Settlements and Rivers: Overcoming an Ambivalent Relationship from the Perspective of History Didactics

The study examines the potential of instructional figures as a didactic approach to history education grounded in a meta-level learning about the past, understood as a reflective relationship between historical knowledge, students’ lived experience and contemporary global challenges. The study argues that history education oriented toward such a meta-level can move beyond the reproduction of fixed historical narratives and instead support continuous inquiry into the meaning of learning about the past in the present. The theoretical framework is situated within the interdisciplinary debate on the Anthropocene, conceptualized not only as a proposed geological epoch but also as an analytical framework that challenges the conventional separation between human history and natural history. As a didactic response to this framework, the eco-educational project The Story of the River is presented as a model that primarily develops core subject-specific competencies in history education while simultaneously encouraging a non-anthropocentric perspective on the river as a historical and cultural entity connecting people, places and multiple forms of life. The study also raises broader questions regarding curriculum design in history education, particularly in relation to sustainability and contemporary societal challenges.