Standing Working Groups (SWG) are small, thematically organized research groups within ISCHE, designed to coordinate research and discussion on a set topic, guided by specific research goals, for a set period of time. SWGs are automatically granted two parallel session slots on the programme of each ISCHE annual conference. Guidelines for the operations and establishment of Standing Working Groups are located in Section 7 of the ISCHE Byelaws.

Overview of Current Standing Working Groups

• Public Histories of Education
• Notre tout puissant Empire du milieu: histories of secondary education
• History of Knowledge in the History of Education
• Observatory for the History of Education

CURRENT STANDING WORKING GROUPS

Public Histories of Education (2023 – 2028)

Convenors: Gianfranco Bandini (Italy), Sjaak Braster (The Netherlands), Francisca Comas Rubí (Spain), Karin Priem (Luxembourg), Sian Roberts (United Kingdom)

Public Histories of Education – Annual Report 2023

Description and Main Objects: Although we have been talking about Public History for decades, we can now say today that it is a topic of great interest and topicality (Sevcenko, 2022; Noiret et al., 2022; Cauvin, 2022). In 1978, Robert Kelley linked Public History to the development – based on thematic knowledge – of research lines and specific studies linked to collective interests emerging from society rather than academia. In general, he made a connection between Public History and historians using the historical method outside academe (Kelley, 1978). Over the years, the concept of Public History has expanded, connecting with oral history, studies on collective memory and cultural heritage, or the so-called ‘history from below’ (Myers et al., 2018). In turn, not only was the choice of subjects to study reconsidered, but the entire process of historical reconstruction itself, aimed at being more participatory and collaborative thanks to cooperation between academic historians and society (Frisch, 1990; Noiret et al., 2022). Today, Public History seems to have ushered in an era of shared authority between academics, the public and community participation, making historical knowledge and narratives more inclusive and democratic (Facer et al., 2017; Ayers, 2018).

Historians of education have witnessed this evolution in Public History, although only in recent years have they included it on their own research agenda. Nonetheless, and looking back, we can see how educational historians who have been working for years with multiple audiences connected by an interest in history, memory and heritage, not only worked outside the academy and for the public, but did so in collaboration with these same audiences, sharing both the process and the final product with them.

Nowadays, there is a rapidly expanding interest in knowing how to produce a Public History of Education. Historiographical traditions developed in different contexts and countries to produce a history of education for and alongside the public are attempting to connect with the most topical trends in Public History. This is aided by the increasing digitisation of freely accessible resources on the web, providing information not only to educational historians but also to groups or individuals in general, in addition to the use of social media to connect audiences and share knowledge, memories and testimonies on issues with a shared common interest.

The dissemination of an increasingly pervasive mass media means scientific research results must be effectively communicated through television, radio, the web, and social networks. Nevertheless, very different communication techniques are now required in comparison to those used until now by traditional scientific communication. For this reason, we need to set a new paradigm of historical mediation in line with the model of Public Communication of Science and Technology (PCST). This model comprises high-quality scientific outreach that is able to transmit historical knowledge to a wider public, with a view to countering pseudo-scientific approaches to the past – a source of many misconceptions and trivialisation.

In recent years, those of us proposing this Standing Working Group (SWG) – in close collaboration with other researchers in our network – have actively participated in the Public History of Education field, and its national and international expansion.

The new book series Public History in European Perspective edited by Thomas Cauvin and Karin Priem (De Gruyter Oldenbourg); the inception of the ISCHE Education & Pandemics Archive (Priem et al., 2022); collaboration with community centres in the UK (Gauld et al., 2021); involvement with Public History initiatives in Italy (Bandini, 2017; Bandini, 2019, AIPH, 2020); establishing research into Public History in Spain (Comas et al., 2022); participation in exhibitions (Del Pozo, 2019); editing a volume about public histories of education (Herman et al., 2022), and writing manifestos (Bandini, 2019; Herman et al., 2022) all demonstrate our clear interest in studying and disseminating the Public History of Education.

Keywords: History of Education; Public History; Digital Public History; Historical Narratives; Open Science.

For additional information and to become involved, please contact the convenor: Francisca Comas Rubí (Spain)

Notre tout puissant Empire du milieu: histories of secondary education (2022 -2027)

Convenors: Luís Grosso Correia (Portugal), Felicitas Acosta (Argentina), Antonio Canales Serrano (Spain)

Histories of secondary education – Annual Report 2023
Histories of secondary education – Annual Report 2022

Description and Main Objectives: Palaestra, lyceum, cathedral grammar low school, collège, lycée, lycée polyvalent, institut, gymnasium, progymnasium, realschule, hautpschule, berufschule, grammar school, high school, modern school, comprehensive school, college, technical school, vocational school, secondary rural school, boarding school, liceo, instituto, bachillerato, colegio, liceu, escola técnica, escola média… These are all part of a wide range of expressions to designate the type of schooling that paved the historical evolution of secondary education, since Ancient Greece to the present day. Influenced by Plato and Isocrates, among many other philosophers, secondary education was conceived for many centuries as second-rate education behind university, with which it shared the same principles and values of knowledge, culture, and intervention in public life, central to the education of the male social elite. This conception of secondary education connected to the university model lasted with greater vitality until the early nineteenth century, despite some changes over time. For example, the late Middle Ages reshaped the ‘seven liberal arts’ (the ‘trivium’ of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic, and the ‘quadrivium’ of geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and music); from the sixteenth century onwards, ‘modern subjects’ (e.g., mathematics, natural sciences, vernacular languages) were integrated in this level of schooling by philosophers of the Renaissance Humanism and the Society of Jesus. This SWG intends to examine secondary education (or, according to Lucien Febvre, “notre tout puissant Empire du milieu”, 1939) in terms of specific historical contexts: its social and political mission, formative goals, curriculum organization, subjects taught, teaching methods, material structure and culture, teacher training, adolescence and youth supervision, among other issues. The topic demands attention for many reasons. In the first place, secondary education has been seen socially as “the survival of a conception of culture formulated when education was the right and possession of a few people” (Kandel, 1926, X), a situation that has completely changed. According to UNESCO, in 2020, the global enrolment rates surpassed 90% in primary education, 85% in lower secondary education, and 65% in upper-secondary education (UNESCO, 2021), whereas in the late 1950s, the same rates where about 21% in secondary education (UNESCO, 1963). These results show that there has been a clear decline in the share of out-of-school adolescents across the world over the past sixty years. Secondly, the utility of a curriculum or of intellectual training aimed almost entirely at middle-and upper-class adolescents has been questioned under the principles of democracy, equality, and education for all. Thirdly, bearing in mind the diversity of syllabi or educational tracks that were developed in Western countries from the mid-19th century onwards (see, for instance, the British tri-partite system of the mid-20th century), the relations established with new forms of social, economic, and labour organization require revision. Finally, given its intermediate 4 4 position, the connection with primary education output and higher education input derived from continuously increasing the years of compulsory education over the past century, has also changed secondary education into “basic” education. Moreover, the United Nations’ General Assembly declared quality secondary education for all at number 4 of its 2015 sustainable development goals (SDG4).

This SWG welcomes papers that address the following topics related to secondary education (including transversal approaches):

• Secondary education: what is in the name? – Historical circulation of discourses and practices connected to secondary education.
• Curriculum organization, tracks, teaching methods, assessment, and outcomes.
• Students, adolescence, and identity.
• Teachers, teacher education, and professional development.
• Social class, gender, ethnicity, equity, and empowerment.
• School types, facilities, and material culture.
• The role of secondary education in compulsory schooling and the relations with primary and higher education levels.
• Educational policies, international organizations and (comparative) perspectives related to secondary education.
• History of current issues regarding secondary education.

Keywords: History of education, secondary education, education policies, school tracks and institutions, teachers, curricula, students, adolescence, compulsory schooling, social justice, comparison, emancipation.

For additional information and to become involved, please contact the convenors: Luís Grosso Correia (Portugal), Felicitas Acosta (Argentina), Antonio Canales Serrano (Spain)

History of Knowledge in the History of Education (2022 – 2027)

Convenors: Jona Tomke Garz (Switzerland), Fanny Isensee, (Germany), Joakim Landahl (Sweden), Björn Lundberg (Sweden), Daniel Töpper (Germany)

History of Knowledge in the History of Education – Annual Report 2023
History of Knowledge in the History of Education – Annual Report 2022

Description and Main Objectives: Until recently the history of education was largely a history of ideas and not seldomly narrated as a ‘whig history’, leaving past practices and their inscribed knowledge(s) as well as non-traditional actors, actants, and knowledge on the margins of the academic discipline. Among the promising new(er) approaches broadening the scope of the history of education is the history of knowledge. A special issue of the Nordic Journal of Educational History (edited by Björn Lundberg, scheduled to be published in the fall of 2022) addresses the role of the emerging history of knowledge perspective for the history of education. Taking this further the proposed Standing Working Group (SWG) seeks to ask which new questions, specific methods and methodologies, theoretical insights and possible case studies could be added to the state of the art within the discipline. This includes exploring ways in which established theories, sources 4 0 and narrations can be questioned, revisited, and updated. Further, we suggest that histories of knowledge may work to broaden the scope of research on institutions, teaching and learning structures to include less formal arenas of education, actants of teaching and forms of instruction and knowledge outside of academia. In particular, our proposed Standing Working Group seeks to integrate new sources (e.g. Haasis & Rieske, 2015), new methodological approaches (e.g. Fenwick & Edwards, 2012; Füssel & Neu, 2021) and theories (e.g. Füssel 2019; Füssel et al., 2019; Östling et al., 2020; Sarasin, 2011) into the history of education. The SWG will work with newly highlighted sources (like pre-printed forms, exhibitions, data visualizations) as well as revisit already established types of sources (like statistical data (Lawn, 2014), personal files (Garz, 2022)), subaltern/precarious forms of knowledge (Caruso, forthcoming) and diverse topics that lend themselves to further exploration. Thereby, the SWG can add to a wider theoretical discussion on where history of knowledge, cultural and material histories of education, discourse history, history of ideas, history of science or learning differ and in turn clarify the specifics of all these perspectives (Daston, 2017; Heilbron, 2019; Joas et al., 2019). We want to ask and continuously work on the question “What does history of education have to offer for the history of knowledge and vice versa?” and specifically focus on knowledge practices (the emergence, usage, and distribution/circulation/transfer of educational and institutional knowledge) within and beyond academia. We further want to attempt to assemble methods and methodologies of history of knowledge, clarify underlying beliefs and popularize this approach in history of education research. What does it mean to write histories of knowledge and in which ways is this a specific approach/methodology? The Standing Working Group would like to initiate and invite debates and scholarly exchanges on different forms of educational knowledge, their production, dissemination, consumption, application and entanglements as well as the means of analyzing the knowledge(s) and their intersections. With this plan in mind, the proposed SWG could further allow to question established hierarchies and spaces of knowledge and education. Moreover, the SWG could as well be very valuable to the study of circulation or communication of knowledge in society by shifting the attention from scientific discovery or production of knowledge to arenas where knowledge is taught and used. Activities The convenors can rely on international and interdisciplinary scholarly expertise in the domain of history of knowledge. Aside from several publications in the field, they have successfully organized a number of activities at ISCHE conferences (such as presentations, pre-formed panels, and the Twitter conference #twISCHE42). In the future, we would like to organize one or two pre-conference workshop(s) on theoretical and methodological aspects of the approach and plan a publication based on the workshop(s). History of knowledge – understood as an approach interested in the role of knowledge in society and human life – also asks for means and ideas to spread and integrate knowledge from outside of academia. Thus, this involves questions on interconnections between academic, popular, activist, practical and other types of educational knowledge. Therefore, we suggest implementing third mission activities on Twitter and the usage of popular media such as podcasts (e.g. FreshEd, HistEdOnAir). If possible, we would also be interested in adding to ISCHE’s blog, aim for follow-up publications and attempt collections on articles and special issues on case studies within the framework of the perspective. Another possible outcome is to establish history of knowledge as a new methodological frame within history of education by inviting historians of science, media historians and book historians to our discussion. This in turn could foster new interdisciplinary cooperation, connecting ISCHE to a larger academic discourse, possibly even making it a core arena for research on histories of knowledge. This dialogue could be further enhanced by planning conferences that focus on the intersection between history of education and history of knowledge. Ultimately, the SWG would like to open up and discuss further avenues for histories of knowledge, advance the interest in this approach within ISCHE, raise awareness for known and unknown structures of knowledge, and connect ISCHE with other disciplinary discussions and actants as well as its own subaltern past and present.

For additional information and to become involved, please contact the convenors: Jona Tomke Garz (Switzerland), Fanny Isensee (Germany), Joakim Landahl (Sweden), Björn Lundberg (Sweden), Daniel Töpper (Germany)

Observatory for the History of Education (2019 – 2024):

Convenors: Thérèse Hamel (Canada), Lajos Somogyvári (Hungary), Marisa Bittar (Brazil)

Observatory for the History of Education SWG – Annual Report 2023
Observatory for the History of Education SWG – Annual Report 2022
Observatory for the History of Education SWG – Annual Report 2021
Observatory for the History of Education SWG – Annual Report 2019

Description and main objectives: The Standing Working Group “Observatory for the History of Education” is inspired by the idea of regarding ISCHE as a “site” from which an international community of historians is able to “observe” the scope of its work by seeking to obtain a more wide-ranging and in-depth knowledge. Since 2014, most of us have been involved with SWG “Mapping the History of Education”, which is devoted to “mapping” the trends of publications in academic reviews and the research outputs of doctoral theses, as well as discussing the question of “where” the History of Education should be institutionally located.

As the successors of “Mapping the HE”, which is being terminated in the 2019 Conference, our underlying objective is to strengthen the collaboration between researchers in every continent. The purpose of this is to give continuity to these studies in the belief that the History of Education as a specialist field, is of value to the whole community of ISCHE, regardless of what research area each of us is involved in. As well as studies of journals and the academic output of theses, we wish to draw particular attention to the teaching of the History of Education in teacher-training courses. What syllabus should be designed for its Curriculum ? To what extent can the internationalization of research be found in the teaching of the History of Education and in which countries? How far is there a dialectical exchange between national and international teaching standards in the History of Education?

The need for this inquiry can be explained by the fact that in empirical terms, we have noted a reduction in the workload that the discipline has experienced in several parts of the world, which has been a cause of concern for its role in teacher-training. Thus, in light of the growing complexity and internationalization of higher education, it seems to us that it is worth investigating to what extent this trend has led to the strengthening of the History of Education and the question of its permanence and degree of exposure in the Curriculum. In addition, we also intend to reflect on what forms the boundaries of the History of Education and its links with other areas of Education and the Human Sciences, at a time when the design of the humanities is being reshaped within universities. The community of ISCHE historians is provided with the necessary means to carry out studies of this nature, since the theoretical input and appropriate methodology of the “Clio workshop” are available, as well as the benchmarks for the assessment of Education and the Social Sciences.

For additional information and to become involved, please contact the convenors: Therese Hamel (Canada), Lajos Somogyvári (Hungary), Marisa Bittar (Brazil)

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ARCHIVES

Material Hermeneutics and Remediation as Challenges in Visual Studies in Histories of Education (2018-2023):

Convenors: Tim Allender (Australia), Inés Dussel (Mexico), Ian Grosvenor (United Kingdom), Karin Priem Luxembourg (Luxembourg)

The Visual Studies in Histories of Education SWG 2023 Annual and Final report is available here
The Visual Studies in Histories of Education SWG 2022 Annual report is available here
The Visual Studies in Histories of Education SWG 2021 Annual report is available here
The Visual Studies in Histories of Education SWG 2019 Annual report is available here
The Visual Studies in Histories of Education SWG 2018 Annual report is available here.

Description and main objectives: In 2000, Marc Depaepe and Bregt Henkens, in cooperation with James C. Albisetti, Jeroen J. H. Dekker, Marc D’hoker, Frank Simon, and Jo Tollebeek, edited a Paedagogica Historica Supplementary Series volume on The Challenge of the Visual in the History of Education (Ghent: CSHP, 2000) highlighting the importance of visual sources in the History of Education. Taking a then innovative approach, the vast majority of contributors to the volume “read” images as important elements in discursive fields within the different histories of education. Since then, several other publications have followed this lead. More recently, many studies in the history of education have situated themselves at the intersection of visual and material studies. In particular, research has focused on the fact that images themselves have a history, or social biography (e.g., Edwards 2004 and 2009). They are produced, circulated, and consumed in ways that could not always be predicted by those who made them. Images are included and inscribed in different contexts; they move from cameras, canvas, papers or walls to albums, plaques, museums, frames, boxes, walls, cards, books, journals, popular magazines, catalogues, pamphlets, screens, and almost any surface that can be imagined, including the screens that are deployed by digital and social media. The material and social history of photography suggests that images should be analyzed as social objects. This notably involves analyzing images from two interconnected research perspectives, focusing on both their material and social-relational qualities. Visual technologies as material practices imply an impetus for reproduction and dissemination where images assume a hermeneutic role that is based on their physicality and presentational forms (e.g., print size, cropping and enlarging, image configurations and orderings, combination of images and texts, paper and print quality, etc.). Contrary to much previous research on the visual, this research perspective looks at images as reproducible and mobile objects. This refers to the second, social-relational perspective where images are perceived as objects that never cease to reach out to audiences and gather a large variety of entangled relations and meanings over time. The material and social qualities of images are therefore inseparable; both refer to processes of meaning-making in chains of reproduction, remediation, and recontextualization, with images assuming active roles as connectors and communicators. Considering the social-material quality of images hence also raises questions about intermedial relations, the life and death of images, technologies of reproduction, hybrid media, and media and humans as collectives of meaning-making, also in the digital age. In addition, it raises questions about what has been inscribed, by whom, when, and where in the (digital) archive, and how a particular visual memory has been produced, defied, challenged, and transformed. The Standing Working Group would like to initiate and invite debates and scholarly exchanges on images and films as complex material and social objects in the history of education. This objective will be achieved by looking at images as objects to think with, by problematizing them as signs or traces of complex entanglements with both the past and the present. These interactions invite us to take more rigorous and complex approaches to studying them. To sum up, we would like to open up and discuss further avenues for visual inquiry, enhance interest in images within ISCHE, and raise awareness for what images allow us to think about the plural and complex worlds of educational practices.

For additional information and to become involved, please contact the convenors: Tim Allender (Australia), Inés Dussel (Mexico), Ian Grosvenor (United Kingdom), Karin Priem Luxembourg (Luxembourg)

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Gendering Local, National, Regional, Transnational and Supra-National Histories of Education (2018-2023):

Convenors: Nelleke Bakker (The Netherlands), Deirdre Raftery (Ireland), Stephanie Spencer (United Kingdom), Tali Tadmor-Shimony (Israel), Kay Whitehead (Australia).

The “Gendering Local, National, Regional, Transnational, and Supra-National Histories of Education” Annual Report 2023 and Final Report is available here
The “Gendering Local, National, Regional, Transnational and Supra-National Histories of Education” Annual Report 2022 is available here
The “Gendering Local, National, Regional, Transnational and Supra-National Histories of Education” Annual Report 2021 is available here
The “Gendering Local, National, Regional, Transnational and Supra-National Histories of Education” Annual Report 2019 is available here

Description and main objectives: Exploring the significance of gender in histories of education has been an ongoing project in ISCHE. In this new SWG, our primary goal is to articulate the significance of gender in relation to the dynamics of intersectionality in local, national, regional, transnational and supra-national historical research in education. Thus studies and conceptual approaches that investigate the relationships and entanglements between the different levels is an important dimension of our agenda. Likewise, within this approach to intersectionality the SWG is proposing to extend its remit to include research into ways in which masculinities as well as femininities interact with an array of cultural markers including race, class, age, religion and nationality. Given that educational networks are one of the oldest forms of global connectedness, we are interested in men and women educators whose lives and work crossed borders as well as networks of correspondence, and exchanges of material goods such as books and pedagogical materials. We include activism within groups and organisations whose work transcended national borders, for example, the United Nations. In that sense we are interested in connections between women educators and international feminist networks and their intersections with men who engaged in international feminist networks.

For additional information and to become involved, please contact the convenors: Nelleke Bakker (The Netherlands), Deirdre Raftery (Ireland), Stephanie Spencer (United Kingdom), Tali Tadmor-Shimony (Israel), Kay Whitehead (Australia)

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The History of Educational Funding: Models, Debates and Policies in an International Perspective (1800-2000) (2018-2023):

Convenors: Clémence Cardon-Quint (University of Bordeaux), Damiano Matasci (University of Lausanne), Johannes Westberg (Örebro University)

The History of Educational Funding SWG Annual Report 2022 is available here. 
The History of Educational Funding SWG Annual Report 2019 is available here.
The History of Educational Funding SWG Annual Report 2018 is available here.

