Mapping moral consciousness in research on historical consciousness and education - a summative content analysis of 512 research articles published between 1980 and 2020

ABSTRACT The purpose of this article is to provide a unique overview of how third-order concepts, linked to moral consciousness, are expressed in research articles on historical consciousness related to education, as well as to document how frequently the concepts are applied between 1980 and 2020. A count of word frequency says something about how popular (strong) a concept is during a particular period, while different themes of moral consciousness enable teachers, students, and researchers to broaden their perceptions and sharpen their (moral) judgment in their day-to-day reflections and practices. The following questions guide the study: 1. How do words signal good/bad and right/wrong in the texts about historical consciousness? 2. How frequently are the words mentioned? And 3. What kind of frames do the choices of words indicate for educational practice and purpose(s)? Very strong, strong, medium, and weak words have been located between 1980 and 2020 depending on how often the words are mentioned. Five themes were found and are reported on in this article: cosmopolitanism, democracy, emancipation, character building, and existential struggles, which all come with different frames for how to approach the past in relation to the present and future in history education.


Introduction
While historical consciousness directs attention to how people make meaning out of temporal relations, moral consciousness signals in a similar fashion how the notion of morality is interlaced with human meaning-making regarding issues of good and bad, and right and wrong. This article considers ways in which research categorized as history in relation to educational issues intersect with understandings about good and bad, and right and wrong.
Historical consciousness has come to be one of the most central concepts in history education and history curricula over approximately the last 40 years (cf. Karlsson, 2009;Grever & Adriaansen, 2019). The movement from history as objective and detached from people's lives to a history interpreted by and in support of present and future understandings has brought with it a moral awareness and sensitivity to the way history is taught and researched (cf. Ammert et al., 2017; making up the third section: a) an overview of words and frequency; and b) a thematic analysis of themes based on the keywords found. Finally, the article ends with a discussion linking the results to previous research and future studies.

Various traditions of historical consciousness
Historical consciousness is generally about how people make meaning out of the relationship between past, present, and future (Jeismann et al., 1979, pp. 40-42). At one level, every human being is equipped with some kind of historical consciousness (Ammert, 2009). It can also be approached as an ability that can either be a simplistic or a more or less complex and nuanced consciousness (Rüsen, 2012, pp. 52-54). In order to get an overview of how historical consciousness is approached in research, three different overarching traditions are discussed below: modern, cognitive, and the heritage of Gadamer's hermeneutics.

Modernism
The first tradition of historical consciousness as a collective and universal project based on the pillars of modernism took form during the 1750s to 1850s and is still used as a starting point for historical consciousness in various forms of history research today. Central to this tradition is to view individuals' consciousness as part of a modern and universal (single) consciousness cherishing progress, acceleration of history, and a belief in the human capability to develop (Grever & Adriaansen, 2019, p. 179). This tradition is defined by Körber (2015) as a narrow form of historical consciousness (p. 444).
The purpose of history education in many countries at the beginning of the twentieth century was to socialize the younger generation and foreigners into the social order favouring patriotism, national identity, solidarity, and loyalty. Through teacher-centred, behaviourist approaches to learning, students were expected to passively receive the authorities' seemingly correct narrative of the good life and align with it without questioning its veracity (Milligan et al., 2018, see also Osborne, 2008Osborne, , 2011. Rather than acknowledging people's plural consciousness, humans are treated as if they share an identical and essentialist core of historical consciousness that is permeated by shared modernist ideals. While social and cultural factors are understood to generate change and development it is done so as a process that does not take people's culturally tinted consciousness into account. This creates a paradox in that social and cultural factors, on the one hand, are described as key engines for progress, but on the other hand ignore the consciousness-making of individuals as part of cultural and social contexts. In other words: 'our lives are vacated of historical context, and an "idea of progress" that could actually drive progress becomes impossible' (Seixas, 2012, p. 864). A consequence of this is that the modern tradition of historical consciousness regards the past as radically separated from the present and future. This suggests that present people can learn about the past in an objective manner, but since the past is seen to move forward external to human consciousness, it is more difficult to learn from the past events, traditions and values to create a more fulfiling future. From that perspective, historical consciousness is regarded as a universal and instrumental mental process that does not take into account various ways of individually conceptualizing, understanding, and relating to the past (Grever & Adriaansen, 2019, pp. 815-817).

