Introduction

Building on Michael Rothberg’s concept of multidirectional memory (2009), my paper examines how public narratives of the past - such as the Holocaust in the Austrian context – shape or deviate from family’s memories living in Austria. I investigate how these dominant historical narratives, influenced by institutions such as school curricula, museums, media, and politics challenge memories within postmigrant families. History education plays a key role in conveying or challenging narratives and regulating how or whether memories that deviate from these are (not) negotiated within the classroom.

Therefore, my central research questions are:

• How are family’s memories reflected in history lessons?

• What experiences of violence, what stories are (not) remembered by families living in Austria – and how are they remembered?

Based on the still ongoing “Historiker:innenstreit 2.0” my paper engages with current debates on whether Holocaust-centered memory cultures still reflect the realities of increasingly diverse societies (Friedländer et al. 2022). Individuals with migration backgrounds often face what Rothberg (2021) calls a “paralyzing double bind”: they are expected to support national memory to gain belonging, yet, despite their engagement with national memory, they are not recognized as full members of society. These tensions between recognition and exclusion become particularly visible in history lessons, where dominant narratives meet the lived experiences and memories of postmigrant students. In this context, I investigate what is remembered - and by whom - while addressing the gendered dimensions of memory by examining who acts as a “memory keeper” and how this role is socially and culturally constructed.

More broadly, the postmigrant society is often framed as a disruption of an otherwise stable social order, and distinctions between one’s own and the “foreign” (or: Other) function as compensatory responses to perceived uncertainty (Yildirim 2018). My project challenges this dichotomy by arguing for an understanding of migration not as an exception but as part of the social norm, and for imagining a more inclusive collective “we.”

Methods

For this paper, I draw on interview data collected as part of the Sparkling Science project “The Memory of the Classroom: Multidirectional Remembering in Graz’s Schools (MEiK)” (2024–2026). I use these interviews as the central empirical corpus; by the end of February 2026, approximately 40 interviews will have been conducted in around ten languages. Students conduct the interviews with their family members using a provided interview guideline and the process is accompanied by preparatory workshops and continuous support from the project team. By actively involving students and their families in the research process, the project grants participants agency. The interviews are analyzed using qualitative content analysis following Udo Kuckartz, based on a system of main and subcategories.

Results and Discussion

In this paper, I present first preliminary findings that support my hypothesis that students’ family narratives often diverge from dominant public narratives conveyed through media, curricula, and other institutional contexts. Rather than reproducing these narratives, the interviews foreground different experiences such as accounts of violence and other disruptive life events. Overall, the interviews illustrate multidirectional forms of remembering, in which experiences such as migration, displacement, and gendered care work intersect with Holocaust-centered narratives.

Educational Significance of the research

This research contributes to history education by critically examining how collective memory is negotiated in increasingly diverse classrooms and by generating empirical data that has so far been largely absent from the German-speaking research context. By combining curricular analysis with student-led oral history, the study highlights the gap between state-authorized historical narratives and students’ lived experiences, particularly those of postmigrant backgrounds. It demonstrates how subject-oriented and multilingual approaches can foster inclusion while challenging exclusionary notions of national belonging.

Theoretical background, aims, and research questions

Civic education within history teaching is often framed as a neutral process of knowledge acquisition and democratic competence development. However, research in political education and history didactics has shown that educational processes are shaped by power relations, social inequality, and normative assumptions about legitimate knowledge and political agency (Biesta 2011). Learners are not simply recipients of historical knowledge but are positioned as political subjects through curricula, narratives, and classroom practices that define whose perspectives count and whose experiences remain marginalized (Wineburg 2001). This contribution examines political education in history teaching as a process of democratic subject formation under conditions of social inequality. Drawing on intersectionality (Crenshaw 1989), it explores how categories such as gender, race, class, and belonging shape recognition, participation, and access to political voice. In addition, the concept of epistemic injustice (Fricker 2007) is introduced to analyze how unequal conditions of recognition influence political learning and democratic inclusion.

The presentation addresses the following research questions:

• How are learners positioned as political subjects within history education?

• How do epistemic hierarchies shape recognition, participation, and democratic inclusion?

• How can intersectionality and epistemic justice serve as analytical frameworks for understanding political education in history teaching?

The aim is to develop a conceptual framework that connects political education, intersectionality, and epistemic justice to understand democratic subject formation in history classrooms.

