Vol. 15 (2014) by Encounters on Education
Over the past two decades, there have been significant developments in the field of cultural lear... more Over the past two decades, there have been significant developments in the field of cultural learning. In museums, galleries, archives, and in myriad informal educational activities, children and adults have been encouraged to identify, explore, and celebrate their heritages in an attempt to combat social exclusion and promote individual and collective well-being. This paper argues that projects for cultural learning are important educational interventions, but their operation and outcomes are matters that require further research. In particular, cultural learning offers opportunities for historians of education to critically engage with important topics around history, memory, and identity. Yet, this critical engagement will also require reconsidering and refining the theoretical models currently popular in the history of education.
Throughout the second half of the twentieth century -from the years of the Fordist welfare state ... more Throughout the second half of the twentieth century -from the years of the Fordist welfare state to those of the post-Fordist neo-liberal order -educational systems in the West have fostered ambitious schemes promoting wide-ranging 'progressive change.' Equally ambitious Marxist critiques have targeted education's regulatory role within the capitalist system. In the early twenty-first century, as privatization and the radical subordination of educational aims and objectives to the demands of capital ('neo-liberalism') become unavoidable topics of educational debate, resistance to such neoliberal projects demands a rigorous reconnaissance of the achievements and limitations of radical educational thought. After canvassing major critics of mainstream schooling inside North America and beyond, we suggest that a radical retrieval of the insights of C. B. Macpherson and especially Antonio Gramsci can move us far beyond both reductionist Marxism and unreflective liberalism. We take a third position -embodying an individualist and collective pedagogy -in which the much-maligned 'liberal arts' stand against 'possessive individualist' education reform.
Researchers faced with large, routinely-generated record systems may think themselves compelled t... more Researchers faced with large, routinely-generated record systems may think themselves compelled to choose between accepting their empirical materials as given in order to pursue research questions, or closely examining the provenance of their materials. I argue that researchers can employ a reflexive historical method that allows us to both address research questions with evidence, as well as to examine how the provenance of our sources shapes our research practice.
By the example of school reformer and education scholar Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827) al... more By the example of school reformer and education scholar Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746-1827) along with editions of his writings and correspondence, this article examines the relationship between sources, research traditions, historiography, and the production of editions. What emerges is that those sources that have been turned into editions for use by researchers exercise a significant influence on the issues researchers explore and on historiography, while the kind of historiography dominant at any given moment has always privileged a particular kind of edition. In light of two examples, this paper elaborates on the problems this creates for historiography after the linguistic turn and how these can be minimized -in significant part by tapping the potential of digital editing.
Quentin Skinner's work is central to Intellectual History. This article reviews his methodologica... more Quentin Skinner's work is central to Intellectual History. This article reviews his methodological critiques and exegetical recommendations as they can be of interest for historians of education, educational comparatists, and analysts of educational policies. The article analyzes Skinner's proposals against alternative methodologies. Firstly, it explores the criticisms he makes to traditional forms of the History of Ideas. These criticisms attack, in an original way, well known fallacies that are also common in History of Education. Secondly, the article explores his constructive proposals based in linguistic philosophy. The article introduces Skinner's idea of "meaning," which focuses on the intention of the author in issuing or writing the utterance or text. This intention can be worked out by considering the linguistic-rhetoric context of the work. The focus on intentions and contexts, which puts at the center of the exegesis what was considered a fallacy among positivist historians, implies a change in the conception of History of Education and in its relation to Philosophy of Education. The article sketches, as a way of conclusion, some implications of these constructive proposals for the work of comparatists, historians and philosophers of education.
This paper examines changing relations between education and psychological knowledge about childr... more This paper examines changing relations between education and psychological knowledge about children. I discuss some of the ways in which relations between education and psychology have been approached in historical research in education, ranging from social history to genealogical approaches, influenced Michel Foucault. Rather than viewing these approaches as mutually exclusive, I suggest that they can enrich each other. I illustrate this argument by tracing how two kinds of psychology -mental measurement and child study -constructed the child as object in the practice of psychologists working at the University of Toronto in the first half of the twentieth century.