Cognitivism
The second tradition of historical consciousness regards it as trait for individuals to develop cognitively to understand the past and is primarily used in history education research. From a general point of view those advocating for the cognitive tradition argues that history education is more than memorizing objective facts and involves cognitively placing the past in relation to the present and future in ways that make it possible to learn from it in a manner where the past knowledge influences present and future perceptions and action. However, it is important to be aware of the fact that the cognitive tradition consists of a variety of sub-traditions that at times overlap, and can on other occasions cause friction (Seixas, 2015). A historical consciousness that incorporates all variants of (shaping) historical thinking in present and past contexts and cultures can be referred to as a broad dimension of historical consciousness, as argued by Körber (2015). A central purpose of education is to develop this historical thinking with the help of a broad range of different typologies for cognitive structure to avoid .
Cognitive traditions of historical consciousness thus render consciousness more or less interlinked with historical thinking skills, based on nuanced schemes and models aiming to enhance cognitive development in various ways (Grever & Adriaansen, 2019). This means that people's historical consciousness, as a mode of interpretation of the world, becomes more or less separated from the messiness of their experiences, uniqueness, cultures, and values, since the idea is that increased knowledge will lead to a development where messiness is cleaned away. At the same time there are currently tendencies to increase attention towards the linguistic turn and the knowledge contributed by Gadamer's hermeneutics.

Hermeneutics
Recently the relationship between historical consciousness and culture has been re-awakened, as has the question regarding what it is that distinguishes historical consciousness from historical thinking (Clark & Grever, 2018, p. 183). These queries direct a spotlight on to the very meaning of historical consciousness, which emerged from a clash between traditional history based on positivism, and history education drawing on social/human sciences. Historical consciousness in this sense is not just about various perspectives or a perspective amongst other perspectives. The creation of historical consciousness starts in the very building blocks and evidence that showed positivism as a rigid methodology, an ideal that is incapable of handling the complexities of human life. Accordingly, the foundation of historical consciousness based on hermeneutics is not just limited to history education, but cuts across a range of social and humane disciplines and knowledge areas as part of the moral, cultural, and linguistic turn of science in general (Zimmermann, 2016).
One central point in Grever and Adriaansen (2019) article, which discusses various enigmatic traditions within the field of historical consciousness, is that even though Gadamer's hermeneutics has occasionally been referred to, it is only done so in a shallow manner, while the cognitive or competence approach drawing on progressive development has been in the foreground. In other words: 'although sometimes history education scholars do refer to Gadamer (e.g. Wineburg, 2001, p. 10;Seixas, 2004Seixas, , 2017, and although Gadamer was one of the sources of inspiration for Rüsen and other history didacticians, they did not necessarily build their didactic models on his hermeneutics . . .' (Grever & Adriaansen, 2019, 822).
What this insight brings to the fore are the tensions in the field of historical consciousness between various traditions. This can be seen in the difficulties of taking into account the awareness that Gadamer and others raised, namely that the hermeneutic problem is everyone's problem (see for instance, Gadamer, 1975/Gadamer, 2006Edling et al., 2020a). It is not a question about wanting or not wanting to enhance knowledge, being relativist, or being objective. It is rather a question about how areas like historical thinking can be approached without overlooking fundamental human traits, since an ignorance of these traits creates illusions, and as such, becomes morally questionable. Gadamer's historical consciousness is much broader than a methodological model or a set of principles on how to understand and progress understanding, but starts in the very human conditions that enable understanding. Rather than focusing upon degrees and progression it is more about a complicated broadening of horizons, where meaning-making is about questioning, struggling with, and re-imaging the plurality of past events in relation to people's diversity and multiple perceptions of present and future contexts. It is not about arguing that there is no need for cognitive analytical tools, but that learning is a much more complicated process than an image of progression entails (cf. Grever & Adriaansen, 2019, p. 823;Edling et al., 2020a). Like historical consciousness, the field of moral consciousness is constituted by different traditions.