Description and main objectives: Educational funding is vital for our understanding of mass schooling. As Brian Simon once noted, finance is “the life blood of any system that requires effective resources for healthy functioning.” An increasing number of researchers – both in history of education and in economic history – have consequently addressed various aspects of the economic and financial dimension of primary, secondary and tertiary education. Economic historians have investigated how variations and changes in educational expenditure have been linked to, for example, factors such as wealth inequality, political voice and fiscal capacity, social historians have explored systems of local funding, and historians and educationalist have also explored finance from a policy-perspective. Despite the immense contributions of these studies, there nevertheless remains a wide range of unanswered questions. These include the issues of school vouchers and centralized versus decentralized systems of funding on primary school level, and how the funding of secondary education (that in many countries at least used to be a privilege for those who could afford it) relates to primary school finance. On the tertiary level, we have the question of the funding of universities, and, not the least, the history of student loans that require further studies.The purpose of this SWG is to stimulate the growing research in the history of educational finance by bringing researchers of different disciplines and nationalities together. Thus, the SWG will foster a dialogue between quantitative and qualitative approaches, while promoting international comparative perspectives on education funding. One of our goals is to go beyond the comparison among limited territories of similar countries (“developing countries”, European and North American countries, BRICS etc.) to build a global comprehension of these phenomenon. One the one hand, we will try to use the comparative approach as a tool to better identify and analyze common trends; on the other hand, we will be attentive to the transnational circulation of different funding models, as well as to local receptions and appropriations according to specific political, economic or pedagogic settings. This would usefully extend the scope of the existing ISCHE SWG who are – currently – focused on pedagogical, philosophical or sociological issues but do not tackle directly the economic and financial stakes of educational structures.

For additional information and to become involved, please contact clemence.cardon-quint@u-bordeaux.fr, damiano.matasci@unil.ch, johannes.westberg@oru.se

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Growing up in out-of-home care: Histories of children and youths in foster families and residential homes (2017-2022):

Convenors: Joëlle Droux, University of Geneva (CH); Jeroen J.H. Dekker, University of Groningen (NL); Els Dumortier, Vrije Universiteit Brussel (B); Aurore François, Université catholique de Louvain (B); David Niget, Angers University (F).

Description and main objectives: Since the late 1990s, forced out-of-home placement of children and youth became an issue in the public debate in several western countries, starting with Australia and Canada. When care leavers, who were placed out-of-home during their childhood and / or adolescence, decided in growing numbers to testify about their experiences, including maltreatment and sexual abuse, and to require explanation and / or compensation, the political authorities, responsible for forced out-of-home placements, in many countries mandated research teams to shed light on the long term history of welfare policies and historical abuse. Some of these investigations have been completed, others are ongoing or still in their early stages. Focusing on the extent of abuse and mistreatment, including sexual abuse, which occurred in residential homes and in foster families, these investigations also touched upon a variety of related issues: origin and evolution over time of public policies regarding child and family welfare; political and economic issues underlying these policies; categories and categorization of children and young people in relation to public intervention (orphans, illegitimates, delinquents, maladjusted, disabled…); social and cultural origins of those children in care; situations of the families and the individual vulnerability of the children behind out-of-home placement; the nature of educational institutions (private, public); the recruitment, training and profile of staff in educational institutions (lay / religious; gender perspective); the role of various experts and professionals in placement-related processes (psychiatrists, psychologists, judges, social workers, educationalists, etc.); educational and diagnostic methods and therapeutic practices applied in the institutions; attitudes and practices toward families. This whole line of inquiries not only touches upon past discourses and practices, but also resonates with current practices and professional interrogations in the ever-growing field of child and youth welfare. Fed by this steady stream of political and media interest and scholarly input, the issue of child out-of-home placement now and in the past has thus gained an undeniably audience in Western societies and public opinions over the last decade. Its societal and scientific importance justifies an in-depth analysis within an ISCHE SWG. The issue is not new for ISCHE. ISCHE 29 in Hamburg, 2007, was dedicated to the topic of “Children and Youth at Risk”, and in the last few years various individual contributions and panels were related to this field of research (Chicago 2016, Istanbul 2015). The establishment of this new SWG will make possible to create an invaluable platform of discussion for scholars and research teams on this topic. It will result into international comparisons on the history, experiences and memories of out-of-home care and education. This new SWG aims at the contribution to a debate of great topical importance, so enabling historians of education to get in touch with the concerns of society. This SWG aims to stimulate research in a wide range of geographical regions, which have been brought during various stages of history into contact with colonial and western-inspired child welfare policies (Latin America, Asia, Africa), but also in other political contexts (such as the Ottoman empire or former communist regimes).

For additional information and to become involved, please contact Joelle.Droux@unige.ch, j.j.h.dekker@rug.nl, els.dumortier@vub.ac.be, aurore.francois@uclouvain.be , david.niget@univ-anger.fr

 

Migrants, Migration and Education (2016-2021):

Convenors: Kevin Myers (GB), Paul Ramsey (US), Helen Proctor (Australia).

The Migrants, Migration and Education SWG 2021 Annual Report is available here.
The Migrants, Migration and Education SWG 2019 Annual Report is available here.
The Migrants, Migration and Education SWG 2018 Annual Report is available here.
The Migrants, Migration and Education SWG 2017 Annual Report is available here.

