Conference Agenda

This study, anchored in contemporary intercultural challenges, seeks to understand the historical-social consciousness expressed in the historical narratives of History teachers and students in Portuguese schools. The debate on respect for human dignity within intercultural dialogue has been reshaped in light of emerging concerns, discussed from a didactic perspective and articulated with the need for a “new humanism” (Rüsen, 2021) that may be strengthened through Historical Education. The study aims to examine how the discipline of History has contributed to the development of historical consciousness. It is therefore essential to map and critically discuss educational and social ideas and practices related to the concepts of Human Dignity, New Humanism, Interculturality, Historical Consciousness and Teacher Education, in order to identify pathways for enhancing critical and independent thinking in curricular and pedagogical decision-making and for promoting educational practices aligned with research and with the shared conceptual framework of Historical Education.

This paper presents preliminary results from the first phase of the research, focused on the initial characterisation of teachers’ and students’ conceptions of human dignity, interculturality and historical-social consciousness, as well as on the identification of interpretative tendencies emerging from their historical narratives. This exploratory phase makes it possible to recognise meaning-making patterns and hermeneutical tensions that shape how both groups mobilise historical ideas in contexts of plural coexistence and decision-making. Within this scope, the study seeks to address questions such as: what conceptions History teachers and students in Portugal hold regarding respect for human dignity, interculturality and historical-social consciousness; how teachers promote these principles in their pedagogical practices; how students mobilise their ideas in decision-making processes; and how teacher education in Portugal may reinforce pedagogical practices that support human dignity, interculturality and historical-social consciousness.

The objectives of this initial phase are to map teachers’ and students’ conceptions concerning human dignity, interculturality and historical-social consciousness; to understand how teachers integrate these principles into their educational practices; to conduct a preliminary analysis of how students use these ideas to substantiate decisions; and to outline directions that may strengthen subsequent stages of the research and inform proposals for teacher education. Expected contributions include the future development of training initiatives in collaboration with the Portuguese History Teachers Association (APH), aimed at promoting respect for human dignity, interculturality and historical-social consciousness, as well as the co-construction, in later phases, of an educational resource repository that may support teaching practices grounded in these principles.

Civic and citizenship education has long been a field of political and moral contestation in Spain (Vázquez Ramil & Porto Ucha, 2020; Groves & Navarrete-Sánchez, 2025). Building on previous research on the historical evolution of citizenship models in Spanish education policy, this paper argues that these controversies cannot be portrayed as a clash of ideologies over values and moral content alone. Rather, they are recurrently articulated as struggles over the legitimacy of knowledge: who is entitled to define civic aims for schooling, on what epistemic grounds, and through which forms of expertise political choices appear acceptable, neutral, or inevitable (Burnham, 2001; Porter, 1995; Biesta, 2007; Tröhler, 2023).
The paper takes the confrontation between two different conceptions of citizenship embedded in the education reforms enacted by a progressive government in 2006 (LOE) and a conservative government in 2013 (LOMCE) as its analytical core, situating this peak episode within a longer historical trajectory that includes the comprehensive education reforms of 1970, 1985 and 1990 (Espigardo Tocino & Cabrera Montoya, 2016). This genealogical perspective allows the study to trace shifts in the regimes of epistemic authority through which civic education has been justified over time (Tröhler, 2006). These shifts include (González-Moreno, 2021) developmentalist and technocratic rationales linked to modernisation (1970), democratic participation and rights (1985), pedagogical professionalism and comprehensive schooling (1990), and, increasingly, evaluative, competence-based and performance-oriented frameworks from the 2000s onwards (Ydesen & Andreasen, 2019).
Engaging directly with the conference theme, the paper treats education as an arena where past, present and future are entangled rather than sequential (Cowen, 2002). Historical reforms are approached not as closed episodes, but as repositories of justificatory strategies, categories and unresolved uncertainties that continue to shape contemporary debates (McCulloch, 2016). In this sense, the study responds to calls within the history of education to interrogate how knowledge of the past is mobilised—or selectively forgotten—in the governance of educational futures (Westberg, 2021).
The European and international dimension is central to this analysis. Consistent with earlier findings on the internationalisation of Spanish education policy discourse, the paper examines how transnational references (OECD recommendations, PISA results, EU coordination frameworks) are mobilised as sources of epistemic legitimacy in national reforms (Rizvi & Lingard, 2010; Grek & Ozga, 2010). These references function as technologies of synchronisation, aligning national policy with globally circulating narratives of quality, effectiveness and evidence (Porter, 1995). At the same time, they open new spaces of contestation, as political actors challenge the neutrality, applicability or democratic legitimacy of international benchmarks in the civic domain.
This contextualisation allows us to explore the extent to which contestations over citizenship education in Spain address not only specific curricular contents, but also the epistemic frameworks through which certain orientations are presented as objective, neutral or evidence-based, particularly via appeals to expertise, evaluation and international comparison (Tröhler, 2023). Accordingly, the objectives are threefold: to map historically the dominant regimes of epistemic authority invoked to legitimise civic education across key reforms; to analyse how LOE (2006) and LOMCE (2013) deploy technical vocabularies and transnational references to justify divergent normative projects; and to identify forms of resistance that target not only civic contents, but also the claims of neutrality and objectivity underpinning curriculum design (Biesta, 2007).
The theoretical framework combines scholarship on depoliticisation and technical governance, studies of numbers and audit cultures as sources of authority, and research on globalising education policy (Burnham, 2001; Rizvi & Lingard, 2010). Together, these perspectives enable an analysis of citizenship education as a historically situated field in which normative conflict is repeatedly reconfigured—rather than resolved—through technical forms of legitimation (Ball, 2003; Tröhler, 2006).