Various traditions of moral consciousness
Moral consciousness as a term has been approached by phenomenologists and existentialists like Schrag (1963) and Buber (1947), by developmental psychologists like Kohlberg (1981), by developmental psychology influenced by feminist approaches, such as that studied by Gilligan (1982) and Noddings (2002), and as a matter of linguisticality that is intimately linked to historical consciousness, as expressed by Gadamer's (1975/Gadamer, 2006 notion of hermeneutics. Moral consciousness that stems from the fields of phenomenology and existentialism is interested in how moral choices, actions, and judgements take shape in people's here-and-now experiences of being-in-the-world. The conscious valuing of moral choices (multiple alternatives) is consequently expressed as action that requires value judgment between what is deemed desirable or nondesirable, right or wrong, good or bad. According to Schrag (1963), moral consciousness consists of six elements that make moral acts possible: intersubjectivity (characterized by intentionality), temporality, historicity, freedom, purpose, and meaning (ibid).
The term moral conscience is often interwoven with psychological and neuropsychological understandings, thereby placing development and the rational individual at the centre of attention. Generally, being conscious has to do with being morally aware of what takes place both inside and outside the individual (Schneider & Velmans, 2007). Hence, the American developmental psychologist Lawrence Kohlberg's ideas have played a crucial role in moulding the meaning of moral conscience. Drawing also on Mead's pragmatism and John Rawls's 'natural law', it is possible to establish right and wrong forms of moral reasoning founded on rationality whereby depending on the moral stage they are at, people are more or less successful in their moral judgements (e.g. Habermas, 1990, pp., 117, 119, 120). For example, morality through the work of Rüsen (2004a) is linked to Piagetian developmental moral philosophy and discourse ethics (see Edling et al., 2020b).
A critique of developmental psychology and its focus on an ethics of justice came from Gilligan (1982), who empirically argued that the underlying perspective of ethics of justice excludes the concrete other and feminine values (which should not be understood as values that are exclusively linked to women) in ways that diminish many women's moral judgements due to their life situations. Drawing on Gilligan (1977), Nodding maintains that moral consciousness as part of an ethics of care is about a capability for moral judgment and action that is possible to develop, and that pays attention to particular feelings of care and the flow of everyday relations.
Whereas moral consciousness generally is defined from the fields of psychology and neuropsychology linking the term to moral progression, the term attaches to a different meaning through the grid of Gadamer's hermeneutics. Just as history is expressed through human experience rendered meaningful through language, ideas about moral good are expressed with the help of language and are always intermixed with a historical consciousness. Language expressions of moral issues say something about what the present observer values in the past and set the foundation for judgement in the present as well as directions for future change. What Gadamer showed, amongst other things, was that there is a dialectical relationship between entities like time spans, body, and mind; that language and individual's meaning-making are the sole mediators for consciousness; the unescapable presence of human uniqueness (plurality), prejudice, values, and risk; and that moral issues depend upon (a will for open) communication (and listening) in the realm of the public and day-today practice. Accordingly, the very epistemological framework that accompanies Gadamer's philosophy is infused with a moral consciousness drawing on the human condition (Edling et al., 2020a). Education in relation to moral issues can thus be grasped as a complicated conversation where (moral) judgements take form, relocate, and alter during the continued process of deepening knowledge (Pinar, 2012, pp. 188-198). Drawing on Gadamer's reasoning, we maintain that the use of words is important to acknowledge, map and problematize in order to deepen meaning-making, which is why we have turned our gaze to research on third-order concepts in history education.

Third order concepts in history education: analytical tools for reflection for teachers and students
History education is generally associated with first-and second-order concepts (Ludvigsson, 2015). First-order concepts are linked to the subject content of education and relate to specific (historical) events and time spans. For instance, in a study by Sandahl (2011) in which he analysed how globalization was approached in six school classes, he found that the subject circulated around economic concepts like import, export, protectionism, specialization, World Trade Organization, and political concepts like international law, new liberalism and so forth. Whereas first-order concepts are more subject particular, second-order concepts direct the attention towards scientific meta-concepts (methods and principles) that aim to secure a critical stance on historical reasoning and approaches to subject content. In Sandahl's study, he found that concepts like evidence, abstraction, and causality could be linked to second-order concepts, i.e. ways of scientifically structuring the subject content in a meaningful way (ibid). However, there is a tendency to put a wide range of dimensions under the second-order umbrella, such as epistemology (evidence, validity, reliability, etc.), metaphysics (space, temporality, cause, time, etc.), ideology (progression, importance of democracy, etc.) and emotion (empathy, sympathy, etc). Although various 'order concepts' can be seen as mutually interlinked in an ecological fashion (Kainulainen et al., 2019, pp. 252, 253), there is a point in separating between metaphysical and epistemological concepts, and concepts that involve meaning-making processes and include emotions and ideologies.
Drawing on Sandahl's study, Christensen Spanget (2013) concluded that concepts that stimulate self-reflection tend to be ignored in first and second-order concepts, thereby requiring a third category, here labelled as third-order concepts that highlight individuals' reflections and values in relation to the subject content in focus. Third-order concepts therefore become a kind of glue that connects first-and second-order concepts to issues about democratic citizenship and didactical practices (ibid).
The structuring and meaning-making of concepts are at the heart of Schön's (1983) notion of the reflexive practitioner, where teacher judgment and reflection are linked to language use. The choice of concepts both names and frames educational practice, thereby rendering concepts essential to pay attention to when planning lessons and analysing whatever is in focus. In relation to this variation theory, a variety of concepts and perspectives are emphasized that can stimulate deep learning and help to make sharper judgements in everyday practices (Ling, 2014). This stance can also be detected in history education, as indicated by Kainulainen et al. (2019): Learning history involves conceptual changes-that is, major conceptual shifts in how students understand history and the concepts used in history. Accordingly, professional development of historians requires enabling students make these conceptual shifts on the path to expertise/ . . . /expert conceptual change involves understanding multiple approaches to the production of history. (p. 245) Like Christensen, Jarhall (2020) detects both a lack of and a need to bring concepts that accentuate value reflections into education. She also shows how these concepts are vital for sharpening people's historical consciousness. Following Jarhall, history education and knowledge about history can be characterized as knowledge about history, knowledge in history, and knowledge from history. While knowledge in history refers to first-order concepts related to subject content, knowledge about history refers to scientific methods and principles that aim to deal with the content in a structured and critical way and thereby guarantee high quality. Knowledge from history can be understood as knowledge that is linked to the existential and experiential dimensions of history, i.e. how historical content affects us emotionally and influences our meaning-making. From this reasoning, knowledge from history is an essential condition for historical consciousness and the possibility of reflecting on aspects like past, present, and future, conditions for human existence over time, and what insight brings to human relations and co-existence in the present and the future (p. 414). Although knowledge from history is a fundamental dimension of historical consciousness, Jarhall acknowledges that there is no place for them in first and secondorder concepts. As such, she suggests that third-order concepts-those that give meaning to the value, citizenship, and identity dimensions in the history subject-should be introduced in history education (p. 103). Following Jarhall, first and second-order concepts can be seen as securing quantity and quality in history education, while third-order concepts can be seen as securing and analysing the relevance of the history subject (p. 414). However, it is not only Christensen and Jarhall who point to the need to introduce and study third-order concepts. This is also stressed by Nordic researchers of history didaktik (Ludvigsson, 2015).
To sum up, we argue that historical consciousness can be understood as what Gadamer refers to as linguisticality, where third-order concepts can provide a road map for teachers, students, and researchers to reflect on, structure, and grapple with how meaning-making and moral consciousness are expressed in research on historical consciousness. As this is a field that is scarcely investigated, this article has the potential to provide unique material in this regard.

