Introduction: Historical thinking, historical consciousness

Abstract

In September, 2014, the University of Ottawa Education Research Unit, Making History / Faire l’histoire, hosted Canadian History at the Crossroads, a SSHRC-funded symposium in collaboration with the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Québec. The symposium brought together multiple stakeholders, historians, history and museum educators, classroom teachers—including Governor General’s award winners as well as teacher education and graduate students—to stimulate further public dialogue on pedagogies of history and the politics of remembrance. Building on some of the symposium’s original contributions as well as other submissions, this Canadian Journal of Education Special Capsule advances current debates in history education, historical thinking, and historical consciousness, and forges new directions for collective understandings of the past, by connecting with everyday lived experiences in the present. The contributions range from discussions of how young people themselves understand their past to the link- ages between forms of remembering and conceptions of the nation itself.