Histories of education and the 'unending dialogue': a reflective account of 21st century historical practice.

Abstract

«History consists of a corpus of ascertained facts. The facts are available to the historian in documents, inscriptions and so on, like fish on the fishmonger’s slab. The historian collects them, takes them home, and cooks and serves them in whatever
style appeals to him [or her]»
So wrote E.H. Carr in «What is History?» some sixty years ago. Carr recognised that history was “an unending dialogue between the past and the present.” It is the role of historians to ask questions, gather and interpret evidence, and bring together the facts that belong together. In short, the past is the past and history is made in the present by historians. If all histories are constructed in the present, it should come as no surprise that each new generation of historians ask new questions of the past. These new questions align with the different forms of history (economic, social, cultural, educational, sensory, postcolonial, public, reparative and so on) that make up the collective historical enterprise. How history is told, the reflexive processes of making history, is central to the “unending dialogue”. The present paper will use a case study to explore the “unending dialogue” by documenting historical practice from a particular intellectual, institutional, and geographical perspective and reflecting upon ways of knowing, the associated research connections, relationships and networks, and the products of research. In the process it will address histories of education in the past and the present and identify possible histories of education futures.