Methodology
The purpose of this article is to map third-order concepts in history education in published research on historical consciousness between 1980 and 2020 through a systematic literature review. In identifying the literature on moral consciousness as it is situated in historical consciousness across this extended time period, this article highlights how concepts loaded with moral values with regard to good/bad and right/wrong are named in texts about historical consciousness and what kind of frames the choice of words indicates for educational practice and purpose(s). To gain an understanding of how moral consciousness is approached in this systematic literature review, a summative content analysis is applied. Contrary to conventional and direct content analysis, a summative content analysis has the potential to provide an overview of the words that occur during certain time periods and their frequency (e.g. Edling & Mooney Simmie, 2018;Fabra-Crespo & Rojas-Briales, 2015;Riffe et al., 2005). We maintain that the latter says something substantial about which value concepts gain more emphasis (are more popular) than others in different time spans, which in turn can spur discussions about the reasons for these changes in emphasis.

Procedure and selection of articles
Data was retrieved using scholarly databases based on specific concepts and limits guiding the formal search strategy. Only articles concerned with historical consciousness within the field of education between 1980 and (the first part of) 2020 that expressed qualities about human coexistence were of interest in the literature review search. A further parameter that was applied was that only original peer-reviewed articles written in English and Swedish were included, which means that many articles in other languages like German are omitted due to language barriers. Most of the texts are in English and cover all continents. The broad search terms were applied to conduct a scoping search in consultation with a professional librarian in order to sharpen and nuance relevant concepts and make sure relevant search terms were included (see Table 1).
Boolean operators were applied to combine concepts from the following databases: Scopus (Elsevier), ERIC (Ebsco), PsychInfo (Ebsco), and Web of Science (Thomson Reuters). In the formal search there were 5 508 articles retrieved (Scopus n = 1643, ERIC n = 1508, PsychInfo n = 1017, Web of Science n = 1340). All duplicated texts were deleted using Endnote and in accordance with Bramer et al.'s (2016) de-duplication method. At the conclusion of this process, 3596 articles remained for screening, which was performed in three steps (1) 3596 abstracts were read by one reviewer with the help of the web tool Rayyan (rayyan.qcri. org) for determining inclusion and exclusion (see Table 2). From this, 2886 articles were excluded and 710 full text articles were read using Mendely; (2) The remaining 710 full text articles were screened and quotations (including abstracts) targeting values of human relations were depicted and collected in a separate document.
In the selection process the following questions guided our steps: 'Do the texts signal values about good and bad or right or wrong in any way and do they explicitly direct attention towards history education?' During this reading, 198 articles were excluded because the full text articles were outside the scope of the study, were in another language, or too short to say something substantial. Accordingly, only 512 articles were included for final analysis.
(3) Selected quotations identified in Step 2 were uploaded in Atlas.ti, in order to count and map the content.

