Pendulum Movements

This selection seeks to inform the international public. Most ofthe writings it contains were published earlier in Hungarian,and this is footnoted in the titles. Versions of the first andfourth pieces were initially used as teaching materials forthe university-level instruction of history teachers. Thesecond study appeared in a volume of English languagestudies published by the Hungarian Institute for EducationalResearch and Development. The third chapter is an excerptfrom a secondary school textbook still in use in Hungary today.The inclusion of the textbook chapter has a dual function. Firstly, to inform theinternational public about the processes of the past decades in Hungary and theirappearance in textbooks and secondly, to showcase multiperspectivity as well ascompetency- and activity-based preparation in teaching practice.Its inclusion in this volume intends to help readers who are unfamilar with thecircumstances in Hungary to better understand the context in which processesrelated to the teaching of history have taken place in the past decades. The penultimatestudy is a condensed version of work written together with my colleague ÁgnesF. Dárdai and was published in the anniversary volume of the online didacticsjournal History Teaching and the last one was published in the 2020 yearbook ofthe International Society for History Didactics.The writings in this volume provide insight mainly into the main trends of theteaching of history in Hungary in the quarter-century after 1990, when, in additionto the shaping of the national identity, a genuine effort to commit to European valuesand the implementation of the elements of modernization in Hungary featuredprominently. The writings seek to serve the formation and development of historicalliteracy undertaken in the search for responses to new challenges. The author - asis evident in the writings - places great importance on the shaping of democraticattitudes, the formation of collective identity, the passing on of a common culturalcode system, the experience-based, multiperspective and varied processing ofconcrete histories and historical documents (sources), and the practice of adaptivehistorical thinking skills that may be based on the recognition of analogies andpatterns for the advancement of citizenship education. This is all done in the hopethat acquiring historical literacy can help the coming generations approach futurelocal, regional, national, European and global issues with a realistic knowledge ofthe past and historical consciousness, and get sufficient underpinning for theirsocialization in society as well as the pursuit of their personal lives.