The History of Education as History of Knowledge: Exploring Methods and Sources

The History of Education as History of Knowledge brings together international scholars to explore how the emerging field of the history of knowledge can enrich the well-established history of education. While recent research in the history of knowledge has examined actors, practices, and institutions of knowledge, this volume is the first to focus systematically on sources and methodologies within the context of education.

Covering the modern period, the chapters investigate a wide range of case studies―from kindergartens and teachers’ associations to philosophical societies and transnational transfers of solidified knowledge. Together they demonstrate how shifting perspectives on sources and methods allow historians to examine knowledge in its plural forms: produced, mediated, contested, and circulated within and beyond educational institutions.

Emphasising how knowledge is bound up with power relations, this book shows how hierarchies of gender, class, race, and ethnicity have shaped what counts as educational knowledge and how it is transmitted. In addition to empirical studies, contributors critically reflect on methodological approaches drawn from intellectual history, sociology of knowledge, praxeology, discourse analysis, and science and technology studies.

This book will appeal to scholars, students, and teachers in educational history, the history of knowledge, and related fields and will serve as an orientation for early-career researchers.

Joel Barnes is an honorary research fellow in the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry at the University of Queensland, Australia. He works on histories of evolutionary science, education, and universities.

Jona T. Garz is a senior research and teaching assistant at the University of Zurich. His work explores the history of knowledge in education, psychology, and medicine. He is currently writing a history of self-directed learning in the twentieth century.

Fanny Isensee is a postdoctoral researcher at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Germany. Her research interests include the history of school organisation, school routes and school transportation, small forms in education as well as the connections between history of knowledge and history of education.

Joakim Landahl is a professor of education at Stockholm University, Sweden. Specialised in the history of education, his current research includes the history of international assessments, the relationships between parents and schools, and the school student movement.

Björn Lundberg is an associate professor of history at Lund University, Sweden. His research focuses on the history of childhood and youth and the history of knowledge. He coordinates the focus area Knowledge and Education at the Lund Centre for the History of Knowledge (LUCK).

Daniel Töpper is a postdoctoral researcher at Humboldt University zu Berlin, Germany. His research interests include the history of school administration, school supervision, and the grammar of schooling. He is currently investigating the emergence of sex education as cross-curricular theme in the 20th century.