Uchronia in schools: national perspectives and practices in Belgium.

Belgium

ELAN

Nadège Lefort

28/02/2026

Belgium doesn’t have one single national school system: it has three, one for each language community: Dutch-speaking Flanders, French-speaking Wallonia (which also covers the small German-speaking community), and Brussels, where families can choose between the two. Each community runs its own schools, sets its own curricula, and handles its own reforms.

Children must stay in school from age 5 to 18. Schooling is split into three main stages: primary (ages 5–12), secondary (12–18), and higher education. At secondary level, students can follow one of four tracks: general academic, technical, vocational, or arts-focused.

After secondary school, higher education is offered at universities and colleges (hautes écoles or hogescholen), following the standard European bachelor–master structure. Public schools are most common, but private and faith-based schools are widespread too.

Critical thinking and creativity

Critical thinking is a central educational goal across both Belgian communities. In Flanders, more than 60% of teachers considered a few years ago that promoting students’ critical and independent thinking was the most crucial objective of civic and citizenship education, and Flemish teachers feel better prepared than their international colleagues in helping students develop these skills (Sampermans et al., 2017). In Wallonia, critical thinking is equally central and is formally assessed within the curriculum. Nonetheless, many teachers still find it difficult to translate general principles of critical thinking into concrete classroom activities and materials (Wilke, Depaepe & Van Nieuwenhuyse, 2023).

When it comes to creativity, Belgian students perform above the OECD average in PISA 2022 (35 points vs. 33), which is a notable result given their relatively low reading scores. However, there is a clear gap between what students can do and what schools actively teach: Belgian students report fewer opportunities for creative work in class than their peers in other countries, and school principals confirm that creative activities are offered less frequently than in many other OECD systems (OECD, 2024). Students therefore seem to develop creative skills despite their schooling rather than thanks to it. There is also a significant equity concern: Belgium’s gap in creative thinking between advantaged and disadvantaged students (49.6 percentage points) exceeds the EU average of 42.7 points, meaning the country’s overall strength in this area does not reach everyone equally (OECD, 2024).

Social and emotional learning (SEL)

Social skills are not formally tested or centrally coordinated in Belgium. Schools choose their own tools and approaches, which means practice varies a lot from one school to the next. There’s no national framework that defines what social skills are or how they should be taught and measured. The approach to social skills is not absent from the curricula, but it is more a transversal one.

Really bringing SEL into the curriculum is hard in practice though. Academic priorities tend to take over, and the question of who is responsible (the schools, the teachers, the state, parents) often remains unanswered.

Inclusion

Numbers from 2018 showed that, with around 6% of pupils in special education, Belgium had the highest proportion in the EU. The European Committee of Social Rights has also condemned Flanders (2017) and the French Community (2020) for failing to ensure truly inclusive education.

Flanders has attempted to reform its system through a series of laws and policy changes. The M-Decree (2014) gave more pupils with special educational needs the right to attend mainstream schools, and in 2023 it was replaced by the Decreet Leersteun, which introduced a new support model aimed at helping teachers and schools respond to these needs within everyday classroom settings. Despite these efforts, the share of pupils with special needs educated in separate schools remains among the highest in the OECD, and this placement often affects students from disadvantaged or migrant backgrounds.

Progress in Wallonia has been even slower. In both communities, however, the core challenge remains similar: there is often a gap between the political calls for ‘inclusion for all’ and the actual resources made available to teaching staff. A lack of resources & training, the diversity of pupils’ backgrounds, administrative complexity and institutional fragmentation appear to be major obstacles to truly equitable inclusion.

Wallonia & Brussels: Reform “Le Pacte pour un Enseignement d’Excellence” (2015–2030)

The “Pacte” is the biggest education reform in the French-speaking community in decades. Its goal is to make schools both better and fairer. A central feature is the Tronc Commun, a shared curriculum for all students from primary through to the 3rd year of secondary (ages 6–15). The reform is being rolled out year by year, reaching the 3rd year of secondary by 2028. Upper secondary (years 4–6) still follows older 1999 frameworks for now but this might change in the coming years.

