Impact case study database

Reach and significance

The findings of this study provided evidence that existing teaching and learning about the Holocaust were failing to address many widely held myths and misconceptions. Accordingly, it highlighted the imperative to improve teachers’ – and by extension, students’ - substantive and conceptual knowledge of this history. In response to these findings, Foster and his colleagues developed a series of transformational professional development and Beacon School programmes which have demonstrably improved teaching and learning across England, impacted educational practice in at least 60 further countries and benefitted society as a whole.

Impact on national policy and development

The pioneering research undertaken by Foster and his team (R1), was cited extensively in the Prime Minister’s 2015 Holocaust Commission Report, Britain’s Promise to Remember, as evidence that effective Holocaust education was failing to reach young people (S1, S3, S4). Personal correspondence from the Prime Minister David Cameron (dated 25th January 2016) stated: ‘ Early access to your report... provided much of the evidence base for the recommendations the Commission made. The full final report will be a great help to the [UK Holocaust Memorial] Foundation’ (S4).

One outcome of the Commission was the commencement of a GBP100,000,000 pound National Memorial and Learning Centre to be built next to the Houses of Parliament signifying its central importance in popular and political consciousness. Projected to open towards the end of 2024, the Centre is expected to attract one million visitors annually. The team’s research (R1, R2, R4) shaped and influenced this important initiative from the outset as ‘ an invaluable part of [the UK government’s] ongoing efforts to ensure that Holocaust education in the UK and internationally is delivered in a confident, effective and credible way’ (S3). Foster is a member of the Academic Board ensuring that the Centre’s empirical insight and analyses continue to perform a critical advisory role.

The impact of the team’s research was also cited extensively by government officials, NGOs and teachers in an Education Select Committee Inquiry into Holocaust Education in 2015 (S2). Written evidence from the Department for Education, for example, emphasised the unique importance of the Centre’s empirically rooted expertise in positively informing the practice of thousands of teachers who annually attend its courses. Most recently, the Centre’s model of robust research directly informing transformational professional support for teachers was cited as ‘ an important blueprint for an effective research-led teacher education programme’ within the Runnymede Trust’s current, high profile, 7 Actions to Change the History Curriculum campaign (S5). The campaign has drawn specific attention to the Centre’s research (R1) to galvanise public and political support behind the proposed creation of a national programme of teacher education on empire, colonialism and migration, directly emulating the Centre’s approach.

International impact

The Centre’s research is of internationally recognised importance within the field of Holocaust education and its 2016 study (R1, R3, R5) ‘ led to the revitalization of teacher training in this field in the UK and beyond’ (S3). On the basis of this reputation and the Centre’s ‘ unique position and high degree of expertise’, in 2018, UNESCO and the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR)) commissioned Foster and colleagues to create a research-informed curriculum framework for pre-service teachers and school directors addressing antisemitism and intolerance (S3). The Centre’s materials for this project were disseminated to government ministries in the 57 Participating States of the OSCE across Europe, Central Asia and North America as well as UNESCO Member States across the world, and used to train key policy makers and teacher trainers from over 60 countries of all regions through workshops organized by UNESCO and ODHIR at ODIHR (Warsaw), UNESCO (Paris) and the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner (Geneva) (S6).

Several other institutions worldwide have referenced the impact of the Centre’s research on their own work. For example, in a written testimonial given to the Education Select Committee on Holocaust Education, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum emphasised, ‘ no institution has been more influential in our work in Holocaust education’ (S2). Similarly emphatic testimonials to the impact and influence of the Centre’s research were also given by, amongst others, the Association of Holocaust Organisations, the Mauthausen Memorial Site and the World Holocaust Remembrance Centre at Yad Vashem (S2).

The research (R1, R2, R6) has informed policy directions set by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), the preeminent intergovernmental organisation working in this field, for example, in influencing IHRA’s latest international teaching and learning recommendations. The Centre’s Programme Director sits as one of only two members of the UK delegation within IHRA’s Education Working Group. This appointment reflects the impact of the Centre and its research to the UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office who consider it, ‘ integral to [Britain’s] work promoting good Holocaust education across the world’ (S3).

Impact on teaching and learning

Research into Holocaust Education undertaken by Foster and his team has drawn attention to real issues that teachers and learners face. By utilising these findings, the team has developed initial teacher education, CPD, MA and Beacon School programmes to form a pathway of professional development targeting teachers’ needs at every stage of their careers. The courses address contemporary issues within Holocaust education, explore appropriate pedagogical approaches and model the Centre’s resources and lesson plans to support teachers in the classroom and build capacity for exemplary practice in schools. Since January 2014, more than 18,000 teachers have attended such programmes. Each is uniquely responsive to the Centre’s empirical research and recognised by leading organisations including the IHRA and UNESCO as representing ‘ best practice internationally’ (S3, S6). Data collected by the Centre for the Department for Education show crucial impact on students’ knowledge. For example, in a sample of 886 students from eight schools the Centre has worked with, 90.7% of the students knew what antisemitism referred to after learning about the Holocaust, compared to 21.4% in a national sample of control schools (S7). Tangible impact reported by teachers and corroborated by programme evaluation includes increased confidence, expanded and better informed content choices and improved subject knowledge among both teachers and students (S7, S8).