Description: Academic history has always been closely associated with the development and consolidation of nation states. The institutions, practices and historiographies created by academic historians over the past two centuries were deeply imbued with nationalism. Academic history helped to create a national way of seeing the past, framing powerful collective memories and helping to form bonds of loyalty that remain potent across the globe. Contemplating this legacy, contemporary historians have been debating the problem of ‘methodological nationalism’. The history of education has arguably been particularly sensitive to the problem of methodological nationalism. Its foundational concerns with the origins and development of state systems of schooling relied on the naturalization of the nation state, a reification of its territorial boundaries and a more or less explicit concern with nationalising people, knowledge and spaces. Migrants, and the process of migration, were rarely accorded any sustained scrutiny. If migrants did appear it was often in the guise of ‘problems’ or ‘challenges’ to states whose policy agendas were often faithfully reflected in studies of assimilation, in the management of race relations, in the consolidation of ethnic identities and in the emergence of multicultural education policy and practice. More recently, the history of education has been undergoing a process of transformation in which themes of transnationality and internationality are key themes. Our goals are to consider, debate and discuss how migrants, and migration, can be written into the history of education; and to promote and develop empirical projects that cast new light on migrants and migration in the history of education. In doing so migration is defined, following the influential work of Jan and Leo Lucassen, as crosscultural movement (Lucassen, Lucassen and Manning, 2010). In these movements migrants traverse cultural boundaries of values, religions, technologies and political systems and, in doing so, facilitate processes of cultural exchange and negotiation with dynamic and unpredictable outcomes. This definition enables a focus on socio-cultural processes that are arguably particularly, although not exclusively, appropriate for historians of education. Indeed, our goal is less to lay down a particular method or set of concerns than to promote the study of migrants, migration and education at macro, meso and methodological/theoretical levels. Potential themes for study include:
• Macro: state/nation/empire building and education; educational policy making in respect of
migrants and migration.
• Micro/meso: migrant individuals and networks; movements and transformations in
knowledge; transmission of material culture; migrants as educational actors; migrant
educational institutions; intercultural pedagogy; migrant memory and educational agency;
• Theoretical/methodological: historiography of race/migration; postcolonial theory; whiteness

For additional information and to become involved: Please contact K.P.MYERS@bham.ac.uk, pramsey1@emich.edu or helen.proctor@sydney.edu.au.

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REFORPRO: Reformism (s), Progressivism (s), Conservatism (s) in education: what critical argumentations? (2016-2021):

Convenors : A. Robert (France), F. Mole (Geneva), J. Pintassilgo (Portugal)

The REFORPRO SWG 2021 Annual Report is available here.
The REFORPRO SWG 2019 Annual Report is available here
The REFORPRO SWG 2018 Annual Report is available here.
The REFORPRO SWG 2017 Annual Report is available here.

Description: Teachers all act according to what Sensevy called their practical epistemology (Sensevy, 2011). They organize their teaching on the basis of ideas pertaining to what they conceive as knowledge. These ideas constitute for them a kind of theory of knowledge which springs from practice, and controls it. But, more largely, every teacher acts according to a more or less coherent overall conception of his work and its meaning (a horizon of meaning). If the teacher’s task is constrained by legislation and regulatory documents, every teacher adopts a more or less critical position towards them in the discharge of his duties as well as in his political, union, or associative activism. It therefore seems relevant to investigate not only the tensions that may divide teachers between “conservatism(s),” “reformism(s),” and “progressivism(s),” but also to examine the critical arguments they use to foster or overcome these distinctions when some teachers endeavor to theorize their positions and practices. Now, the history of schooling inclines us to think that it is sometimes difficult to find out which position is really progressive in a context of struggles within societies. Likewise, deciding, in such a context, whether critical assessments of a given situation are to be considered progressive or not and why is no easy task. Indeed, it is not uncommon for teachers to adopt positions conceived as progressive on the political and social side and which are, at the same time, regarded as fundamentally conservative on the educative side; such a phenomenon was called demo-elitism (Robert, 2006). Conversely, a progressive, innovative educational view may be rooted in conservative political conceptions or in backward-looking, if not reactionary, philosophical options. For instance, eugenics, which can be considered historically and philosophically as a reactionary ideology, may have had advocates among the strong supporters of democratic schooling, such as Édouard Toulouse and Henri Piéron (Garnier, 2015). Among the numerous questions that may be explored, one concerns the determination of progressive positions within Hannah Arendt’s framework of the necessary conservatism of teachers (Arendt, 1972). How is it possible to identify progressive positions, given that the school is a conservative institution? Such a question underlines the fact that certain contradictions may prove to be important in teachers’ critical thinking: can an avowedly progressive position jeopardize, under certain circumstances, the things worthy of being preserved within the school? And, conversely, can an apparently conservative view prove itself to be a determined stand against the squandering of the cultural legacy which it is the school’s duty to preserve? The recent debates in France surrounding middle school reform (without prejudice to anyone’s position on that matter) may constitute in this regard a contemporary illustration of this issue. In any case, the Standing Working Group will strive to identify in the history of education (whether in long-run history or in the history of present times) situations emblematic of this debate pertaining to the various meanings of terms such as conservatism, or even reactionary philosophy, reformism and/or progressivism.

For additional information and to become involved: Please contact andre.robert@univ-lyon2.fr, fr.mole@wanadoo.fr or japintassilgo@ie.ulisboa.pt.

