How to Tutor Students Researching Propaganda
The role of propaganda
As this year’s common umbrella topic of the four competitions focuses on history-based propaganda, potential tutors explored a wide range of issues in their training sessions. They investigated both the use of propaganda in history as well as current examples of propaganda, often with a regional emphasis.
Four workshops with different regional emphases
While the role of propaganda in the history of Abkhazia from 1917-1921 was at the centre of one of the training sessions in Georgia, potential tutors in Moldova dealt with, among other things, the history of propaganda and Russian expansion in Romanian speaking regions from Peter I to Putin and became familiar with didactical methods for dealing with 20th century propaganda in the classroom. In the final seminar of a series of workshops offered by the competition organisers, teachers in Ukraine discussed how to speak about war and propaganda with children. In Armenia potential tutors gained knowledge of critical tools to analyse historical sources as part of the training sessions.
In each country the training sessions enjoyed considerable popularity with participant numbers for all sessions combined ranging from around 60 to almost 200. Organisers in Armenia were able to engage 54 new potential tutors who had not been part of a competition yet.
Training sessions in Georgia appealed to a new target group for this competition iteration: For the first-time guides who give tours at historical sites could participate in training sessions together with history teachers in five different Georgian regions.
Putting it into practice
Well-equipped with the knowledge and skills acquired, tutors have begun working with their students on their competition entries with deadlines for handing in the contributions approaching at the end of March in Moldova and Ukraine and in May in Armenia and Georgia.
The workshops were part of the cooperation project “History Competitions”, which is implemented by DVV International, Körber-Stiftung and five local NGOs in the partner countries. It is funded by the German Federal Foreign Office in the framework of their “Civil Society Cooperation” programme.