in understanding the process of educational reform, set out by McLaughlin and Ruby in their review of the case studies in Implementing Educational Reform: Cases and Challenges. These are: the historical and political context; models of implementation; timescale; internal and external actors; communication and discourse. It examines the relationship between structure and culture in promoting successful change in educational systems focusing particularly on the role of external actors in shaping the Scottish Government’s management of change and the tension between the broad curricular intentions and the narrow conception of assessment in upper secondary school. It also examines the extent to which governance reform is capable of enabling sustained cultural change; and the best means of encouraging teachers to develop a sense of agency, not simply the implementers of policy devised by external ‘experts’. It illustrates how educational reform in Scotland is complex, contested territory in which the policy intentions of government are interpreted and mediated through bureaucratic agencies, professional networks and an expanding field of interest and pressure groups.

The need to reform pedagogical practice in Peruvian schools has been on the country’s policy agenda at least since the mid-1990s. Since then, the country has undergone several attempts at reform through curriculum change and various in-service training attempts that relied on top-down implementation models and achieved only partial changes. In 2013, an innovative programme named Soporte Pedagogico (SP) devised a strategy to work on changes from within schools and intervening in several key areas at once. It combined teacher mentoring with training workshops, strategies to strengthen a school’s pedagogical leadership, remedial strategies for students lagging behind and parental involvement for improving learning. In sum, an integral approach to reform pedagogical practice. While implementation and impact evaluations showed great promise in the programme, the Ministry of Education introduced cuts and later dismantled the programme. The story of SP is illustrative of how the political economy of education policy making and reform operates in contexts described as Sysiphean states, whose weak institutions give rise to often erratic policy making processes. The case of SP also speaks about how competing visions of education – technocratic versus pedagogically minded – might clash and work against promising change strategies.