Education was a crucial transfer point within modern imperial projects; it was a key domain through which relationships between the state, religious institutions, various agents of reform, and Indigenous, colonised and enslaved peoples were negotiated. Exploring a range of case studies, this article highlights the multiple trajectories of colonial…

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…

The nineteenth century has been characterised as a period in which mathematics proper acquired a disciplinary and institutional autonomy. This article explores the intertwining of three intersecting worlds of the history of mathematics inasmuch as it engages with historicising the pursuit of novel mathematics, the history of disciplines and, more…

Skill development is the key instrument for achieving the target of Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 8 in developing countries. The development of human capital in India is of global importance, given the prospects of India being the fastest growing economy of the world and poised to be the country with the largest working-age population in the…

In India, the history of education has traversed a unique path in the last hundred years. The political influences guided the discipline, but at the same time, they were also contested and critiqued in equal measures. History of education as a discipline went through four distinct phases. The first phase coincided with the last stage of the…

The paper explores the historical significance of Hindu College Calcutta, a key institution in colonial India's intellectual discourse. Established in the early 19th century, the college faced numerous challenges, including opposition from conservative factions and financial constraints, as it evolved into a hub for education and independent…

The educationists and the statesmen of different eras have casted mathematics education in different forms, and it has swayed to and from the elites to the commoners several times. The vision of the educationists always took tolls on mathematics curriculum, which survived the maximum change during the past one century. Several unorganized or…

This article examines the historical backdrop to the involvement of teaching Sisters in convent schooling for girls in India and the Islamic Republic of Pakistan, since the late nineteenth century. It then explores how, as a consequence of a range of social changes, leadership in convent schools has changed in both countries, across the twentieth…

The world we live in today compels what Ruben Gaztambide-Fernandes describes as 'intensified encounters with difference' constituted by contradictory and paradoxical movements. A decolonial approach to constructing global imaginaries centres on reconfiguring human relations in ways that unmask complicity and denial and further healing, justice and…

This article advances an explanation for the dynamics of agencies and institutions responsible for the formation of skills in nineteenth-century western India. It shows that multiple agencies - artisanal apprenticeship, indigenous schools, new "bazar" schools, modern vernacular and English schools, and institutes for technical,…

Maria Montessori arrived in India in 1939 to conduct the first training course on the Asian continent. Thus began Montessori's extended stay in India. She wrote and published "The Absorbent Mind," crystallized the Elementary curriculum, and developed the theory of "Planes of Development" as the basis for the curriculum from…

Thomas Babington Macaulay's 1835 minute on Indian education is widely held to be representative of the views which underpinned the English East India Company's replacement of Persian with English as the official language of administration in India in 1837, and the promotion of English and Indian vernacular languages as part of colonial educational…

The paper explores India's response in the face of the COVID-19 educational crisis compared to the educational thoughts and experiments of Rabindranath Tagore, Asia's first Nobel laureate and an avid educator. The context of the study is formulated from the perception that the past and present are interconnected; hence examining similarities and…

This paper builds upon the understanding that the knowledge of traditional design concepts, particularly the "ma??ala," is relevant for contemporary design education. The significance of traditional principles and practices of design has been undermined by contemporary systems of education. The theory and practice of the philosophy of…

In times of crisis it is good to look back. Not only is it comforting, but better understanding of events in our past can inform decision-making and help us find direction at uncertain times. COVID-19 may have presented new challenges, but this exploration of historical disruptions to school exams highlights themes and a recognisable human spirit.…