Convenors
Karin Priem (Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg)
Inés Dussel (Dept of Educational Research, Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados, DIE-Cinvestav, Mexico)
Matthew R. Keynes (Faculty of Education at the University of Melbourne, Australia)

What we want: Encouraging ISCHE members to collectively re-story histories of education
In times of radical global precarity, climate grief, food crises, political violence, social injustice, war atrocities, pandemics, and unprecedented change, how might histories of education beyond the human be researched and (re-)written? When futures are disconnected from the past due to disaster and disruption, how do we study and re-story educational histories and to what ends? What knowledge do we want to provide for future historians of education? How can we develop a respectful, sensitive and fair language of historical research? Our SWG invites the ISCHE community to collectively think about methods, theories, and sources we might draw on to offer other narratives of the past considering collective ecological vulnerability and precarious planetary futures (e.g., Westberg and Marsden 2024).

Our rationale:
Historian Hayden White has made us aware of the power and normative quality of essentialist narratives many historians – often critically engaged and equipped with an emancipatory mindset – tended to follow blindly in the Western and Northern hemispheres until well into the twentieth century. Numerous historical studies were written in the belief that the expansion of Western civilization would be the only pathway leading humanity to progress, equality, and freedom. These histories, as Hayden White has pointed out, testify to a “panorama of domination” because they also document the history of those “cultures and peoples who are the victim of this process” (White 2018). The spread of Western civilization and education indeed was “pursued along a predetermined axis of progress” that was perceived as universally valid and generally not questioned as a sign of hierarchy and means of power and aggression towards Indigenous cultures, other knowledge, and the more-thanhuman world (Azoulay 2019; Chakrabarty 2021; Bignall 2022; Fassin 2023; Lorimer & Hodgetts 2024). This implies the necessity to look at the dynamics of climate change and analyze its consequences as rooted in long lasting geopolitical hierarchies and persistent colonial pasts (Gosh 2021). Terms like “The Great Derangement” (Gosh 2016) and “The Great Acceleration” (Steffen at al. 2015) relate to the dark side of the long history of Western progress and, indeed, invite for reconsidering our shared history.

History of education and educational research have widely ignored important studies of ecological history and historical anthropology that could have enriched their research agendas (e.g., Ingold 2000). The anthropocentric episteme, imperialism, and hegemonic Western concepts of culture, knowledge production, lifestyles, and societal structures operated as enduring overarching thought patterns that are difficult to unlearn, to entangle, and to diversify within histories of education. Therefore, the convenors of this Standing Working Group would like to initiate exchange about histories of education beyond the human (Priem & Keynes 2024; Westberg & Marsden 2024). This implies acknowledging research perspectives that focus on human-material, human-ecological, and human-planetary relations in histories of education (e.g., Dussel 2021; Priem 2022; Van Gorp et al. 2022, Keynes 2024). We would like to encourage historians of education to think about histories of education that attend to humans as a geological force and respect the diversity and decentralization of knowledge against notions of the West as a superior normative center. This implies that historians of education must not be trapped by archival systems and their seemingly neutral structures and order that follow familiar rationales and hierarchies of modernity and Western civilization (Azoulay 2019).

Past activities and what we plan to do:
The convenors can rely on international and interdisciplinary scholarly expertise in material studies, educational histories of repair, histories of disruption and trauma, and (post-)colonial studies in education:

• Besides several publications in the field (see bibliography), a symposium on “Disruption and Recovery: Transitions, Transformations and Trends in Histories of Education” has already been successfully organized at ISCHE Budapest.
• Papers have been published open access in a special issue of the Journal Encounters in Theory and Hisory of Education (vol. 25, no. 1; see also https://ojs.library.queensu.ca/index.php/encounters) entitled “Consequences of the Past and Responsible Histories of Education for the Future.”
• In sum, we see a strong impact of our activities within ISCHE and are eager to continue to invite ISCHE members to further discuss different perspectives of histories of education beyond the human within our field by sending out calls and by organizing workshops, a blog, webinars, symposiums at ISCHE conferences, and electronic and paper publications (e.g., a special issue of Paedagogica Historica).

Bibliography
Azoulay, Ariella Aïsha. Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism. London, New York: Verso, 2019.

