This historical inquiry analyzes the appeal of Harold Rugg's social reconstructionist social studies for Alberta educators in the 1930s. It demonstrates why and how this small, rural province adapted Rugg's curriculum, a program and resources he developed to guide American students' understanding of what he called "the American problem."…

Historians of education are well placed to engage in applied historical approaches providing authoritative evidence of the past to inform policy and practice. This article is based on the presidential keynote delivered at the History of Education Society (UK) annual conference in 2019. As such it reflects on possible future directions for the…

This paper describes three eras of state building and higher education in Canada. Higher education in 'Old Canada' before WWII was mostly a small collection of colleges that bore imprints of American and British institutions and provided personnel needed to develop a vast and sparsely populated territory. The 'Hey Day of Canadian Nationalism' from…

This paper provides a historic overview of the crises that have faced the Canadian professoriate since the 1950s. Historic periodization is used to identify the eras, defined by broader societal movements, in which the nature of academic work in Canada has changed. Key narratives of crisis are identified, including: the post-WWII perspective that…

This article considers the theoretical argument of anthropologist Tim Ingold, that the denial and subsequent encasement of bare feet in footwear was a critical characteristic of the development of modern societies, in exploring three aspects of feet, footwork, and footwear in the history of the modern school. First, the material conditions of feet…

This article examines the transformation over time of alternative secondary school programs in Vancouver, British Columbia (BC). It approaches school choice from a historical standpoint, to make the point that today's choice policies are neither entirely recent nor entirely neoliberal in origin. Instead, they are built on past precedent and policy…

This article focuses on some of the broader complexities of citizenship in Quebec, paying particular attention to the Quiet Revolution and Bill 60 (Charter of Values) in order to understand how these historical events shape contemporary politics. Using a case study of the Ethics and Religious Culture Program (ERC) in Quebec, we seek to highlight…

Transitional justice and education both occupy increasingly prominent space on the international peacebuilding agenda, though less is known about the ways they might reinforce one another to contribute towards peace. This paper presents a cross-national analysis of truth commission (TC) reports spanning 1980-2015, exploring the range of…

"New Directions of STEM Research and Learning in the World Ranking Movement: A Comparative Perspective" illustrates new directions of STEM higher education from the perspective of twenty-first century types of learning outcomes and focuses on need for developing an interdisciplinary approach to STEM higher education reform. It provides…

Postmodern university education should provide students with, among other things, a third eye of wisdom to see the world and themselves. The enculturation of Buddhism in university education serves to realize this grand aim. This paper first examines the historical development and practical significance of the Buddhist components in both Chinese…

There is a good deal of ongoing debate about the effects and impacts of globalisation. Many educational theorists (e.g., Meyer et al., 1997) have argued that there is a world systems model at work (see Wallerstein, 2004). And we would agree that a convergent global rhetoric for education has emerged in the neoliberal period. However, whilst at the…

This article attempts to demonstrate similarities between the socioeconomic, cultural, and religious contexts of 18th-century England and 21st-century Canada. Revisiting the Sunday School movement in 18th-century England provides insights for the development of renewed Sunday School models in the current Canadian context of transnational…

Over the past two decades there has been a growing interest in the exploration of "transnational history". This work has focused in general on understanding the "movement, ebb and circulation" of ideas across borders and in particular on the introduction, transmission, reception and appropriation of ideas through the process of…

In this journal's Fall 2009 issue, the Forum section included an article by Gordon Selman and Mark Selman arguing that although Canadian adult education had existed as a social movement in the middle part of the 20th century, it is no longer a social movement. They also speculated about the causes of this change. In the Spring 2011 issue, Tom…

This paper considers the history of Québec's higher education system and the reforms that have contributed to the role of education in the province. Québec's education system has repeatedly been a site for social and political transformation; most recently, reevaluation of education's role in the province has revealed a tension between…