This essay critically examines the so-called 'unnaturalness' of historical thinking. I identify and analyse three lines of argument frequently invoked by historians to defend the validity of historical inquiry in response to scepticism, which is often couched in postmodern terms. In doing so, I highlight that these lines of argument are predicated…

Music is ever expanding and growing. It feels as if there is a new artist, genre, technology, or something happening in the broad world of music on a daily basis. Our ability to access all sorts of music and musical information has never been easier. Running parallel to this ever-changing landscape of music and music-making is a similar pattern of…

In March 2022 the United Kingdom (UK) government published "Inclusive Britain: the government's response to the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities." This accepts the 'bad apple' understanding of racism but is incurious as to the historical context and existing power relations shaping racist attitudes, thereby creating a tension…

This article deals with the study of natural sciences in non-compulsory secondary education from the end of the nineteenth century until the educational reform in 1970. We begin with a critical review of the ways in which the secondary education curriculum and textbooks of this period conveyed established knowledge about natural sciences. We then…

The present study aims on the one hand to analyze North American curriculum reforms with a focus on the twentieth century, and on the other hand it aims to demonstrate the implications of Weberian rationality theory for century-specific curriculum theory and practice. At the theoretical level the study shows the implications of Weberian…

This paper reviews one of the first systematic programs in the history of art, developed in 1877 by P.V. Pavlov (1823-1895), professor of history at the University of St. Vladimir in Kiev. It is stressed that P. Pavlov's program is a rare case of preserving the original curriculum of educational courses developed by Russian art historians of the…

The Zimbabwean crisis, which began around 2000, had serious ramifications for the teaching of history in the country, especially in high schools. This study investigated the impact of Zimbabwe's economic and political crisis on the production of syllabi for teaching history at high schools. It analyses the hurried changes in the secondary school…

World history curriculum in the United States is Eurocentric. By downplaying contributions from non-Western societies, state standards of world history in the modern era create a narrative of the West as a driver of progress and Europe as the primary protagonist of global events. Research further shows social studies teachers rely on such state…

Different and competing conceptions of knowledge have recently been the focus of debate in education, especially art education. The cognitive science conception of knowledge as information processing and storage in long-term memory is especially prominent in educational policy. By contrast, within writing that is directly about art education,…

Over the past 20 years, "transnational knowledge circulation" has become a powerful theoretical construct for use by historians of education seeking to identify, characterise, and account for the nature of ideas and practices operating in one constituency that had their origins elsewhere. Research of this nature is very limited in…

Post-Soviet republics have undergone a variety of political and economic changes following the collapse of the Soviet Union to transform themselves into market-oriented open societies. Transitional countries have faced various problems, including social inequality, political unrest, economic hardship, and ethnic conflict. The countries had to…

The development of critical sociohistorical knowledge is needed to assist teachers in negotiating and deconstructing the relevance of race, racism, and black history in global-themed social studies courses. Drawing from Diaspora Literacy as theory and Critical Studyin' as method, I situate Afro-Latin humanity within educational research relevant…

This article explores representations of problems regarding citizenship in changes to the syllabi of social studies and history in Swedish secondary schools between 1970 and 2017. Previous research has shown that the general educational discourse changed from an emphasis on the societal needs of committed citizens to an emphasis on the…

This report, intended primarily for civics reformers considering how best to defend and improve traditional American civics education, surveys a selection of different civics offerings, both the traditional and the radical. Surveyed providers include organizations such as the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life, We the People, and Hillsdale…

This article analyzes a popular arithmetic textbook, "Arithmetic: For the Use of Schools and Colleges," authored by Jadav Chandra Chakravarti, to examine the contents and pedagogies in the text for how mathematics was taught and learned from the end of the nineteenth century through the first half of the twentieth century in colonial…