Teaching about terrorism: Evaluating a historicizing pedagogy in times of crisis and disruption

Abstract

This evaluation study investigated the impact of a historicizing workshop on terrorism in Dutch secondary education on students’ self-reported fear levels, statistical and historical knowledge concerning terrorism, and perceived control. Our pedagogy emphasized terrorism’s historical roots and provided facts about the threat of terrorism and knowledge to help students gain a sense of control over it. We used a pretest-posttest design and mixed-method approach. 390 students completed a survey before and after the workshop and 20 students were interviewed. The quantitative results show that students gained statistical and historical knowledge concerning terrorism and experienced a significant increase in perceived control over the threat of terrorism. Moreover, they showed a significant reduction in fear levels. The qualitative results tentatively suggest that increasing knowledge on terrorism (factual, historical, and knowledge on preventing attacks and managing their impact) can help reduce fear. This paper provides implications for teaching terrorism in secondary education.