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…

Over half a century since the last wave of political decolonisation, the handling of "dark" colonial histories remains topical. Influenced by the postcolonial turn, this study aims to examine, from a novel historical and comparative perspective, evolving textbook representations of Belgian colonialism and its legacy in Belgian and…

This article pays attention to the regional embeddedness of early research on giftedness, looking principally at the works of Lewis Terman and his peers, between the 1910s and 1930s. The rhetoric, ideology, and aesthetics of giftedness in those early works were, I argue, stamped by the context and imaginary of Progressive-Era California and shaped…

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 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…

Programmes of international educational exchange are not only carried out for educational purposes, but form an important part of modern-day public diplomacy. Through exchange programmes education and research are linked with foreign policy interests, which then in turn should affect the international contacts of universities and research…

This essay critically examines the commitment of James Bryant Conant to equality of opportunity as a guide for educational practice in his own era and in contemporary society. Noted chemist, president of Harvard University from the 1930s through the early 1950s, and noted analyst of the American high school from the time of publication of his…

This paper focuses on the history of relations between colonialism, schooling and social change in Australia, Papua New Guinea and Ireland, countries that were once part of the British Empire. It indicates that responses to schooling ranged from acceptance and tolerance, to modification and rejection, depending on the country, the issue, and the…

During the Second Spanish Republic (1931-1939) the Government identified many of its educational goals with those of the international movement of the New School. While not subscribing to any particular trends, the legal documents are filled with appeals to activism, vitality, work school and collaboration. Many teachers identified with and…

In this article the author looks at the appropriation of the monitorial system of education across a number of Spanish American countries between 1818 and c. 1844. The British understanding of the method is compared with the Spanish American perception of it (privileging the similarities rather than the differences in perception among Spanish…