Beyond the trenches? An exploration of young people’s heritage education experiences at the Western Front.

Abstract

Young people have been targeted by public policy initiatives to commemorate the First World War centenary in the UK, with Western Front heritage education receiving significant investment as an avenue for revitalising the significance of 1914-1918 amongst the generation most distant from the conflict. In light of this policy priority, and the anxiety over the survival of collective memory that it indicates, this study examines existing heritage education practices originating in English secondary schools. It focuses on young peoples’ visitor experience in Western Front war museums, where transnational comparative discourses challenge insular or exceptionalist national narratives. It examines the objectives of museum professionals and schoolteachers, along with the pedagogies that inform their design and framing of heritage education packages, finding a variety of approaches that are often congruent, but rarely mutually coordinated. The research foregrounds the responses of young people themselves, exploring how they think and feel about encounters with heritage in Western Front war museums. Taking an interpretive constructivist approach, it provides a rich and varied account of how the young participants negotiate and respond to the complex dynamics of memory in the context of the visits. Although museum educators are denied opportunities to shape the visits directly, the young people are receptive to the discourse and museography of their institutions. Across diverse cohorts the young participants shared a palpable desire for experiences that brought them closer to the past. The purposes of schoolteachers vary from a disciplinary emphasis on historical enquiry to the reinforcement of a shared sense of identity through pilgrimage, and these diverse framings of the field-trips are reflected in the responses of the young participants.

Date of Award	4 Dec 2023
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bath
Supervisor	Andrea Purdekova (Supervisor) & Anna Bull (Supervisor)