Stanford Teaching Festival course offers inclusive look at World War I

A new professional development course at Stanford for middle and high school teachers highlights the importance of studying the history of the First World War in a global context.

Despite the global nature of World War I – one of the deadliest conflicts in history, involving dozens of countries and affecting hundreds of millions of lives – U.S. schools usually teach its history from the dominant perspective of the Western world.

But even the dates of the war (1914 to 1918) can shift when examining the conflict through different perspectives.

“The Western view of the war is that it ended in 1918 when the armistice was signed,” said Jovana Knežević, associate director at Stanford’s Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, who teaches a seminar on the First World War in Eastern Europe and Russia. “But in the East, the fighting didn’t stop until as late as 1923.”

With those words, Knežević kicked off First World War in a Global Context, a new five-day professional development course designed for middle and high school teachers – some of whom traveled across the world earlier this month for a week of learning at Stanford.

Knežević designed the World War I course together with Nicole Lusiani Elliott, a professional development associate at CSET, and through a collaboration with Stanford Global Studies. It was partially funded through a U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant.