Selecting, Stretching and Missing the Frame: Making Sense of the Cold War in German and Swiss History Classrooms

Abstract

Christophe explores approaches to teaching the Cold War using the case studies of two teachers, one German, one Swiss, and analyses ‘classroom talk’ and teaching techniques to understand how they, both consciously and unconsciously, manipulate their own frames, which she defines as cognitive frameworks inevitably affected by cultural conditioning. Drawing on this research, Christophe articulates her own theory, which, also influenced by recent anthropological studies, postcolonialism and theories of discourse analysis, illustrates how current analytical categories limit understanding of and teaching of the Cold War. Competing approaches to remembering the Cold War, often disregarded, are crucial in classrooms, as students otherwise misunderstand teachers’ mnemonic framing techniques, as they expose unconscious bias and the interdependence of fact and frame.