Conference Agenda

There can be a significant disconnect between how we teach History and what we understand as good historical practice as evident in the work of historians. We often teach History in the tertiary classroom as a collection of facts, or perhaps historical stories, or maybe even a series of arguments, issues and interconnected events. This approach suggests history is easily periodised, knowable, and singularly interpreted. Yet we know that History is what historians write. It is highly individualised, drawn from embodied experience and intuitive and imaginative interpretation. It is not the same as the past nor is it necessarily the same for any given two people. What we hope to emphasise more consciously is how to help history students to recognise and engage with their own ontological positioning.

Teaching positioning and knowledge-making processes in tertiary History classrooms promises to raise awareness not only of the role of diversity in the understanding and reading of History, but perhaps more importantly, in the construction and communication of innovative and ground-breaking History as well. As a dynamic discipline, History relies on different perspectives and new approaches to move it forward and to push its boundaries.

This paper examines how the teaching of good History as a challenging, constantly re-worked and revitalised exercise relies on teachers understanding the importance of recognising the impact of diversity in the History discipline. We ask: How might the introduction of post-qualitative approaches and new materialism to the teaching of History provide a diversification of the contemporary tertiary History classroom? Moreover, we explore a number of ways in which diversity can be accessed by students who may struggle with recognising their own ontological positioning and how that might influence, and should influence, how they write History. By considering how to employ a number of post-qualitative and new materialist strategies in the classroom, we argue that teachers can help students to identify themselves within the History-making process and understand what impact that self-knowledge has on the subjects they explore, the sources they access, the methods they employ, the questions they ask and the conclusions they draw.

Our work is theoretically informed by post-qualitative theories of affect (Taylor & Fullegar, 2022), and new materialism (Barad, 2012, Fox & Aldred, 2017). Post-qualitative theory offers us ways for thinking differently about data and the traditional conventions of research. It offers a new degree of flexibility and responsiveness to doing research (Adams St Pierre, 2014, p3). Infusing questions of affect and matter into history allows for new questions of historical imagination, locatedness and knowledge making.

Affect and affective entanglements offer an entry point into historical thinking, how historical knowledge can be constructed and can evolve. Affect can be thought of as a type of sensation, or relational and transpersonal becoming (Taylor & Fullegar, 2022, p.8-9). Affect might be spotted out of the corner of an eye, through a hunch, an uneasy feeling or realisation. It is intensely personal and embodied and may emanate between the corporeal and the material. Using a pedagogical focus on affective flows and entanglements between body and material, we argue there is a wealth of opportunity for new approaches to teaching History.

New materialism provides alternative theoretical insights for thinking about history and matter. It speaks to the liveliness of matter. Bennett reminds us that matter has intrinsic vitality, it can be disruptive, affective, effervescent (2010, p. 112). It can be encountered in assemblages or be boundered or isolated. New materialism supports a relational ontology; one that questions how students of history encounter matter, consider the human and nonhuman relations, think about locatedness and the ethics of knowledge making.

‘Why is Socialism necessary? Socialism is necessary because the present system enables a few to enrich themselves out of the labour of the People.’

• Socialist Sunday School Federation (in Gallagher, 2021)

Looking to Glasgow's past, a small committee of organisers are working to revive a lost tradition of providing radical learning spaces in Scotland’s most densely populated city. Founded in the 1890’s, the Socialist Sunday School Federation once provided a radical alternative to traditional schooling, offering ‘a widespread feeling as to the inadequacy of the orthodox Sunday Schools as a training ground for the children of Socialists’ (W.C.N.L., 2016). As chronicled of the modern incarnation by Gallagher (2021), ‘one of the main objectives was to develop the next generation of socialist leaders’ - something that has arguably ceased within the contemporary Scottish party-political scene, yet, seemingly thrives within social activist and, arguably, the trade union movements (McAlevey, 2016, 2020). Indeed, several former students went on to hold prominent positions within Scottish politics, with anti-fascist Patrick Dollan elected for the Independent Labour Party and serving as Lord Provost (Gallagher, 2010; Carrigan, 2014), and Janet ‘Jennie’ Lee going on to found the Open University after serving as an M.P. for the Labour Party (Dorey, 2015). A revived version, however, was established in January 2020 (Bhadani, 2022) it’s the rationale and possibilities of this current incarnation that this submission explored.

Through the support of a public fundraiser, the organisers raised circa £2,000 to cover essential costs involved in running the initiative, as well as a reserve to ensure compliance with child protection, and for providing food for learners as a means of providing a comfortable learning environment (Callaghan, 2021). As summarised by Callaghan (2021), the Red Sunday School affords children opportunities to develop ‘the tools to explore nature, culture and society from a radical perspective and get involved with modern day struggles such as anti-racism, feminism and the climate crisis’ (see also Bhadani, 2022). The space operates only once-per-month, resulting in circa ten to eleven sessions per year given the break over the Christmas and New Year period. With the Kinning Park Complex selected as the venue (itself a site of a one-time occupation by community members [Akilade, 2022]), the facilities were already in-place to prepare meals (the centre already runs a weekly community meal, demonstrating the appropriateness of venue choice), whilst the informal learning environment of the community-owned building (Bhadani, 2022) helps distinguish it further from traditional schooling spaces. The programme itself is not constrained by state-produced programmes, rather it is generated by the learners and families (the focus of the Glasgow Red Sunday School being children and young people), and, as such, is able to include arts, physical activities, alongside more traditional input style learning (O'Neill, 2022). One of the co-founders Mackinnon advises that the programme was specifically 'tailor-made for engaging children'.

One of the most important functions of the education system in the 19th century was to promote nation-building by developing and disseminating national culture and identity (Westberg et al., 2019). This tendency also applied to teacher education and the textbooks used in it.

The development of educational history writing gained momentum in the first half of the 19th century. Its development was closely linked to the development of teacher training, and textbooks for use at different levels of education played an important role in the formation of the discipline. Research (Tröhler, 2004, 2006) points out that the content and narrative of these textbooks are strongly linked to national (and imperial) frameworks.

Hungary was in a unique position in terms of both its educational system and nation-building. The development of its culture and educational system was strongly influenced by transnational trends (Mayer, 2019). In this regard, the role of German culture should be emphasized. One of the main goals of Hungarian textbooks on the history of education was to place the history of Hungarian education in a European framework.

At the end of the 19th century, Hungary was a multinational, multi-religious, socially fragmented, agrarian-industrial country (Romsics, 2010). When writing a national history of education, the authors should (have) taken into account not only the European framework, but also this diversity.

In my research, I investigated whether, and if so, to what extent, the above-mentioned diversity is reflected in Hungarian history of education textbooks published in the second half of the 19th century. I understood diversity from different perspectives (gender, religion, sex, special needs).

My research questions were:

How is the diversity of European culture represented and what is the role of Hungarian culture in it?

Does the textbook include nationalities other than the majority nationality?

Is the religious diversity of the country represented?

Does it reflect the ethnic and religious tensions that existed at the time?

How is women's education represented in the textbooks?

Are children with special educational needs represented in the textbooks?