Interesting elements within this reform:

• The FHGES domain: History, geography, economics, and social studies are no longer taught as separate subjects in the “Tronc commun”. They are grouped into a single domain called FHGES (Formation Historique, Géographique, Économique et Sociale), where students learn to think like historians and citizens rather than simply memorise facts. This is what they call the “démarche historienne”. The idea is to follow an inquiry-based approach focused on how historians work: questioning sources, building interpretations, and understanding how accounts of the past are constructed. Students develop two key capacities: organising and understanding time, and thinking critically about historical narratives.
• French language: Secondary French lessons are organised around learning units (“Unités d’Acquis d’Apprentissage” or UAA). The use of uchrony could fit into two of them: UAA 1 (researching and gathering information) and UAA 5 (engaging creatively with a cultural work through reinterpretation or transposition).
• Philosophy and Citizenship Education: “A number of attitudes, although not explicitly mentioned in the reference framework, are reflected in the (aimed) skills. These include adopting a critical stance, taking a step back, showing empathy, expressing surprise, etc. The aim is to enable students to take the lead in their own learning by starting with situations that encourage them to engage in individual and collective research”. (Référentiel d’éducation à la philosophie et à la citoyenneté).”Opening yourself to others” and “develop complex and critical thinking” are also mentioned as cross-disciplinary goals. 

Flanders

Reform 1: Primary school curriculum reform (from September 2025)

A new primary school curriculum is being progressively rolled out in Flanders from September 2025. It dedicates half of teaching time to Dutch and mathematics, while also giving more space to STEM subjects, personal development, and social skills. 

Reform 2: Secondary history education reform (2018)

At secondary level, a 2018 reform placed historical thinking at the heart of history education. Historical thinking is defined as the combination of knowing history (acquiring substantive knowledge about the past) and doing history (applying the methods and reasoning processes of professional historians).Rather than learning a single national story, students are now expected to understand historical context, critically examine sources, build evidence-based arguments, and reflect on how history is told and retold. History is taught as a subject on its own right in Flanders.

In the meantime, some research shows that history teachers in Flanders already paid attention in their classes to the constructed nature of history before, even though the history standard did not request it before this reform (Van Nieuwenhuyse et al., 2016). It was also combined with a strong focus on critical thinking skills.

Because education in Belgium is split across three language communities, there is no single national definition of ‘social skills’. Each community has developed its own approach to it. The WHO framework and definition of psychosocial competencies is sometimes used as an international reference point in Belgium. 

In Wallonia and Brussels, social skills aren’t officially defined in any decree or core curriculum document. Instead, competencies related to social interaction, emotional development, and citizenship are woven into the “core competency frameworks”, rather than treated as their own category.

In Flanders, the curriculum includes what is called ‘social-relational competences’. This covers building and maintaining relationships with parents, peers, and others, understanding others’ perspectives, respecting boundaries, and managing issues like bullying. That said, even here, this isn’t framed as a single statutory definition of ‘social skills’.

In short: social skills are recognised and valued across Belgium, but they are embedded within broader developmental and civic goals rather than treated as a clearly defined, measurable subject area.

In Flanders, social competencies are part of the ‘human and society’ learning area and are organised around three connected dimensions:

• knowing yourself and feeling confident (me and myself)
• building good relationships (me and others)
• understanding how groups and society work (me and others in a group)

These are translated into concrete learning goals and classroom activities through official curriculum documents.

In the French-speaking community, we can distinguish the framework for very young kids and the framework for older kids. In the Initial Skills Reference Framework (for children under 6), one of the goals mentioned is “Social Autonomy” which includes: cooperate, recognize the other, listen to the others, respect the other, express preferences.  

Social skills don’t appear as one of the seven main areas of the Tronc Commun (the common core curriculum) for older kids. Nonetheless, they show up as cross-cutting goals across subjects, especially through citizenship education, personal development, and collaborative learning. 

Across all three communities, the picture is similar: social skills are embedded in how schools approach learning more broadly, through collaboration, communication, self-awareness, and active citizenship. Teachers and schools then put this into practice in their own way.

