Recommendations for Stakeholders

The IHRA’s Education Research Project shows the significant empirical research and data collection that have been undertaken in many countries, and the progress in theory building that has been made. It also points to the regional diversity and heterogeneity of approaches, methods, contexts and results. These observations suggest that local, regional and international forums have to be created or reinforced to discuss results and their implications for both the formulation and implementation of teaching and learning about the Holocaust (TLH) policies.

Recommendations to Educational Policymakers

1. Allocate funds to support research in TLH. Allow access to schools for qualitative or quantitative research projects, especially focusing on the implementation of programs in the classroom.
2. Allocate funds to conduct an independent evaluation of specific TLH projects, both in schools and in extracurricular projects.
3. Introduce a national strategy to study the determinants of success and failure of TLH.
4. Charged expectations prevail as to what the purpose and the impact of TLH should be: civic education, prejudice reduction, embracing diversity and fostering a culture of pluralism and democracy. Policymakers
should encourage discussion with stakeholders (researchers, educators) to jointly identify and define reasonable goals, without overloading TLH with overblown expectations.
5. Support the dissemination and discussion of results and ensure that the results are used for evidence-based policymaking.
6. Endorse a dialogue with all social agents involved in empirical studies on TLH to support their separate efforts, coordinate the studies at a higher level and create synergies.
7. Apply empirical research results to content and methodology in the curriculum-planning process.

Recommendations to University Departments, Teacher-Training Institutions
and Research-Funding Organizations

1. Build the capacity of researchers.
2. Develop research tools.
3. Encourage interdisciplinary work.
4. Reinforce research and development in the field of teaching tools and resources for teachers and reinforce access to existing tools and resources.
5. National and international research programs, including European programs, should encourage data collection in the field of TLH by independent researchers. The results should be published and made
accessible to policymakers and educators.
6. Support and build research capacity in under-studied educational contexts.
7. Encourage cooperation with state institutions and NGOs to conduct empirical studies on their TLH programs and projects.

Recommendations to Funding Organizations

1. Encourage NGOs to cooperate with researchers conducting empirical studies to evaluate TLH programs and projects.
2. Support empirical research that will ultimately empower teachers in the classroom.

Recommendations to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance

1. Establish research on TLH as a priority of the organization, including follow-up on the results of this report with discussions to develop concrete objectives for all stakeholders.
2. Facilitate access to research results and organize exchange between researchers across language barriers.
3. Support the development of and access to instruments for research (methods, standards and tools) that are free and multilingual, and build the capacity of researchers/research institutions to use these
tools to further professionalize the TLH field.
4. Provide a space for educators and researchers at the regional, national and international level to further discussions about the methodological foundations of TLH.
5. Form a network of institutions and structures to initiate further empirical studies on TLH that can help prioritize long-term effective action and build cross-language cooperation.