ISCHE 46 – Lille
8 – 11 July 2025, Lille, France (in-person conference)
15 – 16 July, online conference
Theme: Teachers and Teaching. History on the move.
The ISCHE 46 wishes to look at the history of teachers and teaching, from the earliest times to the beginning of the 21st century, in all its diversity, from primary school teachers taking care of young children to teachers in higher education, from full professors with a diploma to part-time teachers and professionals who occasionally took on the role of trainer, from preceptors to teaching congregations, to families taking on the task of educating children and the various practices of self-teaching. As key players in the history of education, teachers are defined by UNESCO as all those responsible for educating pupils, all those who teach others. However, teaching has never been the exclusive preserve of professionals and/or people who devote themselves exclusively to this task.
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ISCHE 46 – Keynote Speakers
Clémence Cardon-Quint
Clémence Cardon-Quint is Professor in History at Université de Montpellier Paul-Valéry (France), member of the research laboratory CRISES, and of the Institut universitaire de France. She is co-editor of the journal Histoire de l’éducation. Her scholarship has successively focused on teaching and teachers of literary subjects in the 20th century; on subject matter associations; on budgetary aspects of education; and on knowledge regime and research policy in educational matters. In her research, she sought to understand how the evolution of knowledge, the exercise of state power and social change simultaneously contributed to transformations in schools. Her publications include Des lettres au français. Une discipline à l’heure de la démocratisation (1945-1981) (PUR, 2015), and L’argent de l’école. Histoire du budget de l’éducation nationale depuis 1945 (Presses de Sciences Po, 2025).
“Portrait of the teacher as a civil servant”
The professionalization of teachers is rightly recognized as a key element in the development of mass schooling and the effectiveness of education. This process is shaped by the relationships that teachers – both as individuals and as organized groups – maintain with various segments of the State. In France, this relationship is particularly strong: the State regulates teacher qualifications, recruits through competitive exams, inspects, pays and so on. Over the course of the last two centuries in France, teachers became increasingly “civil servants” (fonctionnaires) – which can mean many things.
As a result, alongside the primary relationship between teachers and their pupils in the classroom, there exists a secondary network of connections linking teachers to the State. This network is more distant and harder to define, but no less tangible, if only through the paycheck. The status of civil servant carries with it a series of duties and obligations: teachers implement the curricula defined by the State, uphold official values, obeys their hierarchy… However, as we know, this framework does not fully capture the complexity of the situation, both past and present. This puts the historian in a dilemma. Studying teaching in the 20th century as if the state didn’t play a role overlooks the profound influence it has had, starting with the materiality of the archives that give us access to this history. Yet, giving the State the place it is legally entitled to is to treat a constructed narrative at face value.
In this talk, Clémence Cardon-Quint will explore this network of relationships, made up of men, women, forms, financial flows, texts and more, analyzing both the factors that strengthen and those that weaken it. She will revisit key questions raised throughout her research – such as teacher training, activism, school culture, the role of women, remuneration – while drawing on both French and international scholarship on the embedment of teachers in the State. Teacher’s place within the State is not given once and for all; rather, it is result of an ongoing process of reciprocal adjustments, regulation, contestation… The rise of private players in education since the late 20th century, the recent surge of the anti-establishment voting among French teachers, or the rejection of the competitive examination by aspiring teachers all indicate that the integration of teachers into the State may be less irreversible than previously thought.
Time: Tuesday, 08 July 2025: 4:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Ian Grosvenor
Ian Grosvenor is Emeritus professor of Urban Educational History at the University of Birmingham, England. Current research focuses on education, activism and art; education and the ecological turn; and cultural learning and community engagement. Books include Assimilating Identities. Racism and Education in Post 1945 Britain (1997), Silences and Images. The Social History of the Classroom (1999) with Martin Lawn and Kate Rousmaniere, The School I’d Like (2003), School (2008) and The School I’d Like Revisited (2015) all with Catherine Burke, Materialities of Schooling (2005) with Martin Lawn, Children and Youth at Risk (2009) with Christine Mayer and Ingrid Lohmann, the Black Box of Schooling (2011) with Sjaak Braster and Maria Mar del Pozo Andrés and Making Education: Governance by Design (2018) with Lisa Rasmussen. With Tim Allender, Inés Dussel and Karin Priem he is editor of the De Gruyter book series Appearances – Studies in Visual Research. Between 2014 and 2021 he was Director of the Voices of War and Peace First World War Engagement Centre. Previous roles include Deputy Pro-Vice Chancellor for Cultural Engagement and Head of the School of Education, University of Birmingham, Secretary General of the European Educational Research Association [EERA], founding convenor of EERA’s Network 17 History of Education, and Managing Editor of Paedagogica Historica, 2008-2020. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
“‘The best of times’ and ‘the worst of times’: ‘Adventures in Education revisited.’”
‘There is just one place where yesterday and today meet, recognise each other and embrace, and that place is tomorrow, ’ so wrote the Uruguayan author Eduardo Galeano in his The Book of Embraces (1991) in which, using anecdotes and fragments of autobiography, he offered a record of the past and encouraged his contemporaries to continue the fight against political, social and economic inequalities. Galeano came to mind when I found myself reflecting on the interwoven nature of the social, the historical and the spatial in shaping histories of education written, the concepts used and the dialogues in the present with the past which have made research knowable and actionable. The present paper ‘The best of times’ and ‘the worst of times’: ‘Adventures in Education revisited’ includes fragments of autobiography, is both future and past focused and takes the form of a journey from the past into the present and possible futures. A journey in the present that is being shaped by growing instability and insecurity in the world, of fears about climate change and pathogen mutations, of the fraying of democracy, the growth of populism and identity politics and of the shift to authoritarianism. Elements which are all bearing down on democratic education and its futures. Yet, it is also a journey of active conversations with the past, of adventures in education that have produced reconstructive histories and forcefully made the case for the role of education in civil society, of historians of education bearing witness and of standing firmly in the present as mediators between past and future.
Time: Thursday 10 July 2025: 12:00 pm – 1:00 pm
ISCHE 46 Call for Proposal & Standing Working Group CfP
The conference will receive submissions through eight thematic strands (A-Strands) or through six strands from the participating SWGs (B-Strands).
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Submission for ISCHE 46
Learn more about how to submit to ISCHE 46 and which presentation formats are available.
Submission deadline: 5 January 2025 – extended: 15 January 2025
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Registration for ISCHE
Information on how to register, the fee structure, terms of registration etc. Registration starts on 10 March, Early Bird ends on 30 April and the registration deadline for presenters is 25 May 2025.
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Conference Venue
The conference will take place on the Pont-de-Bois campus of the University of Lille in Villeneuve d’Ascq.
Link to the official ISCHE 46 website
Important Dates:
January 5, 2025January 15, 2025 | Submissions ends- February 28, 2025 | Authors notified of acceptance
- March 10, 2025 | Accepted authors must decide on the mode of presentation (in person or online)
- March 10, 2025 | Registration opens
- April 30, 2025 | Last day to register at early registration rates
- May 25, 2025 | Last day to register as presenter (papers without at least one registered author will be removed from programme)
- June 15, 2025 | Conference programme finalised
- July 7, 2025 | Pre-Conference Workshops
- July 8-11, 2025 | ISCHE 46 Conference in-person in Lille, France
- July 15-16, 2025 | ISCHE 46 Conference online
