Conference Agenda

Where History of education is often associated with historians doing research on various aspects of education – schooling, policy documents, and a wide scope on educational institutions –, education-in-history is a diversified field of study explored in a variety disciplines like pedagogy, religious studies, intellectual history, literary studies, philosophy, aesthetics, medicine, economics, sociology etc. This has advantages, as multiple disciplinary perspectives contribute to the study of the field, but also challenges, as disciplines take little notice of each other (disciplines also discipline us).

The overarching aim of this panel debate is to elaborate on the potentials for dialogue between histories of education. The question at stake is how these multiple perspectives and inquiries on education and history can shed light on the historical dimensions of education as a field of research and in this sense, make the methods and questions more complex and at the same time gain access to critical and productive perspectives on the historiographies of education as a diversified field. This includes elaborations on epistemological and methodological foundations of education in a wide sense, as well as aesthetic and political perspectives on constitutive practices of research.

A starting point for this discussion is the understanding of education as a central dimension of social, cultural, and political life that transcends research on the school and its stakeholders, while also seeing research on education and history as objects of research. Hence, while history of education already exists as an interdisciplinary field of research, less focus have been made on the often conflicting historiographies, i.e., practises of writing history that are an asset for self-critical and meta reflective discussions. The diversity asked for in this respect does not only concern the object of research but not the least, a meta reflection on practices of historiography as a concern for histories of education.

The panellists will expose different perspectives of history of education as a field of historiographies and research. Here, diverse ways to approach education from national, international, spatial, temporal, and other disciplinary perspectives will be exposed. Further, the participants will raise questions they find urgent regarding the contemporary scene of research on history of education. The discussion will invite to a wider deliberation on how to understand and develop history of education as a complex, dynamic and diversified field of research.

The panellists and discussant all work within the field of history of education while representing perspectives from History, Sociology, Gender studies, Religious studies, and Intellectual history. The panelists represent a diversity from senior scholars to a PhD student. Further they also work with diversified methods such as genealogy, discourse analysis, documentary- and network analysis.