Even if teaching social and emotional skills in Belgian schools is recognised as important, the lack of a clear national framework makes it uneven. Unlike core academic subjects, social skills aren’t really built into the system in a structured way (a bit more in Flanders than in Wallonia though). What schools do in this area depends a lot on individual teachers or school culture. Some use supplementary materials (like Breingeheimen lessons on social skills), but these are extras rather than a shared foundation, which creates real inequality between schools. Overall, soft skills are also less often certified than more easily identifiable skills.

The equity gap also matters here. Research shows that children from disadvantaged backgrounds tend to have weaker social and emotional skills on average, and this gap appears at every age. Weaker SEL skills are then linked to poorer mental health and lower academic results. 

Finding official Belgian reports specifically on social skills in schools is difficult. Most available research and policy attention focuses on bullying (through initiatives like the new “Observatoire du climat scolaire” in Wallonia) rather than on the proactive, structural development of social and emotional competencies. When broader research does exist, it mostly covers primary school, leaving secondary education largely unmapped.

In Belgium, and even more especially in Flanders, history education already avoids teaching a single fixed national story. Instead, students are encouraged to look at multiple perspectives and to question how historical narratives are built. This reflects Belgium’s broader cultural reality, where different (and sometimes conflicting) versions of national history coexist. Researchers consider this quite unusual in a European context.

References of storytelling as a teaching method can mostly be found in relation to primary schools (as a tool to teach how to read and write) and as a topic for teachers’ trainings. 

As for uchronia (counterfactual history), explicit examples in Belgian education are very hard to find. One of the only clear mentions of uchronia that was found was ULB’s recommendation of AlterHis, a counterfactual history video channel, as a classroom resource. Some teachers also admitted having explored uchronia in their lessons, but more as a literary genre or as a way to teach a language more than as a tool to reflect about the past and dominant narratives. Overall, the scarcity of examples in academic research, teaching materials, or teacher testimonials is itself a significant finding.

When interviewing a representative of the Mundaneum in Mons (a museum that has organised several events and activities around utopia and dystopia, including programs for children), it was also emphasized that museums tend to be reluctant to use uchronia in their exhibitions. The main concern is that the boundary between imagination and historical reality can become blurred. While the use of uchronia is not totally ruled out, it would require a very clear and carefully defined framework to ensure that visitors can clearly distinguish speculative elements from documented history.

Finally, the examples mentioned below show that international projects often focus on gigital storytelling as a tool to develop social and civic skills. 

All projects mentioned here are Erasmus+ projects involving Belgium as partner: 

In 2021, an Erasmus+ international course called ‘Applied Storytelling: a Multifunctional Didactic Tool in the Classroom’ was organized in Alden Biesen castle in Bilzen (Flanders). The course was about “how to use oral storytelling and storytelling techniques in formal and non-formal adult learning”, and it was offering a very similar vision of the power of narratives and storytelling as the one we defend in Reframe the Story: “Storytelling and narrative teaching approaches are known to help improve verbal and communication skills in the mother tongue and/or in a foreign language. It also impacts imagination, creativity, social and civic
competences, values, intercultural understanding, cultural awareness and expression. But specifically for adult education, introducing storytelling techniques offers a set of tools for inclusion.”

The Erasmus+ DIGHIST (Digital Historytelling) project explored narrative and digital storytelling for teaching 20th-century history and civic education. Co-organised by the BELvue Museum (King Baudouin Foundation, Belgium), it produced ready-to-use digital resources (interactive timelines, games, and lesson plans) covering topics like the Cold War, totalitarianism, and colonial history. Teachers were also trained to create their own digital narratives. 

The BRIGHTS Project (Boosting Global Citizenship Education using Digital Storytelling) is an Erasmus+ project that aims at training teachers and youth workers in the use of digital storytelling as a tool for global citizenship education. Through a MOOC and hands-on workshops, participants develop competences in social and civic engagement, intercultural dialogue, critical thinking, and media literacy. 

Several features of the Belgian education context make it adapted to uchronia as a teaching approach.

