Decisions and Dilemmas – Learning about the EU
from a historical perspective
Second Development Workshop
15– 16 February 2015
Braine l’Alleud, Belgium.
REPORT
Participants at the EUROCLIO International Training ‘Teaching 1815’ in Braine L’Alleud, Belgium
The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute endorsement of the contents which
reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the
information contained therein.
“Decisions and Dilemmas – Learning about the EU from a historical perspective”
Public Report of the Second Development Meeting
About the project1
The project Decisions and Dilemmas: Learning about the EU from a historical perspective will engage a
cross-border and mixed group of academics and school educators in the fields of history and citizenship
into the collaborative development, testing and implementation of online cross-border educational
modules for both history and citizenship at secondary school level. These modules will offer multiperspective sources and learner-centered activities setting the emergence of post-1945 European
cooperation into its historical context. The project will build the capacity of over 50 history and citizenship
educators from the EUROCLIO network to teach the history of European integration in a way that is both
academically sound and relevant for nowadays’ youth. It will engage a highly motivated and capable
group of practitioners into cross-border cooperation and collaborative tool development that will bring
them into direct contact with recent research in the field of the history of European integration. The
collaboration between academic experts and school educators will result in a product that is both
historically sound and classroom practice-oriented. The project is divided into three modules:
Section “EU in the context of the long search for stability” (1815-1945)
This online educational module will articulate multi-perspective
historical content around a set of key questions allowing
teachers to put the history of EU integration in a longer-term
perspective with their students. Instead of studying the EU and
the idea of European integration in a vacuum, students will
develop some understanding of the context that led to it and
the challenges it had to overcome. The module will integrate
key historical moments and consecutive developments, from
the alliance system, which emerged out of the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to the failure of the League of
Nations to prevent WW2. Instead of an overload of information, the module will be based on a careful
and balanced selection of sources that show complexities and connections across Europe.
Section “Europe after WW2”
This online educational module will include multi-perspective
historical content including life stories and evidence files
around a set of key questions allowing teachers to help
students living in the 21st century to put themselves in the
shoes of ordinary people across Europe post-WW2. It will
support teachers and students to perceive the sense of
urgency, uncertainty and challenge of those days. Sources and
learning activities such as a role-play game will make students
1
For more detailed information on the background of the project, have a look at the public report of the kick-off
meeting, available for download here: http://euroclio.eu/download/3298/
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“Decisions and Dilemmas – Learning about the EU from a historical perspective”
Public Report of the Second Development Meeting
reflect on life situations of refugees and displaced persons, families facing acute economic deprivation,
life in a divided Europe, relations with former enemies, etc.
Section “The EU in the context of a changing world” (1944-now)
This online educational module will articulate multi-perspective historical content around a set of key
questions allowing teachers to analyse with their students how the EU developed in the context of its
time. It will propose an approach that focuses on how the institutions of the EU have had to respond to a
series of real political, economic and social problems and dilemmas – internally and internationally –
whilst balancing the different perspectives and needs of its member states. The module will propose as
learning activities decision making games on a choice of issues and dilemmas that policy makers in the
EU have been facing.
About the meeting
The Second Development Workshop of the EUROCLIO Decisions and Dilemmas project was held in Brainel’Alleud, Belgium from 15-16 February 2015, following the EUROCLIO international training Teaching
1815: Rethinking Waterloo from multiple perspectives.2
Aims of the Meeting
 To discuss the outcomes of the Advisory Board meeting in Madrid and peer-review session with
history educators from Spain.
 To review the learning resources developed so far by core team and start the development of learning
resources that are now missing.
 To prepare the next meeting and decide how to involve and engage local participants and advisory
board members in this meeting.
 To develop a piloting package for people who are willing to pilot materials.
 To develop a briefing for contributors to life stories.
Participants
The following people participated in the Second Development Meeting:
 Development Team: Edgars Berzins (Latvia), Francesco Scatigna (Belgium), Helen Snelson (United
Kingdom), Ineke Veldhuis-Meester (NL) and Marjeta Šifrer (Slovenia)
 Advisory Board Members: Robert Stradling (United Kingdom).
 Coordinators: Judith Geerling (EUROCLIO), Steven Stegers (EUROCLIO), and trainees Hanae Taguchi
and Sara Martín Casamayor.
2
More information on this training and teacher’s guide developed on this topic:
http://euroclio.eu/publication/teaching-1815-rethinking-waterloo-multiple-perspectives/
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“Decisions and Dilemmas – Learning about the EU from a historical perspective”
Public Report of the Second Development Meeting
Executive Summary
The meeting in Braine L’Alleud was the second development workshop with the project team, and the
third meeting in the project. The two editors that participated in the Advisory Board meeting in Madrid
started with an update on how this meeting went, and particularly discussing the feedback received from
both academic advisors on the content, and from the local educators on the learning activities.