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History of Laic Education: Concepts, Policies and Practices around the World (2016-2021):

Convenors: Adelina Arredondo (Mexico), Bruno Poucet (France), Felicitas Acosta (Argentina)

The History of Laic Education SWG 2021 Annual Report is available here.
The History of Laic Education SWG 2019 Annual Report is available here.
The History of Laic Education SWG 2018 Annual Report is available here.
The History of Laic Education SWG 2017 Annual Report is available here.

Laic Education SWG Argument and Objectives

Description: National education systems’ conformation has been a result of nonlinear processes, which went together with the creation of the modern State, the development of capitalist production and the expansion of urbanization and market economy. Nation States have assumed the function to educate the citizens and sometimes built an absolute monopoly on the formal education in societies. To do so, limits between the roll of the State and the civil society had to be delimited. Secularisation and Laic education have been part of the States empowerment, although with different modalities, degrees, advances and backward movements and facing diverse adversaries. Against the conflicts that were caused for reasons of creed or religion, laic education became a principle and a desirable model to the interior of the nations and in international and transnational organizations. The objective of this SWG is to contribute to the explanation of the diversity of processes and conditions that made possible the transition from a religious to a laic education, as one of the fundamental strategies four building hegemonic power in modern States, as well as a mean for obtaining pacific coexistence and respect by the religious and cultural diversity in the world.

For additional information and to become involved: Please contact adelinaarredondo@yahoo.com, bruno.poucet@u-picardie.fr or acostafelicitas@gmail.com.

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Objects, Senses and the Material World of Schooling (2015-2019): Convenors: Kazuhisa Fujimoto (Japan, Keio), Ian Grosvenor (UK, Birmingham), Noah W. Sobe (USA, Loyola University Chicago) and Mirian Warde (Brazil, UNIFESP)

Objects, Senses and the Material World of Schooling SWG 2018 Annual Report is available here
Objects, Senses and the Material World of Schooling SWG 2017 Annual Report is available here
Objects, Senses and the Material World of Schooling SWG 2016 Annual Report is available here

Description: The “object lesson” or the “intuitive method” was a significant nineteenth and early twentieth century pedagogical innovation in many settings around the globe yet it has generally speaking not yet received systematic, concerted history of education research attention. Of particular significance are the ways that ideas and practices related to teaching through/with objects and in relation to the senses circulated trans-nationally. Many were the ways that information about this set of innovations circulated, including for example the reports of C. Hippeau (1803-1883) and F. Buisson (1841-1932) who, like others either on their own initiative or commissioned by various governments, produced detailed reports on new developments in the educational field in America and in Europe. Object teaching could be praised for its modernizing qualities, its alignment with the child´s nature, as well as for its effectiveness in improving teaching practice. Moreover, it is our contention that this pedagogical movement reorganized pedagogical practice in in depth and breadth that historians of education have only begun to explore.

For additional information and to become involved: Please contact mjwarde@uol.com.br or nsobe@luc.edu

 

Mapping the Discipline History of Education SWG (2014-2019): Convenors: José Gondra, Rita Hofstetter and Solenn Huitric.

Mapping the Discipline History of Education SWG Call for Papers ISCHE 41

Mapping the Discipline History of Education SWG Argument and Objectives

The Mapping the Discipline SWG Final Report 2019 is available here.

The Mapping the Discipline SWG Final Report is available here.
The Mapping the Discipline SWG 2017 Annual Report is available here.
The Mapping the Discipline SWG 2016 Annual Report is available here.
The Mapping the Discipline SWG 2015 Annual Report is available here.

Description: In the context of the growth, complexification and internationalization of higher education and research, it had seemed to be fruitful to map the history of education in Europe since the early nineties. Our goal is to create a current and retrospective assessment of the discipline’s institutional grounding and of the knowledge produced by its practitioners, stretching across national and cultural borders. Ultimately, the program will help to increase interactions among scholars and facilitate the creation of collaborative research agendas, thereby augmenting the standing and visibility of the discipline. It aims to describe the recent evolution of History of Education in order to make it more visible and, in knowing it and in reflecting on it, to reinforce its foundation and legitimacy. It may also serve as reference for prospective planning and for establishing a research agenda. This mapping will focus on the emblematic traits that characterize any discipline: its institutional foundation (Institutes, departments, posts), communication networks (associations, scientific events, means for publication), the structures of socialization and education of the new generation (curriculum, diploma, doctoral theses) and the ongoing renewing of knowledge produced by the discipline (research, epistemological foundation, research methods). Transcending internal debates and defying boundaries of all types, our research program seeks to further the self-reflexive study of the discipline through the creation of collectively built databases. Via a shared virtual platform, such databases will provide common access to a catalogue of researchers and institutions, media outlets and studies on the history of education, irrespective of their institutional and geographic moorings. Collective discussion of the data and analyses produced will contribute to create synergies between historians of education in order to elaborate a common research agenda and to reinforce the base of the discipline. Additional information at http://rhe.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/?q=mapping

For additional information and to become involved: Please contact Rita Hofstetter (Rita.Hofstetter@unige.ch), Emmanuelle Picard (emmanuelle.picard@ens-lyon.fr) or Eckhardt Fuchs (fuchs@gei.de).