1. Belgium’s lack of a dominant national narrative creates natural openness to counterfactual thinking. Students are already used to questioning historical representations, so uchronia feels like a natural next step rather than something completely unfamiliar.
2. Het land dat nooit was (2014) is an academic resource that presents Belgian counterfactual history. This book, edited by Belgian historians Van Ginderachter, Aerts, and Vrints, explores eleven alternative scenarios for Belgian history, asking „what if?” questions about key moments since 1830. It is described as the first academically rigorous counterfactual history of Belgium, and could serve as a ready-made resource for classroom use (or for our inspiration), though no evidence of its actual use in schools was found.
3. Flanders’ 2018 curriculum reform introduced historical thinking as a central goal (and in Wallonia, they talk about the “démarche historienne”), including reasoning about cause and effect, understanding context, and looking at events from multiple angles. These are exactly the skills uchronia can develop. This suggests a real alignment between uchronia’s educational potential and existing Belgian curriculum goals.
4. The decolonisation of history education is also a big topic in Belgium. Some studies showed historical thinking (hence probably uchronia too) could help with this, but it is still a very demanding approach for teachers, as they need to really understand several cultures.

Huijgen, T. et al. (2021). “Towards bad history? A call for the use of counterfactual historical reasoning in history education.”

This article makes the case for Counterfactual Historical Reasoning (CHR) as a legitimate teaching tool. While CHR is sometimes dismissed as too speculative, the authors argue it has real educational value: by imagining alternative historical scenarios, students are pushed to think more deeply about cause and effect, context, and historical significance. CHR also challenges students to see that historical outcomes weren’t inevitable: they depended on human choices. The key condition is that the alternative scenarios remain historically plausible and methodologically rigorous.

Wilke, T., Depaepe, F., & Van Nieuwenhuyse, K. (2023). The national past according to Flemish secondary school history teachers: Representations of Belgian history. Journal of Social Science Education, 22(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.11588/jsse.2023.1.98765

This article describes the design and testing of a 12–14 hour lesson series on decolonisation after 1945, developed for 12th-grade students in Flanders as part of the 2018 curriculum reform. Students were asked to critically analyse a range of historical sources through inquiry-based tasks, with their teacher providing guidance and support. The materials were tested with 24 teachers and over 1,100 students. Results showed real improvements in historical inquiry skills. However, the results also revealed that fostering historical thinking in regular classroom practice is complex. Students’ progress varied a lot between individuals and schools. The lesson series also required quite a lot of guidance and time, which made it difficult to implement in practice on a regular basis.

The authors also note that many teachers find it difficult to translate general principles of historical thinking into concrete classroom activities and materials. As teachers in Flanders have quite some curricular freedom, teaching practices vary widely. As a result, despite the curriculum reform that promotes historical thinking, this type of inquiry-based approach is still not consistently integrated into everyday teaching.

Vermeulen, M. (2023). Fairy tales as a teaching and reflection tool in Flemish secondary education: Workshops on stereotypes and alternative narratives

This master’s dissertation looks at how fairy tales can be used as a teaching and reflection tool in Flemish secondary schools. Two workshops run at a high school in Ostend showed enthusiasm and real critical engagement from the students. They analysed the stereotypes embedded in classic tales and created alternative versions. The study aligns well with Flanders’ updated curriculum around citizenship, cultural awareness, and historical thinking. It calls for more research into storytelling in Flemish schools and underlines the risk that can reinforce an „us vs. them” dynamic, making diversity of sources essential.

Research shows that storytelling and immersive narratives do far more than entertain. They are powerful tools for cognitive and social development. Reading fiction, for instance, works like a kind of ‘social simulation’: it lets people safely explore complex social situations, step into other people’s shoes, and experience different emotions. This can lead to greater empathy, less prejudice, and a stronger sense of shared identity.

In early childhood, storytelling has been shown to improve empathy, self-awareness, and critical thinking. Children often pick up on how relatable characters handle conflicts and social situations, and mimic those behaviours in their own play. Techniques like voice tone and body language also deepen emotional engagement.

Research by Brunetti et al. (2024) offers concrete evidence for narrative immersion in education. Drawing on established learning theories, the study shows that when students are placed at the centre of an interactive story, as active participants rather than passive listeners, their motivation, critical thinking, creativity, and social skills improve significantly. The approach encourages collaboration, empathy, and perspective-taking, as students must interpret characters’ intentions, negotiate with peers, and co-create solutions within the story.

