From a Nordic and British perspective, the history of education is a vibrant field of knowledge production. It invites scholars from the humanities and social sciences to investigate the continuities and changes in education over time, as well as "Bildung," nurturing, learning, and teaching. By underlining the breadth of the history of…

The long-term shift in undergraduate enrollment away from traditional humanities disciplines toward vocationally oriented majors poses a unique set of challenges for honors. While some have responded by emphasizing humanities' centrality to honors education, this essay argues the imperative that honors practitioners and administrators improve…

With the growing interest in the field of instructional design and technology to engage with issues of equity, discrimination, and racism, the field needs to tap into disciplines that have been doing this work to be equipped for this work. This paper discusses the need for the field of instructional design and technology to engage with the…

Background: Issues of identity, interdependence, relationality and violence are far larger than the human species alone, although humanity has often pretended as if it alone were the beneficiaries of studying such ideas. Aim: Pedagogically, the complexity of existence beyond human being must influence the traditional humanities curriculum or risk…

This article historicizes "rigor," discipline," and "systematic" as inventions of a certain rational spirit of Enlightenment that was radicalized during the 19th century. These terms acquired temporary value in a transition during the 19th century when a culture of research was established within a modern episteme.…

This report describes the rationale, goals, and activities of the Strengthening Michigan Humanities (MiHumanities) project, an effort led by the Michigan Community College Association (MCCA) and funded by the Mellon Foundation. The project is designed to strengthen community college transfer pathways in four humanities fields--communication,…

This article extends the authors' earlier work (Young & Muller 2013) exploring the concept of 'powerful knowledge'. It first examines some of the origins of the concept and goes on to a brief consideration of how sociology, political theory and economics have traditionally represented 'power' and 'knowledge'. Two key senses of power are…

In this essay Gert Biesta asks what the humanities can contribute to the field of teacher education. In addressing this question he turns to the idea of education as a "Geisteswissenschaft" as it was developed in the German-speaking context in the first decades of the twentieth century. In this conception, education is configured as an…

The phrase "the two cultures debate" has a particular connotation in the British context. It was prompted by a lecture given in the 1950s by the novelist C.P. Snow. Snow's first career had been in science, and he drew on his inside knowledge of that domain in a sequence of novels, known collectively as "Strangers and…

This article argues that an understanding of disciplinary knowledge production helps to underpin a conceptual structure for the humanities curriculum. This is important as a conceptual curriculum more overtly supports knowledge production for both pupils and teachers than one that is solely focused on propositional knowledge. It can mean the…

If we want to combat contemporary "neoliberal" attacks on universities, we should start by refusing the way that their pseudo-rationalities already determine so many aspects of the intellectual and institutional regimes that we consider under threat. This paper sketches an analysis of those aspects of the internal practices of academia…

What does it mean for a student to be critically literate in the Twenty First Century? How do we teach critical literacy within university humanities programs in the United States? And what are the implications of critical literacy for the conception and praxis of the global good? Using Richard Hoggart and Raymond Williams' conceptions of critical…

This article asks: what is the significance of design history within higher education? It reviews the practice and purpose of design history, in the education of historically aware and critically engaged designers, as an emerging independent discipline, and in terms of what the subject has to offer allied fields such as history, sociology,…

This article presents the research context for a 2013 investigation of how discipline of study at undergraduate level contributes to the development of generic problem solving skills. Inspired by a number of recent higher education policy developments in Ireland, it takes a different approach to the utility debate that seems to plague discussions…

PISA claims that it can extend its reach from its current core subjects of Reading, Science, Maths and problem-solving. Yet given the requirement for high levels of reliability for PISA, especially in the light of its current high stakes character, proposed widening of its subject coverage cannot embrace some important aspects of the social and…