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…

Brian Simon (1915-2002), an influential Marxist historian and educationist in Britain, had been campaigning for comprehensive education from the late 1940s to the 1960s. In the early 1970s, followed by a rapid expansion of comprehensive schools since the issue of Circular 10/65, comprehensive education was under attack by the Conservative…

Brian Simon (1915-2002), a Marxist historian and educationist in Britain, was a leading pioneer in the comprehensive education movement. Although Simon's great contribution to this movement has been recognised by historians, the development of Simon's ideas and his actions in this movement have hardly been examined in great depth by previous…

The idea that children need to be exposed to stories of patriotic heroes has again surfaced in recent legislative activity surrounding education. Often, this impulse aligns with a conservative, moralizing vision of teaching history: the flaws of past historical figures should be minimized for the purposes of national pride and traditional virtues.…

This paper revisits the main thoughts of the Filipino historian and social critic Renato Constantino on the role of education in the formation of a neocolonial and postcolonial consciousness. It suggests that Constantino's critical stance towards education embodies a type of philosophizing about education that centers on the problematization of…

Examining developments in the history of education in Africa as a whole raises far-reaching philosophical, anthropological and historical questions about what Africa is and whether such a history is even possible "as such." The course of that history and its tributaries wend around social theories; its dominant issues, tensions and gaps…

Three fundamental scientific works on the pedagogy of Comenius will be considered from new perspectives. These are the works of the East German comeniologist Franz Hofmann and the two West German comeniologists, Klaus Schaller and Andreas Lischewski. Germany has produced numerous scientific analyses of Comenius since 1945, but these three…

In this article, the authors trace their writing instruction through the 2016-2018 school years. They begin by describing how they framed the foundations of historical work and the importance of this framing for the later production of historical narratives. Then, the authors discuss how they integrated traditional literacy instruction with…

This article offers a critical review of the literature on how race played into the historical development of pedagogical progressivism in the late-19th and early-20th-century United States. While many historians have focused on the overt/covert racism inherent in much of progressive pedagogy as espoused by White educators, others have highlighted…

One neglected aspect of the Gorbachev perestroika era in Russia [1985-1991] was the remarkable "pedagogy of cooperation" (or pedagogika sotrudnichestva) movement, a renewal of the experimental tradition in education. Central to this was Edward Dneprov, a brilliant and forceful individual whose views and personality substantially shaped…

The article provides a new interpretation of the most widely cited essay on historical consciousness, Friedrich Nietzsche's 'On the use and abuse of history for life' from 1874, reconnecting it to current debates in educational science and the role of the historian and educator in a post-colonial situation. It reminds us how historical…

This paper examines controversy concerning the televising of the documentary "This Is the BBC" (1959) and situates the dispute in a wider cultural context of media criticism of Oxford University in particular, and academic educators more generally, in the period 1956-1960. Technological change, increased television ownership and a…

This article discusses the conceptualisation, organisation and philosophical orientation of academic history culture in UK higher education. It problematises the extent to which a dominant history culture in UK universities implies and uncritically reproduces normative understandings about the subject; about its epistemological standing,…

Much of the conversation about inequality in education and society problematizes poor and minority populations, rather than tackling systemic issues. It helps to address these issues through using a lens that exposes dominant ideology. This article examines the exclusion of scholars outside of the ideological center. It also suggests that…

In the current culture of regulation in higher education and, in turn, the history discipline, it is timely to problematize discipline standards in relation to student agency and creativity. This article argues that through the inclusion of a critical orientation and engaged pedagogy, historians have the opportunity to bring a more agentic…