A study on narrative immersion (IJAMRED 2025) further supports these findings, underlining how engagement with story-driven content helps students navigate social realities, including perspective-taking, empathy, and building social understanding.

In Belgium, these insights are already being applied in professional development and training contexts. But their use in formal secondary education remains limited and mostly undocumented.

National and International references 

On the topic mentioned in the previous question:

Brunetti, R., Ferrante, S., Avella, A. M., Indraccolo, A., & Del Gatto, C. (2024). Turning stories into learning journeys: The principles and methods of immersive education. Frontiers in Psychology, 15, 1471459. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2024.1471459

Isiani, U. E., Sopekan, S. O., & Manuel, M. N. (2024). Effect of narrative-based teaching methods on pupils’ acquisition of critical thinking skills in Lagos State, Nigeria. Nigerian Online Journal of Educational Sciences and Technology, 6(2), 86–101.

International Journal of Academic Multidisciplinary Research in Education and Development. (2025). Navigating from textual realm to social realities: Narrative immersion as a catalyst for social cognitive change. IJAMRED.

Mohd Amin, A. Y., Ahmad, A., & Hashim, H. (2024). Exploring the role of storyline, characters, and interactive storytelling techniques in fostering socio-emotional learning in early childhood education. Jurnal Pendidikan Awal Kanak-Kanak Kebangsaan, 13(2), 58–67. https://doi.org/10.37134/jpak.vol13.2.6.2024

White, M., & Epston, D. (1990). Narrative means to therapeutic ends. W. W. Norton & Company.

On uchronia: 

Deluermoz, Q., & Singaravélou, P. (2016). Pour une histoire des possibles. Analyses contrefactuelles et futurs non advenus.

Singaravélou, Q., & Deluermoz, P. – “Et si… ? Introduction à l’histoire contrefactuelle et à l’étude des possibles du passé.”

Jablonka, I. (2014). L’Histoire est une littérature contemporaine.

Labyrinthe dossier – “Contrefactuels en histoire : du mot au mode d’emploi. Le moment de l’histoire contrefactuelle.”

Several Belgian initiatives create a direct bridge between social skills like empathy, respect for diversity or civic responsibility and more inclusive school environments.

Flemish Community

In Flanders, citizenship education is embedded as a cross-curricular theme in secondary education, with objectives covering a positive attitude towards diversity in gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. Schools also benefit from structured anti-bullying programmes. 

In terms of classroom resources, ‘Building Bridges’, launched by Caritas International Belgium and Sankaa, gives secondary teachers activities on identity, prejudice, and racism, drawing on migrant experiences to build more inclusive classrooms.

These approaches are supported by structural policies, including the GOK Decree, the Decreet Leersteun (2023), and reception education (OKAN), which together ensure that schools have the resources to support diverse learner needs.

French Community (Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles)

In the French-speaking Community, social skills education is closely linked to citizenship and intercultural awareness.

Formal learning: Since 2015, citizenship education has been a stand-alone subject in the official curriculum, with objectives that include “preparing each pupil to become a responsible citizen capable of contributing to a democratic, pluralist society showing solidarity and receptive to different cultures”. Two other main goals are to “promote self-confidence and self-development of each pupil” and to “ensure for every pupil equal chances for social emancipation”. The „Pact for Excellence in Education” further pursued these aims by focusing on the development of the individual capacities of each child with respect for difference and disability, and by establishing reasonable accommodations to support inclusion in schools.

Non-formal and informal learning: Beyond the classroom, the Minister of Youth launched a dedicated call for projects supporting harmonious cohabitation (vivre ensemble). The main topics addressed are “youth education to citizenship”, “promotion of intercultural dialogue and racism prevention”, “protection and promotion of the rights of migrant persons, in particularly women’s rights”. Youth associations also contribute actively to this effort by developing projects aimed at fostering mutual understanding and acceptance across cultural differences.

Narrative approaches are rooted in everyday experience. They invite students to draw on their own lives, identities, and ways of making sense of the world, which makes them particularly valuable for students who may struggle in more traditional educational settings.

