This short reflection explores both the challenges and potentials of teacher professional learning in contemporary times. It argues that the neoliberal logics of professional development as deployed in many contexts around the world limit and curtail the potential for teachers to engage in generative professional learning that fosters growth and…

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 past few years have seen a vigorous resurgence of public and academic debate and controversy regarding the British Empire, its place within Britain's own history and the legacies of British colonial practices. In spite of this reinvigorated discussion of empire, education and schooling seem to have been an area largely overlooked within the…

The Standing Working Group (SWG) "Observatory for the History of Education" was formed in the city of Porto (Portugal) during the International Standing Conference for the History of Education (ISCHE) in July 2019. Its essential purpose is to understand and reflect on the current theories and issues that are emerging from this field of…

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…

Isocrates is one of the most remarkable and influential figures in the history of human thought. The influence of his ideas in the history of historical writing, rhetoric, the visual arts, music, religion and theology, political science, philosophy and, above all, educational philosophy and practice in Europe, Australia, North America, North…

Purpose: Charlotte Brontë integrated her own and her sisters' traumatic boarding school experiences into her novel, Jane Eyre (1847) as a way of expressing her anger through autobiographical fiction. The aim is to link contemporary research into boarding school trauma to the relevant events, thereby identifying what she wrote as a testimony…

Studio music teachers have always been constant in Australian society, rarely recognised beyond their immediate surrounds. Building a 'connection' of students required advertising, primarily by word-of-mouth or via local press announcements. Few teachers placed individual advertisements in local papers. This changed in 1911 with the establishment…

As the story is often told, P4C was established after Matthew Lipman, then a professor of education at Columbia University, observed a deficiency in reasoning skills among his students and colleagues during the student protest of April 1968. Lipman pondered whether there might be a way to enhance the critical thinking skills of individuals through…

The Freedom School Movement originated at the nexus of the struggles for liberation and full citizenship. Beginning with the articulation of education as a means to freedom during the era of enslavement, the ideology behind Freedom Schools was an integral aspect of the long Black freedom struggle in the United States. Freedom Schools have…

Academic freedom is under threat across the globe and a wave of substantial academic freedom declines affects not only autocracies but also (liberal) democracies. However, although the development of academic freedom has generated scholarly attention, this article presents the first systematic conceptualization and measurement of academic freedom…

As we re-imagine the role and value of the university, we need to pose new questions about knowledge and institutionality at a moment of intersecting crises. This essay presents a case study of a university in Western Canada, one shaped by the impacts of intensive extraction from human and more-than-human beings and now facing the challenge of…

The University of British Columbia (UBC) opened Canada's first International House (I-House) in 1959 after a decade of activism from students and faculty. Students had demanded an I-House to help them find housing, and to ensure that "brotherhood may prevail," as the I-House motto promised. The I-House campaign received support from…

Spain's greatest modern philosopher, José Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955), wrote about many aspects of education including its aims; the education of children, nations, and elites; types of pedagogy; the reform of the university; and the challenges facing educators in an era of "triumphant plebeianism." The article examines all aspects of…

Our guiding thesis in this article is that the recent burgeoning discussion of differentiation in the context of education has to do with critiques of the globalization theories that have been popular since 1990. In doing so, however, these critically motivated discussions run the risk of overlooking the historical roots of differentiation, which…