This discussion will attempt to elucidate the various employments of the term 'modernity' in hist... more This discussion will attempt to elucidate the various employments of the term 'modernity' in historical scholarship. I argue, following Dipesh Chakrabarty's article "The Muddle of Modernity," that the use of the term modernity privileges those societies of the industrialized West. This focus on the modern privileges modernity as an era at the apex of societal development in those time periods where industrialization occurred. Through the course of this discussion, I also argue that this periodization encompasses an idealized modernity which was conceived as the pinnacle of human society. In this view, all other societies and time periods were in the process of mirroring the modernized society. The sources for this paper are various surveys of national history, ranging from the developed European nations, such as France and England, to the so-called 'developing' nations, such as South Africa and Pakistan. These monographs, despite their variety in content, share their focus of the state's attempt to develop and/or to maintain political institutions, as well as to acquire, to a varying degree, industrial capital. These focuses lend themselves to a somewhat 'Whiggish' perspective on history in which 'progress' ever increases through time toward the present day.
¿Cuál es la potencia de la Historia Conceptual para la historiografía educativa? El neologismo "p... more ¿Cuál es la potencia de la Historia Conceptual para la historiografía educativa? El neologismo "pedagogía" fue acuñado en tiempos de secularización y aceleración característicos de la Modernidad (1750-1850) para referirse a un saber mesiánico-salvífico que había de contribuir a la precipitación del fin de la historia y la llegada de la edad del espíritu (Geist) que sustituía al Juicio Final. Así, la Historia de la Pedagogía se perfiló como una Historia de las Ideas al abrigo del idealismo (Hegel) y del historicismo (Dilthey). Con el paso del tiempo, el auge de la Historia Social produjo una pérdida de la importancia de lo inmaterial en la nueva disciplina que se llamaría Historia de la Educación. Ahora la Begriffsgeschichte (Koselleck) puede ayudar a hacer patente la relevancia del contexto intelectual (Skinner) en la historia de los fenómenos educativos. Alejándose del idealismo y del materialismo, una disciplina podría encargarse de reconstruir las condiciones de posibilidad discursivas y narrativas de las ideas y las prácticas
In dealing with the material side of educational institutions, and cultures of education and lear... more In dealing with the material side of educational institutions, and cultures of education and learning, research on the history of education offers new perspectives and research questions. Familiar sources are thus read anew or re-interpreted; new sources are tapped and even familiar categories and forms of thought are subjected to historical interrogation. A practice-theoretical perspective is concerned with linking the reconstruction and analysis of the devel-opment and evolution of 'pedagogical practices' and technologies. This includes their material conditions, as well as transformations of knowledge about growing up in a society, transfor-mations of 'pedagogical' types of thought and patterns of reflection, and the emergence of relevant institutions and organizations. In this context, no aspect is regarded as a linear conse-quence of another, neither are they treated as independent from each other. Yet the question remains open: What exactly does practice-theoretically oriented or practice-based research on the history of education actually do? And how can a perspective on practices reveal some-thing new in the history of education?
Vol. 14 (2013) by Encounters on Education
Given the global scope of migration, this paper explores the re-emerging concept of cosmopolitani... more Given the global scope of migration, this paper explores the re-emerging concept of cosmopolitanism for its theoretical possibilities with respect to the process of integrating into an officially multicultural country. Nine possible positionings are tentatively identified and explored, starting from global variability, global interconnectedness, and global intercommunication. The resulting theorization provides support for a cosmopolitan approach for greater understanding of the realities of multiculturalism, thus signaling the need for a renewal of this policy.
Educators the world over struggle with contemporary conditions that militate against their vocati... more Educators the world over struggle with contemporary conditions that militate against their vocation. Endless top-down accountability measures, rapid economic turns and inequality in supportive resources, a torrent of consumerist media stimuli that distract educational focus, and other forces require educators to work that much harder to sustain serious educational values. In this article, I put forward a cultural and ethical vision of cosmopolitanism as an orientation that can help educators in their work. This vision pivots around teachers and students learning to fuse reflective openness to new people, ideas, values, and practices with reflective loyalty to local commitments and ways of life. This orientation mirrors how the school can become a cosmopolitan canopy. The school can become a place in which all participants develop ethical strength and perspective in order to respond thoughtfully and actively, rather than react passively, to today's pressures.
A cosmopolitan curriculum encourages students to grapple with the "problem of my life and flesh."... more A cosmopolitan curriculum encourages students to grapple with the "problem of my life and flesh." That "problem" is simultaneously autobiographical, historical, and biospheric. It is a problem to be studied as it is lived through and acted upon. What makes curriculum "cosmopolitan" is its subjective structuration, informed by and addressed to the historical moment, within which subjectivity occurs and takes social form. Cosmopolitan curriculum may claim disciplinary and/or interdisciplinary associations; its educational significance is its provision of passages between the past and present.
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Vol. 15 (2014) by Encounters on Education
Vol. 14 (2013) by Encounters on Education