Bignall, Simone. “Colonial Humanism, Alter-humanism and Ex-colonialism.” In Palgrave Handbook of Crtical Posthumanism, edited by Stefan Herbrechter et al., 295–316 (London: Palgrave McMillan, 2022).

Chakrabarty, Dipesh. The Climate of History in a Planetary Age. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2021.

Dussel, Inés. “What Might a Material Turn to Educational Histories Add to the History of Education? Proof-Eating the Pudding.” In What Might a Material Turn to Educational Histories Add to the History of Education? Proof-Eating the Pudding, 449–468. Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2021.

Fassin, Didier. “The Rise and Rise of Post-Humanism: Will It Spell the Rise of Human Siences?” In The Social Sciences in the Lookingn Glass, edited by Didier Fassin and

George Steinmetz, 368–391. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2023.

Gosh, Amitav. The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2016.

Gosh, Amitav. The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 2021.

Grosvenor, Ian, and Karin Priem. “Histories of the Past and Histories of the Future: Pandemics and Historians of Education.” Paedagogica Historica 58, no. 5 (2022): 581–90.

Ingold, Tim. The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. London and New York: Routledge, 2000.

Keynes, Mati. “From Apology to Truth? Settler Colonial Injustice and Curricular Reform in Australia since 2008.” Journal of Curriculum Studies 56, no. 3 (2024): 339–354, https://doi.org/10.1080/00220272.2024.2323612.

Keynes, Mati et al. “Schools as Public Things: Parents and the Affective Relations of Schooling.” The Sociological Review 72, no. 3 (May 2024): 673–690, https://doi.org/10.1177/00380261231207214.

Keynes, Mati. “Rhetoric of Redress: Australian Political Speeches and Settler Citizens’ Historical Consciousness.” Journal of Australian Studies 47, no. 4 (October 2, 2023): 656–670, https://doi.org/10.1080/14443058.2023.2217824.

Keynes, Matthew R. “An Ethics of Repair? Towards Reparative Principles in the History of Education.” Encounters in Theory and History of Education 25, no. 1 (2024): 12–38.

Lorimer, Jamie, and Timothy Hodgetts. More-than-human. Oxfordshire: Routledge, 2024.

Priem, Karin. “Emerging Ecologies and Changing Relations: A Brief Manifesto for Histories of Education after COVID-19.” Paedagogica Historica 58, no. 5 (2022): 768–780. DOI: 10.1080/00309230.2022.2075230.

Priem, Karin, and Matthew R. Keynes. “Towards Responsible Narratives in a More-than-Human World: Re-Storying Histories of Education.” Encounters in Theory and History of Education 25, no. 1 (2024): 3–11.

Priem, Karin, and Matthew R. Keynes. “Consequences of the Past and Responsible Histories of Education for the Future.” Encounters in Theory and History of Education 25, no. 1 (2024).

Sriprakash, Arathi. “Reparations: Theorising Just Futures of Education.” Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education 44, no. 5 (2022). DOI: 10.1080/01596306.2022.2144141.

Steffen, Will, Wendy Broadgate, Lisa Deutsch, Owen Gaffney, and Cornelia Ludwig, “The Trajectory of the Anthropocene: The Great Acceleration.” The Anthropocene Review 2, no. 1 (2015): 81-98.

Van Gorp, Angelo, Eulàlia Collelldemont, Inês Félix, Ian Grosvenor, Björn Norlin, and Núria Padrós Tuneu. “What Does this Have to Do with Everything Else?” An Ecological Reading of the Impact of the 1918–19 Influenza Pandemic on Education,” Paedagogica Historica 58 (2022): 728–747. DOI: 10.1080/00309230.2022.2053555.

Westberg, Johannes, and Beth Marsden. “A Critical History for the Twenty-first Century? Critique, Truth, Method and Audience.” Encounters in Theory and History of Education 25, no. 1 (2024): 152–171.

White, Hayden. “The Question of Narrative in Contemporary Historical Theory.” History and Theory, Virtual Issue (May 2018),
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/pbassets/assets/14682303/5The%20Question%20of%20Narrative%20in%20Contemporary%20Historical%20Theory1984-1526390431163.pdf