More than an Antidote Against Amnesia... Some historiographical, theoretical, and methodological refl ections on the history of education

Abstract

Abstract: As the title suggests, this article is a theoretical and methodological one, which looks mainly at the conceptualization of the history of education as a fi eld of research. In doing so, it is also partly historiographical, as it deals with the history of pedagogical historiography, concentrating on the way in which the history of education was written and conceptualized in former times. Th e general idea is that the discipline has shifted over the years from an “over-educationalized” point of view towards a more historical one – a paradigm shift that has been labelled, moreover, as a “new cultural history of education”. On the basis of earlier studies, some implications of this evolution are discussed further in this paper: the relevance of the discipline, the development of appropriate conceptual tools, and the use of sources for the history of education. Keywords: pedagogical historiography, theory and methodology of history of education, relevance, conceptual tools, sources.