2010
Students, Volunteering and Social Action 1960-2000: A witness seminar 24 June 2010, 2.15 - 5.15pm, Room 12, NCVO, Regent’s Wharf, London.
A witness seminar brings together key individuals in a chosen field to discuss and debate issues as they remember them. This witness seminar will consider the history of volunteering and social action by university students in Britain between1960 and 2000. Topics will include volunteering, community action and campaigning by students and the role of NUS, SCADU and Student Volunteering England. Confirmed witnesses include Alan Barr and Mike Nussbaum - 1960s; Mike Day, Nick Plant and Ray Phillips - 1970s; Mike Aitken, Erica Dunmow and Debbie Ellen - 1980s; Kelly Drake and Graham Allcott - 1990s. This is part of the Students, Volunteering and Social Action: Histories and Policies project convened by Student Hubs and the Institute for Volunteering Research. For more details and to register see www.studentvolunteeringhistory.org
24-26 June, Galway, Ireland, conference on Education and Empire.
The aim of this interdisciplinary conference is to explore the role of education in shaping, promoting, and challenging imperial and colonial ideologies, institutions and processes throughout the modern world. We invite papers that address the following themes: * the role of educational institutions, ranging from primary schools to institutions of higher education such as universities, missionary colleges, engineering and medical schools, and so on, in shaping imperial, colonial and global processes; * the relationship between imperialism, colonialism and the development of modern knowledge systems, including new disciplines and new techniques of rule, particularly in areas such as science; * the development of curriculum innovation to meet the needs of empire; * education about imperial history (during and after empire); * education and imperial and (post-)colonial models of childhood; * education and the creation of professional diasporas; * types and patterns of knowledge transfer within the framework of empire, including publications and broadcasting relating to education, science, technology, health and government, both between metropoles and colonies and within and between colonies; * the insecurities or failures of imperial and colonial educational and knowledge practices, as well as of resistances to these practices; * transitions in educational practice, either from pre-colonial to colonial or colonial to post-colonial eras. Since this conference is being in part funded through a grant provided by the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences to an inter-university group to explore the relationship between empire and higher education in Ireland, papers are especially invited for a strand exploring the particularity of Irish institutions of higher education in shaping the above processes, and of the role of higher education in shaping Ireland's ambiguous coloniality. Papers should be no longer than 20 minutes. Please submit an abstract, of not more than 300 words, to Fiona Bateman and Muireann O'Cinneide at www.conference.ie/ before 31 January 2010.
18-20 August, Leuven, Belgium, History of History Education and the Temptations of Modernity.
History education will relate to the modern age - or there will be no history education: this appears to be the rule for most Western societies. In the humanistic educational tradition, the past served to present pupils with concrete exempla for decent behaviour in contemporary society. And ever since history became a separate subject in secondary education in most European countries, from the late 18th century onwards, the present has functioned as a form of social security for history education. The history lesson is supposed to guard against errors from the past and offer insight into the attainments of contemporary society. But does the present also throw sand in the eyes of educational historians? The longing for up-to-date history education is so powerful that it seems to colour historians' views. They do not always succeed in placing this longing in a historical perspective. Did enlightenment thinkers have in mind the same sort of focus on the present as the architects of the nationally organised history education of the late nineteenth century, for example? Or how have the two world wars affected the longing for modern history education in the twentieth century? And has the period since the 1960s seen unprecedented use of history education to serve the needs of contemporary, post-colonial democracy? How has each of these longings been translated into a specific, time-related history education? The aim of the 'Longing for the present' conference is to historicise the longing for modern or contemporary history education - not only by examining the existing historiography of secondary education (1), but also by exploring new forms of research into the history of history education (2 and 3). (1) The history of the school subject tends to be read as a story of increasing progress, of education that became more and more open and true to life. Erroneous views in textbooks are identified, outmoded teaching methods are scrutinised. Do contemporary social and educational ideals serve in such a reading as the measure by which the history of history education is assessed? In other words, does the historiography of education and history education share the premises of the contemporary approach to the school subject? From this point of view, at what stage did history education become 'modern', and what exactly does such modernity consist of? Do historians of education think in terms of what had 'not yet' been done and what had 'already' been achieved? (2) The central question of this conference implies an urgent need for a new reading of the classical media of history education: textbooks, curricula and other texts and discussions in which expectations about the ideal history education were made explicit. These sources are often considered in terms of the view they imply of a given theme. However, it is far less common for them to be studied as texts with a specific, time-related narratio and a corresponding (or incongruous) rhetorical approach. In the light of the conference's theme, it would for example be worth investigating the status of the end of history in textbooks. The time-scale within which historical explanations were sought for phenomena may also throw interesting light on the