Content editor Francesco Scatigna presented the draft multi-stranded timeline for the section “EU in the
context of the long search for stability” (1815-1945) and the team discussed particularly the possibilities
for labeling the different strands.
The other members of the development team presented their advances in the development of
educational materials, including sources for the evidence files and ideas for learning activities amongst
which life stories. They discussed the activities that they can develop further taking into account the
sources that have been collected so far, and also taking into account the suggestions that the Advisory
Board made. They also discussed a range of typical experiences to come to a rationale for the evidence
files.
Advisor Bob Stradling prepared an exemplar debate activity on the Common Agricultural Policy, to start a
brainstorm and discussion on how to best approach the further development of this format. This led to a
conceptual discussion on the section The EU in the context of a changing world” (1944-now) and the focus
and formats of debate activities for this section.
The development team at work in Braine L’Alleud.
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SECTION – The long search for stability
Historical Content Editor Francesco Scatigna presented the
Labels for Timeline
improved multi-stranded timeline that incorporated
 Moments
feedback received during the Advisory Board meeting in
 Ideas
Madrid. The aim is to show that the European project has
 Wider context
been different from the previous attempts to manage
conflict and establish stability in Europe. This part will
propose different approaches in terms of economic cooperation, political structures and pooled
sovereignty. The timeline is organized in three ‘strands’ presenting firstly “Moments”, secondly “Ideas”
and thirdly “Social and cultural aspects” like voting rights or peace movements. Using a timeline from
1648 to 1951, students would be able to analyse this historical period and develop their critical thinking
not seeing a succession of conflict but also different attempt to avoid conflict and maintain stability. All
materials developed in this project will form part of the unit ‘Changing Europe’ on Historiana, and after
discussing the concept behind this section it was decided to make this the second part of the unit. Postwar Europe will become the first part to engage students before going in more details through the
initiatives for stability.
The team discussed how this timeline could be used to improve chronological understanding with
students, starting with initial ideas presented by Learning Editor Helen Snelson and Advisor Bob Stradling.
They brainstormed on the pedagogical aspect: to what extent is it relevant to use the timeline? To what
extent will the timeline help to understand events? What is significant in a timeline? What level of
complexity should be included?
One of the ideas mentioned is a learning activity in which students could choose at least two specific parts
of the timeline and try to make a link from one event to another, keeping in mind the main objective of
the module: showing change and continuity of approaches in Europe in the search for stability. It was
agreed that the draft learning activity would be piloted during the EUROCLIO Annual Conference in
Helsingor, Denmark in April 2015.
SECTION – Post-war Europe
The aim of this section is to bring students to put themselves in the shoes of ordinary people across Europe
after the end of World War 2. The team members presented the life stories they developed within this
section, and showed the sources they collected to feature in one of the evidence files that will also be part
of this section.
The team members presented sources they collected so far to contribute to the evidence files and
received feedback from the team.
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“Decisions and Dilemmas – Learning about the EU from a historical perspective”
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Evidence files
Evidence files are organized along four themes:
1. “Infrastructure destruction”. The aim of this theme is to show the infrastructural impact of the
war throughout Europe. Because the massive arms destruction is one of the characteristics of
WW2, it is important to show with sources how far destructions were important.
2. “Displaced people”. For this theme evidence files should show the importance of different
movements of people because of infrastructure’s destruction and dispersed families. A network
of agencies began the huge task of repatriating people, locating people, resettling people and this
theme will ensure the inclusion in the evidence files.
3. “Life goes on”. The third theme tends to show that even if there is a war trauma, life goes on.
People wanted to build new house, children returned to school, factories worked and tried to
develop new markets.
4. “Never again” The last theme contains evidence files illustrating the trauma and the hope that
was present after the end of the war. During the post war period, everywhere memorial steles
and commemorations sites where built. Those constructions contribute to the memories and
honours of military and civilian victims of the war. By doing this, people wanted to ensure peace
and perpetuate the human cost of war.
The whole unit that will be developed will articulate multi-perspective historical content so therefore
evidences files collected must deal with different aspects to lead toward this end. To collect evidence files,
the team agreed on a strategy to collect a rich variety of different types of sources including statistics,
historian views, pictures, audio-visual sources, and from all over Europe to encourage multiple
perspectives. It was also stressed to keep in mind that typical experiences vary between East and the
West.
One of the sources for the evidence file on ‘Infrastructure
destruction’ that team member Marjeta Šifrer collected to
illustrate the magnitude of destruction in Slovenia.
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Picture collected by Marjeta Šifrer to illustrate “Life
goes on” in Slovenia.
“Decisions and Dilemmas – Learning about the EU from a historical perspective”
Public Report of the Second Development Meeting
Example of sources that students
could use to learn about the
construction of political Europe,
collected by Ineke VeldhuisMeester. Extract from Congress
of Europe, official result
documents [original 1948].