Summative content analysis
Central to the purposes of content analysis is to study and categorize the ways various forms of oral and written language are used to create meaning in particular contexts (McTavish & Pirro, 1990;Rosengren, 1981;Tesch, 1990). Three distinct approaches to content analysis, identified by Hsieh and Shannon (2005) include: direct, conventional, and summative. These three approaches differ from each other regarding the way they code the material, the source of origin of the codes, as well as in relation to trustworthiness (p. 1277). The direct and conventional content analyses do not include a quantitative and qualitative dimension in their methodology. As we see merit in mapping both meaning and the number of times words occur in different time spans, the summative content analysis seems more appropriate in our context (see also Edling & Mooney Simmie, 2018;Fabra-Crespo & Rojas-Briales, 2015;Krippendorff, 2013). Moreover, as the material to be analysed is large, a summative content analysis seems to be a better choice of methodology than qualitative forms of content analysis, because it helps to gain an overview of a complex set of information.
A summative content analysis is a qualitative form of analysis with a minor quantitative dimension that counts, compares, and interprets the use of keywords to get an idea of patterns, meaning, and frequency of word use (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005, p.1277, see also Fabra-Crespo & Rojas-Briales, 2015). Indeed, a summative content analysis is not merely about counting words but involves a dimension of examining language systematically as a means of categorizing massive amount of text based on their similar connotations (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005, pp. 1278, 1283 and is particularly useful when coding large quantities of sensitive material (Rapport, 2010, pp. 271, 272). Contrary to a conventional and direct use of a content analysis where the data and language are treated as a whole, a summative approach starts with fragmented keywords that only thereafter are placed in relationship with each other, in order to detect differences and similarities. It can provide an important outline of content but at the same time it lacks tools for in-depth analysis (Hsieh & Shannon, 2005, p. 1286. In this study, 512 articles were scanned in Mendeley and quotations (including article abstracts) targeting values of human relations were gathered in a separate document. In order to minimize subjectivity the following main question guided our steps at this stage: 'Which part of the text directs attention towards values about good and bad or right or wrong in any way?' This meant roughly scanning full texts one by one to avoid gathering words that contextually did not have anything to do with the general question posed in the previous sentence. During this process the text sequences were continually copied and pasted in a separate document along with page numbers and the references, which were uploaded to ATLAS.ti 8 software. More in-depth conventional content analysis will be used in forthcoming articles.
The quotations were then read and re-read, and a selection of words was located that were deemed to signal a specific value-related judgement in relation to the human condition found in history or history education. The frequency of the words was thereafter counted to see how often they were used, as well as placed in relation to one another. The study has the potential to provide history educators and history researchers with a map of moral foci and purposes in history education and research.

An overview of concepts with a moral and temporal element
Drawing on Gadamer's historical consciousness as linguisticality, we argue that a moral consciousness is expressed through language and words tinted with past experience. Choices of words matter since they name and frame practice. Although a simple listing of words does not automatically provide the reader with a sharper instrument to explore the notion of moral consciousness, it nonetheless offers an overview of morally loaded words used over the years. The objective is that this road map can function as assistance in understanding and designing history teaching and learning in the present, based on how research about history education has approached issues of good and bad and right and wrong over the past forty years.
The number of articles addressing the topic of this article increased according to year of publication, which can also be explained by the fact that academic and other similar publications have significantly increased since 1980 and online databases have also increased and become more accessible. Only 11 articles were included for analysis in the 1980s and 1990s compared to 335 articles between 2010 and 2020. During the process of analysis, 92 words expressing value dimensions used in the texts have been depicted during the reading and re-reading of content and in dialogue with previous research. Drawing on research on third-order concepts, we maintain that these concepts enable reflections about good and bad, right and wrong. For example, some articles problematize the lack of, or stressed the importance of, agency in relation to past events, which signals that this concept carries a value to be acknowledged.
Parallel to the increase of articles the number of words located also increased the closer the publication date is to 2020. Words that have increased the most from 1980 to 2020 are citizens(hip), (civic) rights, community, critical thinking, culture, democracy(-tic), empathy(-ic), experience, genocide, global, identity, justice, memory, morality, violence, and power (see words with *) (see Table 3).
The intention with the summative content analysis is to get a general idea of where the focus of moral issues lies in research on historical consciousness and education, rather than providing a fully fledged outline of existing words. The keywords have been structured into four decades between 1980 and 2020. Even though it is difficult to generalize from this sample the number of times words Table 3. An overview of keywords generated from the 512 articles about historical consciousness (interpretation) and their frequency as regards the number of times the words are mentioned in the quotations between 1980-2020. occur indicates plausible directions, changes, and emphasis on moral focus in-between time spans. Based on the findings four categories have been created, determined by how many times the words appear in one or more time spans: 1) very strong keywords (occur 250+ times); 2) strong keywords (150-249); 3) medium keywords (50-149); and 4) weak keywords (0-49).

