Bringing History to Life: Teaching Historical Thinking and Fiction

History has never been as present in our daily lives as it is today. Through any number of media outlets, tens of millions of people are in daily contact with historical discourses and practices. Between games, informational articles, social media posts and other sources, history is everywhere—in Civilization VI, live-action role-playing games, The Berlin Trilogy, Game of Thrones, and the works of Tolkien or Satrapi. This rise in popularity of history, along with an unprecedented access to social platforms, provide opposing and irreconcilable views of what should be commemorated (or debunked), of decolonization and reconciliation, and of other historical and social justice questions such as the elimination of police brutality and racism. How can we help our youth develop the critical thinking they need to address these questions? Reflecting on the use of works of non-academic history in the classroom, the authors of this book explore the use of popular or public history to teach historical thinking that will enable students to become informed and engaged citizens.

Penney Clark (Contributor)
Penney Clark is Professor in the Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy. Clark’s research interests centre on the production and provision of elementary-high school textbooks in historical contexts, the historical development of history and social studies curricula in Canada, and history teaching and learning. She has published widely in these areas and has been awarded multiple times. Clark is co-lead of the Curriculum and Resources cluster in the “Thinking Historically for Canada’s Future” project that was recently awarded a $2.5 million SSHRC Partnership Grant (2019-2026).

Alan Sears (Contributor)
Alan Sears is Professor Emeritus at the Faculty of Education, University of New Brunswick. His research interests are in civic education, history, education, and teacher education. Dr. Sears’s most significant area of impact and contribution is in the curriculum, policy, and practice in Citizenship Education and History Education. He has an outstanding record of national research grants, is widely published, and his work is regularly cited.

Etienne Anheim (Contributor)
Etienne Anheim is a former student of the ENS Fontenay/St-Cloud, agrégé d'histoire, doctor of history as well as a former member and researcher at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique at the École française de Rome. His research focuses on the economic, social, and material history of painting as well as on the history of written practices between the 13th and 15th centuries, from literary figures such as Petrarch to library inventories and accounting records, while at the same time addressing questions of historiography and the epistemology of history. Anheim is a member of the editorial boards of the Revue de Synthèse, Médiévales and Annales.

Julien Bazile (Contributor)
Julien Bazile holds a PhD in Information and Communication Sciences from the University of Lorraine within the Centre de Recherche sur les Médiations and a PhD in History from the Université de Sherbrooke. His research examines the narration of history in video games, focusing on the action-adventure game Assassin's Creed (Ubisoft, 2007). Adopting an interdisciplinary approach, he explores the creation of historical games, balancing rigorous research with the constraints of the medium and the economic, cultural, and commercial pressures of the video game industry.

Vincent Boutonnet (Contributor)
Vincent Boutonnet is Professor of social sciences and humanities didactics at UQO since May 2013. His research, funded by FRQSC and SSHRC, focuses on the epistemological progression of future history teachers, teaching practices, and the use of resources like textbooks, iconographic, and digital documents. He also analyzes cultural products such as historical films and video games. Boutonnet is part of funded teams studying agentivity, citizenship education, and digital technology in schools and is an associate researcher at the Centre de Recherche Interuniversitaire sur la Formation et la Profession Enseignante (CRIFPE).

Olivier Côté (Contributor)
Olivier Côté has been Curator of Media and Communications at the Canadian Museum of History since 2015. As a media historian, he is interested in the impact of mass communications on the understanding of history, the collective imagination and political cynicism. His current research explores Canadian television as a vehicle for modernity and identification with the nation in the 1950s and 1960s. Côté has a Bachelor’s degree in History from Université Laval, a Master’s degree from York University and a PhD from Université Laval. He is a founding member of the website ActiveHistory.ca.

Stéphanie Demers (Contributor)
Stéphanie Demers holds a PhD in Educational Foundations from the Université du Québec à Montréal. A professor-researcher in the Department of Education at the Université du Québec en Outaouais (UQO) from 2011 to 2021, she has taught the History and Theories of Education and Foundations and Theories of Learning courses at both the Bachelor and Master of Education levels. Her research, grounded in social theory and critical pedagogy, explores agentivity in teaching practices across all levels, focusing on how teachers and students engage with knowledge, build relationships to it in university settings, and address socio-educational injustices.

Simon Dor (Contributor)
Simon Dor is Associate Professor in video game studies at the Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue (UQAT), at the Montreal Centre. Professor Dor is particularly interested in strategy games, approaching them from the point of view of their playability, their history, their competitive or narrative experience, the cognition they imply and the representation they induce. His research also explores e-sports, immersion, ethics, emulators, and game design. He shares his insights through blogging (www.simondor.com) and uses platforms like Twitch and YouTube to better understand what these new objects imply about video game culture and to disseminate his research.

Alexandre Lanoix (Contributor)
Alexandre Lanoix holds a doctorate in social studies didactics from the Université de Montréal. His research focuses on the place the concept of nation occupies within the teaching of history and the social representations of history teachers. For several years, he has been involved in the initial training and professional development of elementary and secondary social studies teachers.

Anik Meunier (Contributor)
Anik Meunier is Full Professor of education and museology at the Université du Québec à Montréal. She is the director of the Groupe de recherche sur l'éducation et les musées (GREM). She is particularly interested in issues related to museum education. She also founded and directs the collection "Culture et publics" at the Presses de l'Université du Québec.

Sabrina Moisan (Contributor)
Sabrina Moisan is a professor in the Department of Pedagogy at the Faculty of Education, Université de Sherbrooke. She works on history teaching and citizenship education and is particularly interested in representations of "national" history in Quebec and the challenges of teaching an inclusive history in a pluralistic society.

Carla Peck (Contributor)
Carla L. Peck is Professor of Social Studies Education in the Department of Elementary Education at the University of Alberta since 2007. Her program of research has two main foci: The first seeks to map the qualitatively different ways that teachers’ and students’ understand key democratic concepts such as diversity, and citizenship. The second area of her research is on students’ historical understandings, and specifically the relationship between students’ ethnic identities and their understandings of history.

Bastien Sasseville (Contributor)
Bastien Sasseville is a professor in didactics of the social universe and director of the secondary education module at the Université du Québec à Rimouski. He is interested in cinema as a didactic resource for teaching history and developing historical thinking in students.

Valérie Theis (Contributor)
Valérie Theis is Professor of medieval history. She is a member of the Institute of Modern and Contemporary History (IHMC-UMR 8066) and is the deputy director of the ENS for the Humanities and Social Sciences. She works on the political and social history of Europe, from the central Middle Ages to the early modern period. She is particularly interested in the development of the use of writing for governmental purposes, with a predilection for the study of accounting, the history of medieval archives and the history of surveys.

Marc-André Éthier (Editor)
Marc-André Éthier is Professor of Didactics of History at Université de Montréal and a researcher at Centre de recherche interuniversitaire sur la formation et la profession enseignante. His research focuses on the development, by students, of skills related to historical thought, as well as on the nature of teachers' disciplinary skills and their transposition in the classroom.

David Lefrançois (Editor)
David Lefrançois is Professor of Educational Sciences at Université du Québec en Outaouais and a researcher at Centre de recherche interuniversitaire sur la formation et la profession enseignante. His research and publications examine school program content, and the methods used to teach and assess learning in elementary and secondary social sciences teaching.