How to use Remembrance Education to stimulate the development of critical thinking among young students?

To answer this question, the partners of the project RETHINK - Remembrance Education for THINKing critically. are developing different tools for teachers and educators.

In the first phase of the project the partners have collected good educational practices developed by memorials, museums, organisations and educational centres active in the field of Remembrance Education. The practices were collected in the RETHINK Database, which allows teachers and educators to search for activities according to geographical, content and accessibility criteria.

In the current phase of the project, the partners have worked on the selection of some practices to adapt them to the work of the teachers and make them feasible in a school context. A specific Handbook will be drawn up, aimed at teachers and educators interested in working with Remembrance Education to work on the critical thinking skills of students.

During the meeting held in Mechelen on February 2nd and 3rd, in addition to better defining the practices and contents of the Manual, three new project partners presented their activities:

• The Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute, one of the most important research institutes on the Polish and Central European Jewish community;
• The Holocaust Education Trust Ireland, which runs activities and events as well as teacher training programmes and international initiatives related to the Holocaust;
• Erinnern.at is the Institute for Holocaust Education of the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research in Austria.

In the next phase of the project, an e-learning platform will be set up to provide teachers with pedagogical tools to challenge students' prejudices, deepen their understanding of phenomena such as racism and radicalisation, and develop their critical thinking skills.

To this purpose, we are conducting a survey of teachers' experience of teaching about current (and past) sensitive and controversial issues. You can contribute to the research by filling in the short questionnaire at https://goo.gl/forms/hLJH0CCo7rgvfycA3