Om historie- og samfundsfagsdidaktisk eklekticisme. Med Grundtvigs folkebegreb som eksempel

In many instances, developing comparative approaches to single subject didactic is a progressive way forward in order to escape rigid boundaries between related subjects. However, even so, a comparative approach still run the risk of reproducing and confirming sectorization of subject boundaries, which in my view ought to be transcended. A more radical way of exceeding single subject boundaries, is to ask: Should a comparative approach be complemented and challenged by subject didactics eclecticism? I argue in favor of the latter approach, with the school subjects history and civics as the main case. I do so, first by exploring arguments for eclecticism among scholars, with the aim of positioning my approach to didactics of history and civics within the ‘cultural turn’ of the social- and human sciences. Secondly, I exemplify how an eclectic approach might look like in practice. The poem ‘Folkeligheden’, published 1848, by the Danish poet, priest and politician N. F. S. Grundtvig, serves as an outset for my empirical example within which eclecticism is useful and unavoidable. Finally, I present two related concepts – politics of memory and imagined communities – which contribute to further the cultural turn and eclecticism of history and civics didactics, needed in order to tackle pressing and intricate issues in late modern democratic societies.