Teaching and learning about the Holocaust: a systematic scoping review of existing research

This scoping review aims to map and summarize practice-based research that evaluates outcomes in teaching and learning about the Holocaust (TLH). It focuses on providing an overview of the characteristics of existing literature and synthesizing the educational interventions’ effects evaluated in previous studies. Nineteen bibliographical databases were searched for relevant empirical research published from 1945 to 2020 worldwide. After screening and relevance assessment, 117 research publications were identified for inclusion in the review. The included material was analysed by bibliometric analysis, thematic analysis of educational approaches, and narrative synthesis of outcomes. Based on the bibliometric analysis, the findings suggest that practice-based research on TLH’s educational outcomes is a neglected subfield within the academic field of TLH, with a lack of cumulative development across studies. The scoping review also showed a dominance of studies conducted with qualitative study designs. The narrative synthesis of outcomes showed that these studies provide important insights into how interventions within TLH impact students; nonetheless, these studies need to be supplemented with knowledge from quantitative studies. Without such knowledge, we have a knowledge gap that could imply that TLH interventions are implemented arbitrarily, that students do not learn the intended lessons, or that the lessons are not lasting.