For migrant students, conventional learning can pose real challenges when instruction takes place in a language they don’t speak at home. Narrative approaches can help reduce this gap: rather than requiring strong academic language skills or formal literacy, they allow students to share knowledge and express themselves in more varied and personal ways. Research on digital storytelling with migrant learners shows how this approach enables students to communicate complex experiences, affirm their identities, and participate more fully in school life (Prasad & Lory, 2020). This matters especially in Belgium, where immigrant students face multiple challenges: language barriers, socioeconomic vulnerability, and a tracked secondary education system. In Flanders, research has documented how tracking tends to concentrate students from migrant and low-income backgrounds in lower-attaining educational tracks, limiting their access to higher qualifications and reducing their chances of social mobility (KVAB Thinkers Programme, 2023). Narrative tools, by reducing dependence on academic language and activating personal experience, can give these students a genuine entry point into critical thinking and collaborative learning.

Students with specific learning difficulties (SLD) also benefit from more flexible approaches to learning and assessment. Cognitive factors including working memory and processing speed can affect how students with SLD engage with traditional tasks (Kormos, 2022). Narrative-based learning is naturally inclusive in this regard: it does not rely solely on written language and therefore opens learning up to a wider range of students, not as a special accommodation, but simply because it is more responsive to different ways of expressing and sharing knowledge.

Opportunities (and added value of Uchronia for Belgium) 

• The 2018 Flemish curriculum reform is directly aligned with this project. Its focus on ‘doing’ history, developing critical thinking, and analysing historical sources creates a clear space for uchronia and the lack of practical teaching tools to support this reform is a gap that Reframe the Story can help fill.
• Social skills development is a recognised goal across Belgium, but the lack of shared tools and a common framework means practice varies hugely. Therefore, materials that support SEL in a structured way do respond to a need.
• Belgium’s lack of a dominant national narrative creates natural openness to questioning historical representations, which is the foundation of counterfactual and uchronic thinking. Both the Flemish curriculum and Wallonia’s démarche historienne already call for this kind of approach based on critical thinking.
• Belgium struggles with equity in education, so approaches that don’t rely on academic language and welcome different ways of expressing ideas carry real pedagogical and social interest. Co-created alternative narratives can draw in students often left behind with traditional methods.

• Critical thinking and structured social skills development appear more advanced in Flanders than in Wallonia. This may mean different levels of teacher readiness across communities, so materials should be adaptable to both contexts.
• Teachers generally lack training in SEL. The approach needs enough structure and support to be accessible, without assuming prior experience in this area.
• Storytelling in Belgium is mostly associated with young children and reading development. It is becoming more explored at secondary level, especially in Flanders, but uchronia remains largely unknown. Finding resources in academic literature, teaching materials, or teacher testimonials is genuinely difficult, so we can expect that the teachers will be quite unfamiliar to this approach.

Clear guidelines about group work. Group work carries inherent risks like off-task discussions and unequal participation. Clear guidelines and facilitation structures should be added to the activities from the start. 

Underline the different approaches to uchronia depending on the subject. The framework should clarify how uchronia can be used differently depending on the subject (history, literature, citizenship education…) since the approach and goals will vary. In the case of history for example, it will be particularly important to invite students to get a solid understanding of the historical situation at the point of divergence before imagining alternatives.

Make social skills development visible. Since social skills are a cross-cutting theme in Belgium, the framework should give teachers concrete tools to identify and name the skills being developed (so that this dimension is intentional, not accidental). 

Design for diverse learner profiles. Activities should offer multiple entry points (oral, visual, and written) so that all students can participate fully.

Maintain a clear boundary between fiction and history. In our research, we saw that one fear associated to uchronia was the risk of confusion between imagined scenarios and documented events. We should address this question in the pedagogical framework and think of explicit framing tools such as visual markers or structured prompts to help students and teachers navigate this boundary. 

Explore digital storytelling. Existing projects demonstrate the potential of digital tools for developing civic and social competences. The framework should consider how this dimension could be meaningfully integrated into the project’s activities.

Keep in mind that the use of uchronia can be “scary” or uncomfortable for teachers. Since uchronia is creativity-based, teachers can’t anticipate every alternative scenario students might come up with. Materials need to provide enough structure and background knowledge that teachers feel confident to use it in their classroom.