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Democratic pilgrimage: Swedish students’ understanding of study trips to Holocaust memorial sites

Author(s): Flennegård, Ola; Mattsson, Christer

Date: 2023

Topics: Educational Tours, Holocaust Memorials, Holocaust Education, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Students, Teenagers, Schools: Seconday / High Schools, Democracy, Discourse and Discourse Analysis

Abstract: This article focuses on Swedish students’ understanding of study trips to Holocaust memorial sites. Although about a quarter of all Swedish teenagers visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum each year, with the majority visiting as students as part of their school curriculum, this study is the first to examine these study trips from a student perspective. By applying critical discourse analysis, this article analyses 49 students’ reflections, written before, during, and after two study trips. The results suggest that the study trips’ discursive practice, which constitutes and is constituted by the study trips’ social practice, is regulated by a discursive order termed democratic pilgrimage. In addition, this article reveals two didactic deviations from previous research on study trips: the students’ positive feelings in relation to the Polish environment and the balance between victim and perpetrator perspectives. The latter creates tension within the students and is solved via articulations of democratic values.

Teaching at Holocaust memorial sites: Swedish teachers’ understanding of the educational values of visiting Holocaust memorial sites

Author(s): Flennegård, Ola; Mattsson, Christer

Date: 2021

Topics: Holocaust Education, Holocaust Memorials, Educational Tours, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Teachers, Teenagers, Schools: Seconday / High Schools

Abstract: The present article focuses on teaching and learning about the Holocaust in Sweden, conducted as study trips to Holocaust memorial sites. Although about a quarter of Swedish teenagers visit the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum each year, this study is the first to examine these Swedish study trips. Since there are no centralised systems for arranging these study trips, this study regards dedicated teachers as the main stakeholders. By deploying critical discourse analysis of transcripts of nine in-depth interviews with teachers, the study terms the discursive order of the teachers’ talk about the study trips ritual democratic catharsis. The teachers’ two main purposes are the use of the study trips as a vehicle for the social dynamics in the group to evolve in order to promote personal growth among the students, and the students’ learning about democracy and human rights. Their overarching didactic strategy of focusing on the suffering of the victims is meant to evoke empathy among the students, but lacks an explanatory aim. The study critically points out the teachers’ unreflected relationship to historiographic Holocaust content as a subject, making their teaching vulnerable to contemporary political influences, jeopardising the democratic purpose of these trips.

Creating a youth ambassador: a critical study of a Swedish project on teaching and learning about the Holocaust

Author(s): Flennegård, Ola

Date: 2024

Topics: Holocaust Education, Holocaust Memorials, Holocaust Commemoration, Main Topic: Holocaust and Memorial, Students, Educational Tours

Abstract: This article focuses on a project within the government-supported Swedish Committee Against Antisemitism program. To our knowledge, this is the first study to employ full-project interviews and participant observations to explore Swedish study trips to Holocaust memorial sites. It applies the educational concepts of qualification, socialization, and person-formation inspired by educational theorist Gert Biesta. Students acquired qualified concepts regarding the Holocaust's ‘what' and ‘why’ dimensions. However, findings indicate that attention should be paid to how external organizers risk narrowing the potentials of education about the Holocaust due to a lack of preexisting relations among students, and between educators and students.