Themes of moral consciousness within explanations of historical consciousness
Besides counting the frequency of words, the content of words and quotations have been analysed depending upon their specific focus and difference in patterns. Five major interrelated themes for moral consciousness were found in the articles: cosmopolitanism, democracy, emancipation, identity building, and existential struggle.
The themes are generated through our close reading of the texts and constructed in the process of reading and re-reading of words in relation to their context, aiming to find patterns of similarities and/or differences in how the words are used to approach good and bad and right and wrong, in relation to the historical content of the article. More specifically, the structuring of themes and related keywords has been guided by the questions: a) what is the purpose of morality; and b) what directions for action does the purpose generate? The themes are not necessarily isolated from each other, as the same article can include two or more themes concurrently. It is important to note, however, that words such as global can be mentioned without fitting into the theme cosmopolitanism, as the words get meaning in relation to one another. Words like community are used differently within the framework of, for example, cosmopolitanism, compared to democracy. Nonetheless, the words used within the themes mentioned above can still be helpful in separating thematically different ways of linguistically approaching morality, referred to in this text as ways of constructing moral consciousness in education.
To begin with, cosmopolitanism as a theme is used in a broad sense here as an attempt to see a global community as one interconnected community rather than as isolated population groups that risk causing ethnocentrism in ways that potentially harm people. Several of the keywords linked to the theme cosmopolitanism are in this study weak or medium in frequency except for the word culture. Whereas, for instance, cosmopolitanism is mentioned eight times in 2019 and 2020, the word culture is mentioned 318 times, and global 111 during the same period. Interpreting the keywords in relation to one another, a pattern is created where the focus is directed upon studying past knowledge with the intention to identify similarities and similarities between cultures in various places, globally (see Table 5). The ambition is to discover how past, present, and future human life are interconnected with the intention to create a sense of global community that overcomes war, intercultural tensions, ethnocentrism, and so forth.
Another theme found is related to questions about democracy and several of the strong and very strong keywords are connected to areas associated with democracy. These are also examples of words that have increased most from the 1980s to 2020s. For instance, in 2020 democracy or democratic is mentioned 165 times, (civic) rights 286 times, and community 176 times. What the keywords in this theme have in common is that they switch focus from the global platform, to building a good society infused by and grounded in democratic ideals and principles. Knowledge from the past is placed in dialogue with how they stimulate or counteract possibilities for democratic Table 4. An overview of how frequently the temporal keywords past, present, and future are used in the selected quotations between time spans stretching from 1980 to 2020. :  11  59  107  335  MAX: 512  DECADES: 1980-1989 1990-1999 2000-2009 2010-2020 TOTAL SUM  KEYWORDS  PAST  12  80  261  1264  1617  PRESENT  25  39  263  515  842  FUTURE  10  6  67  277  360 structures, principles, and values. Words like authoritarianism, totalitarianism, and fascism are at times used as antitheses to describe what democracy is not. The past is placed in relation to current democratic aspirations and conditions with the intention to kindle a democratic mentality based on communication, critical thinking (a communicative competence), influence, everyone's equal value, tolerance, solidarity, and/or plural perspectives and worldviews in past, present, and future. Some of the articles that highlight the presence of plurality in democratic societies also direct attention upon controversies, dilemmas, and ambiguities in societies that need to be acknowledged and handled (see Table 5). Rather than (merely) focusing on the importance of creating a democratic society together with others, a third theme shifts emphasis to emancipation and the need to expose the conditions that past actions have created for some groups of people. The word emancipation is thus used in a broad sense to signal a desire to free or liberate groups from oppressive structures. While emancipation is only mentioned 20 times between 2010 and 2020, the strongest keywords within this theme in this time span are critical thinking (324), diversity (133), genocide (141), violence (208), justice (130), and power (298). Three different sub-themes can be interpreted, namely texts stressing the need to a) recognize and collectively remember harm done to past groups of people, b) providing voice to past and present groups who have been historically silenced, and c) empower groups through strengthening critical thinking and improving current conditions (power relations) based on past knowledge. The moral consciousness stimulated here approaches the past with an awareness of its plural and ideological package as well as how this ideologically loaded past impact on groups' conditions in the past, present, and future (see Table 5). Table 5. An overview of the five purposes of moral consciousness, the direction for action generated from that purpose and keywords.

