Early American historians provided the public and policy-makers with information about US history that provided both entertainment and policy suggestions. As American historians became more professionalised in the early twentieth century, they concentrated more on their own scholarly concerns and less on policy-relevant writings. In recent…

The idea for this article proceeds from personal, practical, and emotional experience and reflections on holding the position of the Minister for Education and Science during the period of the economic crisis in Latvia (2007-2010). The article consists of three parts. The first part outlines the potential of a position in power with a particular…

In recent years, visual records have come to be seen as important sources of information in the study of education and its history. However, most of the images used in this way simply provide a glimpse--though admittedly a precise one--of only one moment in the educational process. Graphic verisimilitude is not only to be found in these images; it…

Colin Ward (1924-2010) was an anarchist and educator who, together with Anthony Fyson, was employed as education officer for the Town and Country Planning Association in the UK during the 1970s. He is best known for his two books about childhood, "The Child in the City" (1978) and "The Child in the Country" (1988). The book he…

This article examines the ways in which the very idea of teacher education in the United States was transplanted from foreign lands. Teacher education, particularly normal school training, was based on a model imported from despotic Prussia, a model that was popularised by French and American visitors to the northeastern German land. Although…

The aim of this paper is to analyse how the Dalcroze method was introduced to Spain and became known there, more specifically in the Catalonia of the "Noucentisme" movement, and why it made the greatest impact and was more widely disseminated in this particular region of Spain. Following a summary of Dalcroze's contributions to…

This article is about the deaf education methods debate in the public schools of Toronto, Canada. The author demonstrates how pure oralism (lip-reading and speech instruction to the complete exclusion of sign language) and day school classes for deaf schoolchildren were introduced as a progressive school reform in 1922. Plans for further oralist…

The history of education as a distinct field has been the focus of study, research and writing in Australia for over a century. It achieved maturity with the establishment of the Australian and New Zealand History of Education Society in 1970 and the subsequent establishment of the Society's journal, "History of Education Review."…

This essay explores the historiography of American and European education, considering how educational historians communicate powerful messages about the purposes and promises of schooling through their writing. I divide the historiography of American education into four interpretive traditions: traditionalism, radical revisionism, progressive…

In the past few years, worries about decreasing jobs or even the possible disappearance of the history of education as a field of study have frequently surfaced. Hence, the question arises as to whether the history of education, as a field of study, has a future--or is it, as many authors have remarked, in danger? This article starts from the idea…

This paper explores major historiographic "turns" in history of education with a focus, although not exclusively, on English-speaking Canada. It addresses the transformative intellectual impact of the turn toward social history on the history of education, the impact of cultural history and the linguistic turn, the reception of Michel…

Ways of talking about social histories tend to follow social realities as well as personal inclinations. The very terms we use reflect and refract particular histories. The authors of our sources foretold many concepts as they carved out the domains and marked the paths later historians were to follow in their attempt to understand the past. It is…

This article examines contestations and recent trend-setting approaches in the historiography of education in India in the post-1800 period. British colonialism created a huge rupture in South Asian society as regards the provision of education. Historians of education have asked what sorts of indigenous educational institutions and methods were…

This article considers the role "Paedagogica Historica" has played in stimulating new approaches in the history of education within the international community since the emergence of the new series in 1900. Particular focus is placed on the volumes published in the wake of ISCHE (International Standing Conference in the History of…

Dalton education is the largest educational reform movement in the Netherlands. Around eighty years ago it spread throughout the world; Dalton education was found in the USA, England, Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, the Soviet Union, India, China and Japan. Today there is a revival of interest in England and Germany. We examine the origins of…