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in primary, secondary and higher educational institutes, but
also museums, universities, archives and libraries.
All EUROCLIO teacher training activities are organized
in close cooperation with local academics and institutes
for history teacher education, and international experts, in
order to train history teachers how to use the most modern
teaching methods in their classes. EUROCLIO, always in
close partnership with member associations, has organ-
ized more than 40 international conferences and over 90
national and regional training and development courses.
EUROCLIO implements several long-term programmes:
• International Trainings provides cross-border
professional capacity-building for history, heritage
and citizenship educators related to innovative and
responsible history education
• Historiana – Your Portal to the Past promotes digital
literacy through history, heritage and citizenship
education by means of an online multimedia tool,
offering students multiperspective, cross-border and
comparative historical resources to supplement their
national history teaching tools
• History that Connects in the Western Balkans restores
the professional relations between history, heritage and
citizenship educators and explores opportunities for a
collaborative approach to teaching history in the region,
including sensitive and controversial issues
• Mediterranean Dialogues enables educators across the
Euro-Mediterranean region to open a common dialogue,
to share experiences and to develop cross-community and
cross-border cooperation and networks
• Innovating History Education in the Black Sea Region
raises awareness in this region for approaches in history,
heritage and citizenship education which enhance
democracy and intercultural dialogue, and is creating
sustainable national and cross-border networks.
All of these projects, programmes and activities have been
aimed at fostering and promoting intercultural dialogue.
But intercultural dialogue is not the reason for these activi-
ties; good history education is – and this is only possible
with a proper investment in the cross-border professional
development of educators themselves. Let us share some
examples of what we mean by this.
In 2008, 25 history teachers from the Netherlands
joined a study visit to Turkey, organized by EUROCLIO
in partnership with several young and upcoming history
teacher trainers in Turkey. During the intense one-week
programme the participating teachers had a chance to meet
textbook authors, educational publishers and policymakers
on local, regional and national levels; teachers, pupils and
school principals from public as well as private schools;
teacher trainers and civil society activists. In all these talks,
the Dutch teachers were able to discover the complexity of
education in such a large and rapidly developing country
generally, but more specifically they were able to look
at history using a Turkish mirror, and came back with
profound new insights and experiences. They shared these
insights in magazines at school level, but also at national
level through a documentary. Later on, as EUROCLIO was
able to set up and support a new history teachers’ asso-
ciation in Turkey after it engaged the aforementioned
Turkish history teacher trainers in a new project, new
Dutch-Turkish school partnerships were formed and more
study visits, some of them now with pupils, took place.
What is most important here, however, is not the material
impact and valorisation of the new networks which grew
out of the study visit. Instead, the profound encounter of
perspectives in history education on what to teach and why
to teach it opened new horizons for discussion among the
cultures. This was professional intercultural dialogue – in
other words, peer-learning. Out of this professional discus-
In 2014 delegates of EUROCLIO’s member associations unanimously approved EUROCLIO’s Manifesto on High Quality History, Heritage and Citizenship Education,
which is becoming a guiding document
Image: EUROCLIO
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