Co-organised with historicaldialogues.lk, EuroClio is pleased to invite to a webinar on the use of counterfactual history in the classroom Thursday 28 October at 14:30 CEST (18:00 Colombo)
What if counterfactual history didn’t exist? What would that mean for our understanding of history and especially for history taught in schools? In this workshop we investigate the difference between the past and history. We will see that – while ‘the Past’ isn’t – ‘History’ is as much a construction as ‘Counterfactual History’ is and that the possibilities of counterfactual thinking for historical reasoning can enhance the quality of history taught in schools and the motivation of our pupils for history.
All starts with the ‘What-if’ question with which this introduction began. If there wasn’t counterfactual thinking or counterfactual history, then history education would be much more boring and less motivating for our students.
This workshop will explore this concept of Historical reasoning using examples of counterfactual situations from popular Sri Lankan history with inputs from pedagogues. We are open to discussing in what form and space these ideas could be tried out in the classroom.
Workshop Leaders: Paul Holthuis and Dilshan Fernando
Language: English with Sinhala and Tamil Interpretations options