Purpose of morality Direction for action Cosmopolitan endeavour
Using past knowledge to detect similarities and differences of cultures and lifestyles locally, nationally, and globally in order to create a common ground on which a better world can be built in the present and future Examples of key words Global, globalization, ethnocentrism, culture, intercultural, multicultural, sustainable, cosmopolitanism, peace, commonality, community, (world) humanity Democratic endeavour Using past knowledge to create a present and future society based on democratic principles and values together with others-political governing forms that oppose democracy are often used as antitheses Examples of keywords (Liberal) democracy, democratic, civic rights, (democratic) citizenship, plurality, diversity, controversy, dilemma, ambiguity, collective memory, commonality, community, citizenship, influence, justice, equality, equity, tolerance/tolerant, solidarity, communication, critical thinking, opposite to racism, fascism, totalitarianism, authoritarianism Emancipation Highlighting the conditions for groups of people from the past in order to free them from oppression today and in the future

Examples of key words
Agency , class, collective memory, commemoration, critical thinking, discrimination, empowerment, equality, equity, freeing, gender, genocide, Holocaust, ideology, justice, liberation, oppression, power, prejudice, presentism, race, racism, recognition, silencing, stereotypes, voice, violence (against groups), xenophobia Identity/character formation In encounters with past knowledge the intention here is to shape moral identities/characters in the present (for the future) based on either universal principles or socially cherished values.

Existential struggles
Encountering past knowledge might evoke strong feelings and experiences that need to be faced and worked through, in order to open up possibilities (hope) for a less violent relationship with others in the present and future Examples of keywords Diversity, experience, forgiveness, grief, guilt, hope, horror, memory, otherness, relations, sensitivity, responsibility, suffering, togetherness, trauma, (interpersonal) violence, witnessing Some of the strongest keywords when counting word frequency from 2010 to 2020 are identity (345), empathy (298), and values (141). These keywords, among others, represent the fourth theme in the study where the emphasis shifts from emancipating groups from oppressive and harmful structures to individuals' identity building. This theme intersects at times with democratic aspirations, but not always, which is a central reason for letting it stand alone. In other words, whereas the focus above is on global issues, social issues, and group issues, this stance spotlights the individual's development of identity (character) through encountering knowledge about the past. There are three different perspectives that stand out in the data: a) fostering caring and empathic characters; b) fostering a just moral character based on abstract and universal principles of good behaviour/ competences; and c) fostering virtuous characters (see Table 5).
Switching from character building, the fifth theme is about the importance of working through existential struggles for the sake of others in order to stimulate a more peaceful, responsible, and less violent interrelation with others. The strongest keywords in relation to this theme between 2010 and 2020 are memory (399), experience (194), diversity (133), and witnessing (100). Past humans' experiences are placed in relation to the individual's embodied sentiments and reactions to their (others') life conditions. In this way of reasoning, history is not just about encountering the past objectively but is also about taking into account present people's experiences of the sufferings, traumas, and horrors of past life. This approach to moral consciousness directs attention to witnessing and memory as an existential feature capable of awakening strong feelings in need of being addressed and problematized. Several of the articles stress the importance of paying regard and being sensitive to radical uniqueness, both as an embodied phenomenon and between people in the present and past (see Table 5).

