Abstract

The history of education in the modern world is a history of transnational and cross-cultural influence. This collection explores those influences in (post) colonial and indigenous education across different geographical contexts. The authors emphasize how local actors constructed their own adaptation of colonialism, identity, and autonomy, creating a multi-centric and entangled history of modern education. In both formal as well as informal aspects, they demonstrate that transnational and cross-cultural exchanges in education have been characterized by appropriation, re-contextualization, and hybridization, thereby rejecting traditional notions of colonial education as an export of pre-existing metropolitan educational systems. 

Barnita Bagchi teaches and researches Comparative Literature at Utrecht University, Netherlands. Her numerous publications include many articles and an edited volume, The Politics of the (Im)possible: Utopia and Dystopia Reconsidered (2012) and a co-edited volume with A.K. Bagchi and D. Sinha, Webs of History: Information, Communication, and Technology from Early to Postcolonial India (2005).

Eckhardt Fuchs is Professor of History of Education/Comparative Education at the Technical University of Braunschweig and Deputy Director of the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research in Braunschweig (Germany). He is currently President of the International Standing Conference for the History of Education. He has published widely on transnational and global history of education, textbook and curriculum studies, and history of human sciences including Transnationalizing the History of Education (2012) and Contextualizing School Textbook Revision (2010).

“…the book is an elegant, well-researched and articulate collection of essays that attempt to take seriously the need to incorporate the transnational as one more dimension of the history of education. This makes it a unique and pioneering work.” · Paedagogica Historica

“…builds an essential bridge for future scholarship in educational history.” · Comparative Education Review

“…a truly international volume in terms both of its authorship and its contents… With its interdisciplinary intent and desire to evolve fresh understandings of the way ideas are transferred, this book offers much to the scholar and belies many of the more contemporary simplistic understandings of assimilation and cultural integration." · Cambridge Journal of Education

“Rarely does a book come along that simultaneously fills lacunae in multiple areas of education research; ambitious in scope Connecting Histories of Education does precisely that… [It] provides nuance to what for too long has been regarded as a one-way relationship, where the colonizers spread their tentacles of influence through the colonized world. While this is likely not the first time this argument has been made, what is novel here is its application to histories of education, and the use of a transnational lens to reflect and refract aspects of this relationship, revealing a multifaceted web of mutual influence. If anything, the work feels like a first step, an overdue contribution to the subfields of education research.” · Historical Studies in Education

“…makes a major contribution to the fields of educational, colonial and transnational histories… The introductory and concluding essays draw the book together well. This collection greatly extends our knowledge and approaches and provides a platform for further work. As such it fills a significant gap in a number of fields.” · Joyce Goodman, University of Winchester

Kate Rousmaniere is Professor of Social Foundations of Education in the Department of Educational Leadership at Miami University, Ohio, and past president of the International Standing Conference for the History of Education. She has researched and published on the history of American teachers and school principals, gender in education, and methodologies in the social history of education.