The history of knowledge and the history of education
ISSN: 0819-8691
Article publication date: 18 October 2022
Issue publication date: 22 November 2022
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this article is to introduce the themed section of History of Education Review on “The History of Knowledge and the History of Education”, comprising four empirical articles that together seek to bring the history of education into fuller dialogue with the approaches and methods of the nascent field of the history of knowledge.
Design/methodology/approach
This introductory article provides a broad overview of the history of knowledge for the benefit of historians of education, introduces the four themed section articles that follow, and draws out some of their overarching themes and concepts.
Findings
The history of knowledge concept of “arenas of knowledge” emerges as generative across the themed section. Authors also engage with problems of the legitimacy of knowledges, and with pedagogy as practice. In addition, focusing on colonial and postcolonial contexts raises reflexive questions about history of knowledge approaches that have so far largely been developed in European and North American scholarship.
Originality/value
The history of education has not previously been strongly represented among the fields that have gone into the formation of the history of knowledge as a synthetic, interdisciplinary approach to historical studies. Nor have historians of education much engaged with its distinguishing concepts and methodologies. The themed section also extends the history of knowledge itself through its strong focus on colonial and postcolonial histories.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This paper forms part of a special section “The history of knowledge and the history of education”, guest edited by Joel Barnes and Tamson Pietsch.
This paper and the themed section were supported by the Australian Research Council as part of Institutions of the Humanities Discovery project (DP170103252).
Citation
Barnes, J. and Pietsch, T. (2022), "The history of knowledge and the history of education", History of Education Review, Vol. 51 No. 2, pp. 109-122. https://doi.org/10.1108/HER-06-2022-0020
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
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