Methods

This contribution draws on interdisciplinary research in political education, history education, intersectionality, and epistemic justice to develop an analytical framework for examining political learning processes. The methodological approach consists of:

• conceptual analysis of political education as democratic subject formation

• theoretical synthesis of intersectionality as a framework for analyzing power, recognition, and subject positioning

• use of epistemic injustice as an analytical concept for educational contexts

Rather than presenting new empirical data, the presentation integrates existing theoretical and empirical research on representation, recognition, and inequality in education and history teaching

Results and Discussion

Dominant narratives and curricula focus on particular forms of knowledge and experience, influencing who is recognized as a credible knower and political subject. Political learning thus appears not as neutral or universal but as a contingent and contested process shaped by unequal conditions of recognition and participation. Intersectional power relations further shape access to voice, legitimacy, and belonging. Within this framework, epistemic injustice functions as an analytical concept for examining how unequal recognition shapes political learning, while epistemic justice serves as a normative horizon for more inclusive forms of political education and democratic participation. Political education, therefore, involves not only the transmission of knowledge but also the negotiation of epistemic authority and political subject positions. Addressing inequality requires attention to the epistemic conditions of learning and to the ways historical narratives structure belonging and political agency.

Educational Significance of the Research

The contribution highlights implications for classroom practice and teacher education. Understanding political education as democratic subject formation shaped by epistemic inequality calls for greater attention to whose knowledge is legitimized and how learners are recognized as epistemic agents. For teacher education, this perspective emphasizes the need to reflect on power, recognition, and epistemic authority in political learning processes. The paper offers a conceptual foundation for future empirical research and contributes to debates on political education, democracy, and social inequality.

Introduction: Theoretical background, aims and research questions

In the context of civic education, controversiality is seen both as a core professional requirement and as a challenge to implement (Hahn-Laudenberg & Abs, 2024). The paper addresses this tension and is academically situated within the field of civic education research. It draws on the doctoral dissertation entitled “Approaching Controversial Issues in Civic Education: Tensions between Didactic Imperatives and Classroom Practice among Civic Education Teachers in Austria”, which was submitted to the University of Salzburg in early 2026.

From a theoretical perspective, the paper focuses on professional norms and expectations in civic education with regard to the teaching of controversial issues (Council of Europe, 2015, 2017), while the empirical component examines the related experiences and interpretive frameworks of civic education teachers in Austria.

The study seeks to explore how the perspectives of academic civic education research and the practices of school-based civic education relate to one another — particularly in light of the fact that relatively little is known about the experiences and meaning-making processes of civic education teachers in Austria (Lange, Kierot, Breser & Beutel, 2024). The ways in which teachers experience and conceptualize the teaching of controversial issues have not yet been systematically examined. Given the delayed professionalization of civic education in Austria, addressing this gap is intended to contribute to the field’s further development.

From the perspective of political theory, the project draws on pluralist theory, with particular attention to (neo-)pluralism and agonistic pluralism (Mouffe, 2014). Within the field of civic education, theoretical points of reference are provided by approaches that assign a key role to controversial thinking (e.g., Reinhardt, 2018). More specifically, the pedagogical principle of controversiality and the Beutelsbach Consensus are identified as relevant normative standards for teaching controversial issues.

Methods

In the empirical study, 25 civic education teachers were purposefully sampled and invited in episodic interviews (Flick, 2011) to recount their subjective experiences with teaching controversial issues and to disclose their handling of their own political positioning. The chosen approach focuses on episodic narratives and the associated reasoning that can provide insight into practice-related enactments of controversiality. The data were analysed using type-building qualitative content analysis (Kuckartz, 2016).

Results and discussion

Debates surrounding standards like the pedagogical principle of controversiality and the Beutelsbach Consensus centre on the question of what constitutes controversiality in civic education, or how controversiality can give form to civic education (Goll, 2023). The Beutelsbach Consensus, in particular, offers no clear answers to this question. The blurred boundaries of its controversy requirement (May, 2022) have given rise to misunderstandings (Oberle, Ivens & Leunig, 2018). Drawing on the international discourse on criteria-based specifications of the principle of controversiality (e.g., Drerup, 2021; Hess &McAvoy, 2015), the resulting challenges are systematised as problems of selection, framing/boundary-setting, and positioning. The study’s research questions focus, not least, on these issues.

The findings indicate that civic education theory and the practice of teaching controversial issues largely operate in different worlds (Herzog, 2018). Identifiable categories of episodes, such as “constrained controversiality” or “emergent controversiality”, reflect the observable theory-practice gap, as do cognitive strategies such as withholding positions to maintain political neutrality. Phenomena of this kind reveal practical modifications that are not necessarily inappropriate from a civic education perspective, but nevertheless carry significant risks, which can be professionally addressed within a strategy of contained risk-taking (Pace, 2021).