The Centre’s Beacon School Programme – a nationally recognised and government-supported award – is especially significant in improving teaching standards, raising pupil achievement, and ‘ transform[ing] teaching and learning, both in Holocaust education, and across many other areas of school curricula’ (S8, S7). Since 2014, 155 schools across England have become Beacon Schools working with a network of over 1,550 additional local schools to annually impact the educational experience, understanding and attitudes of around one and a half million students.

Both classroom teachers and senior leaders have extensively praised the ‘ extremely powerful’ impact of the programme within their schools and multi-academy networks (S7, S8). A Beacon School teacher reports, ‘it completely changed our approach and transformed the learning that our pupils experience’ (S7) while one CEO of a multi-academy trust emphasises its ‘ positive impact on the knowledge and understanding of approximately 10,000 of our students to date’ (S8), whilst highlighting the importance of the Centre’s dissemination activity, in conjunction with its CPD offer, in shifting practitioner perspectives. ‘ Before the CfHE conducted their ground-breaking research, the prevalence of such misconceptions was unknown to those working in the field, including schools and teachers’ (S8). At all times the Centre ensures research findings are accessible to teachers and made directly relevant to actual classroom practice. Insight drawn from each of the Centre’s major research publications (e.g. R1, R2) and more recent analyses (R3, R4, R5) is regularly summarised through targeted research briefings, interactive web-site pages and other ongoing communication with a national network of more than 15,000 teachers.

In 2019, the Centre partnered with the Holocaust Educational Trust to deliver a Department for Education funded, national educational programme to commemorate and expand students’ knowledge of Bergen-Belsen and its liberation, a subject typically given very little attention within secondary school history (R1, S9). Approximately 1,300 young people and their teachers participated directly in the programme and the Centre’s research-informed teaching packs were distributed to all 4,000 of England’s secondary schools. As one survivor of that camp describes, the Centre’s involvement in the initiative exemplifies its ‘ critical importance for the field, informing the work that Holocaust education organisations across the country and survivors like me do when we engage with teachers and students’ (S9).

In response to its research showing how problematic and imprecise Holocaust textbooks are (R6, R2), the Centre also created the first empirically informed secondary school textbook to directly confront widespread student misconceptions. In 2020, more than 30,000 copies of ‘ *Understanding the Holocaust: How and why did it happen?*’ (Hodder Education) were distributed to 1,000 secondary schools across England, with an annual reach of over a million students. To align with its launch, the Centre offered an innovative, research-informed on-line CPD course focused on textbook portrayals. More than 1,000 teachers participated in this landmark course highlighted by the Executive Chair of Pears Foundation as ‘ a direct example of the tremendous impact that the Centre can have through making academic scholarship accessible to teachers in the classroom and giving them the resources and training they need to be effective’ (S10). He cites participant responses describing the experience as ‘ phenomenally invaluable’, ‘ a huge advancement for the field of Holocaust Education’ and ‘ the most important thing to happen in KS3 History in years’ (S10). There continues to be high demand for the textbook, and a further 30,000 copies will be sent to another 1,000 schools in spring 2021. Digital ‘Teacher Guidance’ materials to support the use of the textbook feature on the Centre’s website and can also be widely accessed from the Wiener Holocaust Library’s website, ‘The Holocaust Explained’ which receives 1.4 million visits annually.

The Centre’s immediate response to the challenges faced by the COVID-19 pandemic offers further evidence of its impactful commitment to ensuring robust empirical research is utilised to build capacity and transform teaching in schools (S10). Between April and September 2020, 34 high quality, lesson plans and materials for online teaching and learning were produced and accessed by approximately 3,000 teachers and parents/carers across the country and three self-guided, on-line CPD courses were completed by more than 2,000 practising teachers. The Centre’s intensive Beacon School programme was re-configured and offered in an on-line, interactive format to teachers and senior leaders in 23 schools, more than 50 teachers also participated in the Centre’s on-line MA module, ‘the Holocaust in the Curriculum’, and several hundred joined the webinar with world-renowned historian Holocaust historian, Yehuda Bauer, in June 2020. The launch of a Massive Online Open-Access Course developed with Yad Vashem (Jerusalem) in Autumn 2020 also exemplifies the reach and influence of the Centre’s digital offer; the course attracted over 1,000 learners from 88 different countries within just three weeks of enrolment opening.