En borttappad historia : Historielärares förhållningssätt till mellanösterns samtidshistoria i gymnasieskolans kurs historia 1B.

The overall aim of the study presented in this report was to find out how history teachers relate to non-European contemporary history within the framework of the course History 1b in Swedish upper secondary school. For the sake of specificity, three conflicts in the Middle East were used as a basis: the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (1947-), the war in Afghanistan (2001-2021) and the Syrian civil war (2011-). Furthermore, the study aimed to find out what history teachers view as an appropriate ending point in time in relation to the three conflicts. The process through which the study was conducted was qualitative interviews of ten history teachers working in Swedish upper secondary school and the subsequent analysis was based on a theoretical framework consisting of history teachers’ attitude toward external governance of teaching and history teachers’ understanding of the subject. The result shows that a vast majority of the informants view the downfall of the Soviet Union in 1991 as an appropriate ending point, which correlates with the fact that the same informants tend to leave out the three conflicts of the course all together. Furthermore, the result shows that the curriculum is of different importance in regard to selection of specific historical content depending on when the informant in question started his or her career. A minority of theinformants does, however, implement the three conflicts in their teaching, which is partly explained by the fact that they view today’s society rather than a traditional historical canon as a basis in regard to the selection of specific historical content. Worth noting is also that a majority of the informants describe a discrepancy between what they actually include in their teaching and what they would ideally like include