Reform in the Field of History in Education - Bosnia and Herzegovina. Modernization of History Textbooks in Bosnia and Herzegovina: From the Withdrawal of Offensive Material from Textbooks in 1999 to the New Generation of Textbooks in 2007/2008.

Abstract

Despite the passage of more than one and a half decades since Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) became an independent, internationally-recognized state, history textbooks in BiH do not universally meet modern European standards. This overview presents the key developments, with an emphasis on the past decade. This project is the result of a pilot survey among 184 history teachers from all over BiH jointly-conducted in early 2008 by the OSCE Mission to BiH and the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research in Braunschweig, Germany. Part one provides a chronological overview of the reform process relating to history textbooks and history education in BiH. In part two, this overview contains an analysis of selected history textbooks in use in BiH primary schools within the period autumn 2000 – summer 2008. The main objective is, thereby, to investigate whether history textbooks approved for the school year 2007/08 in BiH meet the standards stipulated in the Guidelines for writing and evaluation of history textbooks for primary and secondary schools in BiH. The analysis is supplemented by a comparison among selected primary grade history textbooks from the years after 2000 but before the school year 2007/2008. An emphasis is placed on whether BiH history is accepted as a main reference point in the textbooks, since the requirement to accentuate BiH as the main reference point constitutes one of the major aims of the Guidelines and the recommendations of the Memorandum of Understanding. The final section provides a study on the use of history textbooks in BiH that contains the results and analysis of the pilot survey of history teachers.