Cultural history and education: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Schooling - Softcover

Popkewitz, Thomas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0415928060 ISBN 13: 9780415928069

Publisher: Routledge, 2001

Synopsis

Cultural History and Critical Studies of Education This collection challenges the field of historical studies in education to move away from historicism and introduces new ways to think about the politics of knowledge and the problems of change and reform in education. Full description

About this title

Review:

"A diverse collection of readings by scholars from three continents, this book develops a "cultural history" of education, the term being used to denote a Foucauldian, postmodern analysis of educational phenomena as cultural practices ... The authors reject prevailing explanations - historicist, neo-Marxist, among others - as simplistic."
-The Journal of Educational Thought

Synopsis:

This volume brings together a group of leading scholars in the study of the cultural history of education. These scholars, whose work represents a variety of national contexts from throughout Europe, Latin America, and North America, contribute to a growing body of work that seeks to re-think historical studies in education by integrating the study of knowledge systems, otherwise known as "discourses" into traditional intellectual history. The articles included investigate how these discourses "construct, shape, coordinate, and constitute social practices through which individuals reason about their participation and identity", in the words of Popkewitz. The collection challenges the field of historical studies in education to move away from the historicism that still dominates it, and thus introduces new ways to think about the politics of knowledge and the problems of change and reform in education. By understanding how knowledge gives rise to particular constructs of "the child", "the teacher", "the school" and "the community", the essays open up space for critique and other possibilities of action. The essays are divided into three sections.

The first is an introductory chapter written by the editors that explores the contributions of cultural history to the study of education. The second section examines the construction of historical narratives by exploring traditions of research in Europe and the Americas. Finally, the third section offers case studies of education that demonstrate how these approaches can be deployed and examines the relationship between knowledge and power.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0415928060
• ISBN 13: 9780415928069
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384