During the past decade, the Netherlands has seen a resurfacing of the debate about the purposes of teaching history in light of increasing conflict surrounding multiculturalism. At the same time, there was a review of the history curriculum which resulted in a reversion away from one based on disciplinary approaches and second-order concepts to a Euro-centric, chronological, and didactic history. Since 2005, education in general and history education in particular has been charged with creating social cohesion. In this study, Klein seeks to answer two questions: (1) what are the goals and pedagogical strategies of academic history teachers in the Netherlands; and (2) how are these goals and strategies related to their teacher knowledge? In order to answer these questions, he chose to complete a small qualitative study with five history teachers who teach in multicultural classrooms using interviews.

All five teachers in the study do not believe that history should be used as a vehicle for the development of patriotism; instead, they all believe history class should be used for the development of historical thinking. They have two goals in their teaching: “to contribute to their students’ ability to think outside a group perspective and to help them develop a commitment to Dutch society” (621). He believes that further research is needed to better understand why history teachers “differ in their mediation of values embedded in conflicting narrative,” if they do this at all (629).