Disciplinary Capacity Development in History Education

The Lebanese Association for History (LAH) is a group of educationalists, history teachers, and activists who work together to contribute to the development of disciplinary approaches to History education in Lebanon. LAH promotes the learning and teaching of history as a discipline in Lebanon, raises public awareness about the importance of history and ensures that history teaching becomes more recognized by society and more engaging to learners with a focus on historical concepts. LAH aims at encouraging continuous learning for different age groups as a way to build learners’ critical thinking, shape their personalities and develop a sense of individual and collective responsibility. Alongside working on several projects that aim to foster history teaching, on 18 – 19 June 2013, LAH organized a series of presentations on approaches to “Teaching and learning the civil war”. LAH partnered with the Centre for Lebanese Studies, the Finnish Institute in the Middle East, the Open Society and the Center for Arab and Middle East Studies at American University Beirut. The presentations took place at the American University of Beirut and were attended by 90 history teachers, activists, academics, and researchers.