Touching Bodies in School SWG (2014-2018): Convenors: Diana Vidal (Brazil, USP), Ines Dussel (Mexico, Cinvestav) and Marcelo Caruso (Germany, Humboldt University)

The Touching Bodies SWG 2018 Final Report is available here.
The Touching Bodies SWG 2017 Annual Report is available here.
The Touching Bodies SWG 2015 Annual Report is available here.

Description: In contemporary schools, it is almost impossible that bodies touch other bodies without being questioned or put under suspicion. School regulations, moral orders, and pedagogical discourses have established that teachers and students have to keep their distance. Also, students’ peer relationships are similarly scrutinized. It is not only old punishment practices that are forbidden; bodily expressions of kind and care are practically vanishing from the time-space of schooling. These changes are related to shifts in our understanding of violence; what passed as rituals of initiation in the past may now fall into the category of bullying, and what was perceived as caress and warmth may now be read as sexual harassment or assault. It seems that we have never talked so much about bodies in school. We have never given so much attention to teachers and students as individuals, subjects of desire, anger, sadness or happiness. There was never so much fear of touching each other, hurting each other, affecting each other. Or was there? How was the contact between bodies theorized and practiced in schools in the past? Which languages were used to talk about it? Which strategies and devices were designed to deal with this touching? When did ‘hurting’ become a pedagogical problem? When did rights and protection enter this space? What other transformations are we seeing today?

 

Gender SWG (2012-2016): Convenors: Adelina Arredondo (adelinaarredondo@yahoo.com), Christine Mayer (christine.mayer@uni-hamburg.de)

The Gender SWG 2015 Annual Report is available here.
The Gender SWG 2014 Annual Report is available here.

Description: Historians of gender and education are finding the concept of transnationalism very useful for a deeper understanding of historical change and situations. Transnationalism addresses networks, ideas and practices which transcend national boundaries yet are linked to them and can affect and reflect national developments. Its study illuminates the fluidity of concepts of gender, education, culture and nation in time and space and the significance of individual or group action – a factor which allows the role of those usually marginalised within power structures to be better appreciated. It also raises questions across the continents concerning internationalism, globalization, colonialism and/or post-colonialism, contentious terms which again concern power relations. Thus, this focus should appeal to a wide range of historians and regarding to the relationship gender and education in history, it could cover: • The significance of transnationalism as an organising concept in gender and education history. • A critique of gendered historical terms, language and symbols and exploration of how they are transferred, transformed, imposed or resisted in their passage across borders and in different times and contexts. • Methodologies and theoretical approaches for exploring the interrelation of transnationalism, gender and power in gender and education history.
Proposals related to this range of issues may be submitted by anyone active in this research field. The meetings of the SWG are similarly open to everyone interested in questions of gender. Publications in a variety of formats are being considered (as themed or special journal issues or standalone books).

For Ruth Watts’ Bibliography of Gender-topic articles in Paedagogica Historica, 1994-2012, click here.

For Ruth Watt’s history of the Gender SWG (1994-2012), presented at the 2012 ISCHE meeting in Geneva, click here for the paper, and here for the accompanying powerpoint.

 

Teachers Critical Thinking SWG (2010-2015): Convenor: André Robert (andre.robert@univ-lyon2.fr)

The work of the Teachers Critical Thinking SWG has resulted in the publication La Pensée critique des enseignants: Éléments d’histoire et de théorisation edited by André Robert and Bruno Garnier (University Press of Rouen, 2015).

The Teachers’ Critical Thinking SWG 2015 Annual Report is available here.
The Teachers’ Critical Thinking SWG 2014 Annual Report is available here.

Description: The concept of critical thinking tackled in this standing working group should be understood in a stronger sense that just protests and claims made through the channel of ordinary trade unions and political parties (though unions and parties can sometimes be relays of such a thought). By thought, we understand a kind of discourse that is part of a true intellectual and rational development, giving consistency or even a form of logic system, to arguments and ideas (around operations of conceiving, judging, reasoning) – and not just opinions, even coming from particular individuals or groups. In coordination with this definition, “critical” refers to the tendency of a mind that does not allow any statement without having experienced the rational legitimacy, testing various discursive proposal with discriminant reason (the Greek verb crinein, from which come the verb ‘criticize’ and the noun ‘crisis’, meaning originally to sort). The construction of the distance and externality, provided they comply with the requirements of rational argument, is thus the foundation of critical thought, in the sense meant by Theodor Adorno: “When the culture is accepted in its entirety, it has lost the ferment of its truth, which is negation” (Adorno, 1955, 1986). Critical thinking in the teaching world will be considered in several senses: -thinking from teachers and/or educationalists as unique individuals; -thinking coming from teachers organizations, networks, think thanks or groups operating as “collective intellectual” (Bourdieu, 2001); -thinking from outside personalities influencing the world of teachers in one way or another; -educational thought in a more generic sense, impacting the teaching practice. It will consider original examples of critical thinking, justified along the previous guidelines, or at least revisited at an original angle.

 

The Standing Working Group Educational media in comparative perspective, convened by Eckhardt Fuchs, Ian Grosevenor and Daniel Lindmark came to the end of its work in 2012. In 2009 the SWG Comparative Lexicography in Theory and History of Education” convened by Luciana Bellatalla completed its work. Two SWGs wrapped up their work in 2007: Teachers Union’s (RESEAU) and Cross Cultural Influences in History of Education. From 1998-2012 what is presently the Gender and Education SWG operated as the History of Womens’ and Girls’ Education SWG.