LAH in collaboration with Euroclio, the European association for History Educators, organised four-day regional seminar for history educators entitled “Towards a Responsible and Disciplinary Approach to History Education in the Mediterranean Region – Empowering educators to use multi-perspective approaches and historical thinking concepts in the classroom”. The seminar hosted by Notre-Dame Univeristy-Louaize (NDU) joined a group of 30 history and citizenship education teachers from Lebanon, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, and Turkey, as well as international trainers and stakeholders from Cyprus, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
The seminar offered three types of activities as well as visits to historical sites in Lebanon. Participants exchanged experiences on the challenges, opportunities and best practices in history education in their respective countries and discussed how they could work together on these issues and use the lessons learned on a regional level. Moreover, workshops were facilitated by trainers from Christine Counsell from the United Kingdom (Cambridge University), Steven Steger and Judith Geerling from the Netherlands (Euroclio) and Meltem Onurkan Samani and Mario Epaminondas from Cyprus (AHDR). Participants were challenged to focus on developing activities that required their students to think historically and critically on historical significance, causes and consequences and other historical concepts. They were engaged in activities that allow them to use a variety of sources and online resources to trigger historical thinking in class.
This event also provided an important opportunity for networking with colleagues from other countries in the region to enhance a professional dialogue among history educator in the Mediterranean region.