Life stories
To teach about the post-war period in a more interactive and different way, the Decisions & Dilemmas
project tries to use life stories as a way of engaging students by letting them understand and experience
what life was like at that time. Within these stories, we are looking for life story of people who are typical
in some way of life for Europeans around 1945 while not focussing on the well-known stories. For instance
someone with a black market connection, a Balkans conscript or a child from northern Italy.
Evidences files might lead students to balance the general with the specific. The aim of using life stories,
is to teach WW2 with a perspective other than the massive aspect of the world war. Behind millions of
people involved, displaced and major atrocities, the team proposes several life stories to bring students
closer to what happened during and particularly in the years after the war for any ordinary man or woman.
1949: Deportations (Mara Burka)
On the night of 25 March 1949, Mara was living with her father, mother and brother. Her
sister had died in 1944 due to sickness and malnutrition. The family was woken by a great
noise. People were taken to the train station and packed into cattle trucks for deportation to
Siberia. Mara remembers to this day how: “Machine spotlights shone like monsters’ eyes.
We were filled with a feeling of indescribable horror. In the corner stood a bag of clothes...
Then, there was a knock at the door. Someone was being looked for. It turned out that it was
not they, but her father's brother. Her father saved Mara’s classmate by asking for her
certificate of communist party youth organization.
An extract from a life story from Latvia, collected by team member Edgars Berzins. Mara Burka was a
history teacher and deputy principal at Andrejs Upitis Skriveri secondary school and schools secretary of
the communist party in Latvia.
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“Decisions and Dilemmas – Learning about the EU from a historical perspective”
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The team agreed each life story should emphasize the impact of global developments on people’s life,
include ‘typical’ and ‘a-typical’ experiences, focus on specific experiences during the immediate postwar period and refer to historical events.
SECTION – EU in the context of changing world
Historical Content editor Francesco Scatigna presented his concept of the timeline for this section with
the title ‘Roads to (European) cooperation and integration’, in the form a bullet-pointed timeline. The aim
of this timeline is to guide teachers and students in the reflection of ‘How did this new body try to respond
to new challenges and dilemmas since it beginning?’ to continue the reflection made during the second
part. The team decided to also aim for a multi-stranded timeline for this section, to ensure an inclusive
approach to the EU. In that way, students might be able to link the past to the present and realise the
dependence of the present time on the past. The timeline will also provide key events in a wider context
like inventions, technology improvements, the development of mass communication but also
improvements of for instance medication.
Emphasizing the aims of this section to help students understand the complexity of factors and
stakeholders in Europe for policy makers, and interdependence of international decision-making, project
advisor Bob Stradling presented an exemplar debate activity on the Common Agricultural Policy. In his
presentation he concerned some of the current challenges for the EU: youth unemployment, the Common
Agricultural Policy and the lack of interest for EU policy in the public opinion. Among other things, he
showed some opinion examples from different European politicians concerning those topics.
Helen Snelson presented the improved version of the decision-making activity on the European Defence
Community that was first tested with local educators in Spain during the Advisory Board meeting. It was
decided that a second decision-making activity could focus on the European Constitution and/or Lisbon
Treaty. Furthermore, since many educators only have limited time to teach about the EU, the idea arose
to divide the learning in this section in three levels:
Level 1: extensive introduction to the timelime and instructions how one could use the timeline.
Level 2: mini-research projects leading up to debates (debate activities)
Level 3: decision-making activities.
Conclusions and Next Steps
Following this meeting it was decided that the content within the Historiana unit “Changing Europe”
teachers and students will first deal with post World War II Europe followed by the attempts taken in the
past to establish stability and peace on the continent, and finally, the construction of Europe with a policy
approach focuses on decisions and dilemmas from 1951 to nowadays.
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“Decisions and Dilemmas – Learning about the EU from a historical perspective”
Public Report of the Second Development Meeting
The team members agreed on an updated timetable for the next meetings. The next event in the project
will be two piloting workshops during the EUROCLIO Annual Conference in Helsingor, Denmark in April
2015. Editors Francesco Scatigna and Helen Snelson will test: “It’s been a bumpy ride! Understanding
change and continuity in the search for European stability 1648-1945” using the multi-stranded timeline,
and “These were real lives! Helping your students to connect with the people behind the statistics of a
war-torn Europe” using the life stories and evidence files. The third and final development meeting with
the advisors present will be in The Hague, The Netherlands in June 2015.
Decisions and Dilemmas team working collaboratively on the educational materials in Braine l’Alleud, 16
February 2015
Acknowledgements
The Decisions and Dilemmas project is part of Historiana and the project results will be integrated and
disseminated through Historiana. The project is co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European
Union under the Jean Monnet Programme. More information about the Decisions and Dilemmas project
can be found on EUROCLIO website.
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