In the past two decades, the interdisciplinary push to denaturalise the concept of society has historicised the very object of social history. In this paper, I propose a way of studying the social history of education that eludes the presupposition of the social as a transcendental or pre-discursive object. My central claim is that it is possible…

Delivered as one of the keynote addresses at the International Standing Committee on the History of Education (ISCHE) Conference held in Porto in July 2019, this paper offers an example of a hitherto overlooked embodied space and place in the history of education. Taking the simple pocket found in children's clothing as a significant, if hidden,…

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) has risen to prominence as one of the most influential international organisations in the world, in large part due to its country reviews and comprehensive comparative testing portfolio. This article starts from two proposition: (1) that fields of tension and antagonisms lie beyond…

This article -- the second part of a two-part contribution -- offers a number of suggested directions for the historiography of adult education in Britain. It identifies opportunities to address longstanding areas of neglect that have been overshadowed by a focus on the "Great Tradition" of adult education. Although a key theme of recent…