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…

In the 1960s, people across the West started imagining that they were in a societal transition. Crucially, in these future-oriented discussions, social class was often transformed into educational attainment as the main dividing line. These future studies garnered attention across the political spectrum, including the Swedish Conservative Party.…

This article seeks to introduce a new historical explanation as to why left-wing working-class women engaged in liberal, middle-class organisations during the first wave of feminism. The article specifically deals with middle-class associations and clubs that had educational purposes. Instead of focusing on the larger explanatory scheme of the…

This article looks at how social movements in francophone Belgium shaped the institutional contours of adult education 'from below'. It focuses on the integral role played by progressive social movements in the creation of a regional state-based system of adult education in 1976, known as the "Service de l'Éducation Permanente" (SdEP).…

This study examines liberal arts education model influences in Vietnam's higher education throughout the Vietnam War (1965-1975). Liberal arts education advanced due to the necessity to match market norms and unite qualified people to oppose communism, as well as US specialists. This research article uses source materials from the former Republic…

Current accounts of the British New Right in education during the 1980s generally begin with an observation of the tensions between its neoliberal and neoconservative wings. The subsequent task becomes to explain how they could be reconciled in bringing about the fiercest reform of education in history. This article reverses the interpretive…

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…

Through an analysis of Allahabad University's functioning, this article argues that independent India's ideas of federalism reimagined university education. New visions of the educated person - linked to ideas about the ideal citizen - changed the kinds of disciplines and universities being funded. With support from industrial elites to buttress…

Research on student-centred learning lacks analyses of sociohistorical developments. This article contributes to this niche by developing a sociologically designed draft of its major upheavals. Drawing on Foucault's genesis of governmental rationalities, it links the emergence of educational subjectivations to processes of structural change.…

A long tradition of both State and religious interest and support characterised provision for education on the island of Ireland from the 1700s. Following the partition of Ireland in the 1920s, the newly created political entities of the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland forged separate and distinct education policy trajectories that largely…

By the time political independence was achieved in the 1920s in Ireland, its national education system over the previous century had been underpinned by imperial ideology and values. In the early 1920s, curriculum planning was influenced by the post-revolutionary and post-war context and, unsurprisingly, placed an emphasis on building nationhood…

This paper explores the process of negotiation, lobbying and parliamentary debate that brought the Irish universities legislation into being in the early 1900s against a backdrop of political and religious conflict. The complex interaction between British ministers and Catholic bishops before and throughout the legislative process dictated the…

This study aims to examine communist education in occupied Greece (1944-1945) in combination with anti-communist education in Greece in the Cold War era (1950-1967). It discusses, on the one hand, the intentions of the Popular Liberation Front/the Greek Communist Party in establishing Slavic-Macedonian schools and their features and, on the other,…

This paper examines how government approaches to education were contested by Aboriginal communities in the late 1930s, through organised political actions designed in part to ensure access to the same standard of education and schooling available to non-Aboriginal people. It explores some of the ways that Aboriginal campaigns for education were…

This article sketches the emergence, institutionalisation and emergent issues and challenges in the scholarly field of history of education in Latin America. It argues that these processes have been closely linked with nation-building and the decisive role of national politics. The impact of national politics is herein called a 'beneficial…