ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the rationale of activities offering history education outside of formal schools in Egypt, which were mostly established as non-governmental organizations or as independent initiatives after the 2011 Revolution. The authors study the learning methods of these initiatives and how they aim to influence learners’ understandings of themselves, their contexts, and the world. The main argument is that these activities are spaces for alternative history education, and thus, offer starting points toward developing participants’ critical consciousness. Since 2015, both authors have been personally involved in two of those initiatives. Thus, this research is based on participant observations of these two initiatives, and semi-structured interviews with founders of five others, conducted between April and June 2017. The authors explore the raison d’être of these activities, including their perceptions of history learning, as well as their pedagogical methods that aim to provide spaces for fostering a critical consciousness.