changing position of the present in the history of history education. Studies of the expressed or implied views of specific themes have thus far failed to take sufficient account of the way in which history education has come about through a complex dynamic of didactic choices. For example, the growing didactically inspired paratext in a textbook is just as much a part of the historical content that is presented as the classical 'reading text'. Didactic choices colour the content and form of history education. This seems obvious, but the historiographical significance of this point is rarely considered by historians. (3) This conference not only aims to read the classical media in a new fashion way. It is also intends to encourage the exploration of new sources. How have ideals concerning socially relevant history lessons been translated into contemporary educational practice? What role have current affairs and the present played in actual history lessons? Have pupils been asked about the present or the future in their final examinations, or have these ambitions - to the extent that they have been made explicit - remained confined to curricula and institutionalised educational rhetoric? Research based on archives and oral history gives an insight into the tension between normative discourse and everyday practice. A more anthropological approach of this kind to history education may serve to make concrete the historical multiplicity (or partial absence) of the longing for 'modern' history education. We welcome proposals for 20-minutes presentations in English. Please send your proposal (300 words), together with your contact data, in a separate Word or PDF document to longing.for.the.present@arts.kuleuven.be, before October 15, 2009. Notification of acceptance will be given by December 18, 2009. The speakers who have been selected will be asked to submit a more elaborate abstract of their lecture (1500 words) before June 1, 2010. For more information, check http://longingforthepresent.wordpress.com/. The conference website will be updated regularly, as more information becomes available. A selection of the conference papers will be published. Confirmed Speakers: Annie Bruter, Institut national de recherche pédagogique de Paris; Eckhardt Fuchs, Georg-Eckert-Institut für internationale Schulbuchforschung; Maria Grever, Erasmus University Rotterdam; Evelyne Héry, Université de Rennes; Ed Jonker, University of Utrecht; Daniel Lindmark, University of Umea; Peter Seixas, University of British Columbia. Longing for the Present c/o Matthias Meirlaen, University of Leuven Department of History, Blijde-Inkomststraat 21 - postoffice Box 3307, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium. phone: +32 16 32 49 69 Email: longing.for.the.present@arts.kuleuven.be. Visit the website at http://longingforthepresent.wordpress.com/
26-27 August, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. International Standing Conference for the History of Education (ISCHE) on the theme of Discoveries of Childhood in History at the 21st International Congress of Historical Sciences (ICHS), of which ISCHE is an Affiliated International Organisation. Details at www.ichs2010.org/register.asp).
Canadian History of Education Association 16th Biennial Conference, Novotel (North York) Hotel, 21-24 October 2010, Toronto, Ontario, Canada: Education in Tough Times - Tough Times in Education
CHEA/ACHÉ invites proposals for its 2010 conference in Toronto (21-24 October), sponsored by the Faculty of Education at York University. The conference theme is "Education in Tough Times - Tough Times in Education." In tough economic times, or other times of difficulty, people often turn to education as a means of enduring, or overcoming adversity. Yet education itself seems to face perpetual tough times, moving from (real or invented) crisis to crisis. What's more, education is itself a crisis of knowledge and representation, and educational discourses on questions of authority and discipline tend to swirl around the dichotomy between toughness and compliance. Advocates of curriculum change, for example, call for 'tough new standards.' 'Zero-tolerance' policies demonstrate educators' willingness to 'get tough' on school violence.
CHEA/ACHÉ welcomes proposals on all subjects in the history of education from graduate students, independent scholars, and from new and established scholars. We especially encourage individual papers or panels that address - from an historical perspective - any aspect of education or schooling as it relates to difficult times, crisis, adversity, or 'toughness.' Potential themes include, but are not limited, to:
• Education in 'tough times': economic depression, war, revolution, social upheaval.
• Crisis in education: representations of learning as crisis, learning from knowledge of historical trauma, history curriculum as crisis of representation.
• ''Toughness' at school: discipline, curriculum, bullying, and school violence.
• 'Toughness,' education and identity: gender, class, race, sexuality, and disability.
• Surviving 'tough times': education and social, economic, or political reconstruction.
CHEA/ACHÉ also invites contributions to a new conference feature: the '1000 words in a picture' session. We welcome proposed presentations that consist of a picture of an artifact, a place or an image and a short paper (maximum 1000 words) analyzing the picture's historical significance and relevance to the conference themes. The picture will be projected during the delivery of the paper. This special session will take place during the opening of the Conference on the evening of October 21st.
Submission process: For all individual and panel proposals, please include the name, institutional affiliation (if any), contact address and email of the presenter, a 250 word abstract, as well as a one-page curriculum vitae that provides details such as publications and current research interests. For panel proposals, please include this information for each presenter, as well as a one-page proposal for the entire session. Proposals should be submitted by email in a Word or Word compatible file to cheasubmissions2010@edu.yorku.ca no later than January 8, 2010. Inquiries should be directed to Paul Axelrod, President, CHEA/ACHÉ, at paxelrod@edu.yorku.ca. Information on the Canadian History of Education Association can be found at
http://www.ache-chea.ca. CHEA/ACHE looks forward to welcoming you to Toronto!