Discussion
There appears to be a general agreement that historical consciousness is accompanied by a moral dimension when approaching history, as it emphasizes the importance of taking into account the human condition when learning and researching about the past. The recognition of the concept's importance was boosted by the horrors of the Holocaust (see for instance, Gadamer, 1975/Gadamer, 2006Rüsen, 2011). This is important to acknowledge at a time when the spirit of the past seems to haunt contemporary societies through, for example, rising hatred and/or fear of foreigners, political populism, and narrow nationalism (Rydgren, 2018).
History education is mainly approached within the framework of first and second-order concepts, but there is interest among educational historians to add a third category of order concepts, to more systematically interpret moral issues, since concepts related to morality often occur in history education, but are scientifically unexplored (Ludvigsson, 2015, p. 23). First-order concepts are content and time specific, while second-order concepts are general methodologies that are needed to manage the historical content in a scientific and critical manner. Simultaneously, there is a tendency to add meaning-making dimensions to second-order concepts (Kainulainen et al., 2019), which means that they do not gain their appropriate space or retain their analytical sharpness. Indeed, whereas the first-and second-order concepts are vital, they are insufficient to handle the value and human dimension in history education. These dimensions require concepts outside (but in relation to) the first-and second-order concepts, referred to here as third-order concepts (Jarhall, 2020, pp. 390-396, see also Christensen Spanget, 2013. Third-order concepts are thus necessary to highlight, in order to understand the notion of morality within history education and to stimulate critical citizens (cf. Christensen Spanget, 2013).
Third-order concepts are a relatively new term in history education. Drawing on previous research (Christensen Spanget, 2013;Jarhall, 2020;Ludvigsson, 2015), we maintain that third-order concepts are indispensable for processing moral and value issues in history education. Following the hermeneutic stance in relation to history education, meaning-making can only be reached through language use, where the ambition is to broaden and deepen (factual) understanding in a continuous dialogue (cf. Grever & Adriaansen, 2019). However, this does not mean that all perspectives rendered meaningful through language are equally good, efficient, or simply useful to attain specific purposes (cf. Bernstein, 1983). On the contrary, what a palette of different perspectives of third-order concepts shows is that there are various moral purposes tied to teaching and learning history and it is important to critically discuss their meaning, and which are accentuated or omitted in the daily practice of teaching and learning. Certainly, simply using words does not necessary mean that they gain significance in action, but at the same time, words are fundamental for meaning-making and describing-not the least-what takes place in practice. Accordingly, drawing on research on teacher judgment (Schön, 1983) and history didaktik we argue that a variety of concepts are vital in order to structure meaning-making and stimulate nuanced reflections (Jarhall, 2020;Spanget Christensen, 2013). Concepts enable a precision where the exact focus is on education (naming), and at the same time help individuals to detect directions and limits for action (framing) (Schön, 1983).
This study provides a road map of third-order concepts aiming to support teachers', teacher students' and educational researchers' negotiations in relation to various moral purposes, selection of subject content, and directions for action in education with the help of research related to history education. The ambition is not to make any suggestions for how people ought to behave morally based on keywords used since 1980s, but to widen their horizons and thus provide a more nuanced base for moral deliberations. To systematically interpret educational policy, design education, and educational practice in general, educators need to have a conceptual toolbox where a range of different plausible perspectives are presented to stimulate reflection (cf. Kainulainen et al., 2019;Ling, 2014).
While morality is knotted into the fibres of historical consciousness and many publications refer to moral issues when analysing and discussing the relationship between past, present, and future, research that provides a map of how morality is approached more specifically in relation to historical consciousness is scarce. Contrary to some approaches to history, where the past is regarded as detached from the present and human interference historical consciousness brings with it a distinctively human dimension.
The five, at times interrelated, themes found in the material-cosmopolitanism, democracy, emancipation, character building, and existential struggles-all come with different frames and content of moral consciousness and also how to approach the past in relation to the present and future in history education. This can in the future be used as an analytical tool to study, for instance, young people's moral reasoning in history education. We know today, for example, that it is mainly existential approaches to morality that engage students, which does not necessarily mean that they stop working with factual knowledge . Chinnery (2014) highlights four strands of historical consciousness, namely the existential strand that takes interest in how people reflect on themselves when encountering history, the cognitive (knowledge-based) strand that argues that moral character building takes form through (rational) knowledge about the past, a narrative strand that involves stimulating a moral awareness through interpreting and using narratives from the past to guide the present, and a caring strand that aims at developing caring relationship (ibid). These strands have been developed further by  where four purposes of ethics in research about historical consciousness are explored more indepth, finding links to Piaget's developmental ethics (Rüsen, 2004a), virtue ethics (cf. Seixas & Morton, 2012), care ethics (Chinnery, 2013), and ethics of alterity (Simon, 2014).
The themes found in this study can partly be tied to these overall stances. What we refer to as existential struggles have similarities to the existential stance or the ethics of alterity and identitybuilding to various forms of developmental ethics (Piaget, virtues, care) often dominated by a cognitive tradition of historical consciousness (Grever & Adriaansen, 2019).
As a supplement to previous research this investigation adds three other purposes of how to make meaning out of morality in history education, namely cosmopolitanism, democracy, and emancipation. Consequently, besides the strong link to individual character building and existentially working through strong emotions for the sake of others a global, social, and group perspective is added in relation to topics that raise questions of what is good and bad, right and wrong.
Although the gathering of keywords (third-order concepts) does not provide a deep understanding of moral consciousness they offer a unique overview of morally loaded concepts that can help add nuance to meaning-making and enabling a more elaborate base for moral deliberations in history education today (cf. Gadamer, 1975/Gadamer, 2006Grever & Adriaansen, 2019). The study shows that number of articles on this topic has increased significantly between 1980 and 2020, making it possible to argue that the increase of morally loaded words is a natural consequence of this phenomenon. Concurrently, it is interesting to notice how the focus of words shifts over time and how some terms, like democracy, critical thinking, civic rights, culture, empathy, morality, and power become more dominant than others, for instance, xenophobia and discrimination. Moreover, the word past comes to dominate over the term present and by far over terms like future. The consequences of and reasons for these tendencies would be interesting to investigate more thoroughly in the future.