Using the example of the 1937 Ontario elementary school reforms, this article will make the case for considering pedagogical knowledge as a distinct object in the history of education. In this context, pedagogical knowledge refers to the conceptual and normative aspects of teaching and learning that seek to inform the decision-making of the…

This article compares and contrasts the use of mental testing and the formation of educational streaming in Denmark and Ontario during the interwar years. In this sense, the article adds nuances to the meaning of internationalism as well as contributing to our knowledge about how ideas of testing practices circulated among countries and…

This article brings the Italian activist and thinker Antonio Gramsci's theory of organic intellectualism and the Canadian historian Ian McKay's theory of liberal state-formation to bear on the "Indian Question" -- or how best to yoke Indigenous children and young people to the modern Canadian state. From the mid-nineteenth to the…

Substantial historical research indicates that during World War II Canadian schools were considered optimal sites for fostering nationalistic sentiments in teachers and learners. Policymakers directed educators and students to collect scrap metals, purchase war savings certificates, salute the flag, and undertake marching drills. These…

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…