Network
NW 17. Histories of Education
Title
Past visions of learning for the future: Tensions and possibilities
Abstract
ECER 2027’s call invites us to consider “ways in which various forms of learning are conceptualized, organized, and justified in education”. It also references in particular visions of futures. Historical, temporally complexified perspectives are important in this endeavour, calling on us to question how past visions of learning for the future have been shaped by specific past social, cultural, economic, and political factors, as well as by individual learners. Our special call welcomes exploration and questioning of how visions of learning for the future have been conceptualised, who it has benefited, and how it has shaped education policies and practices.
The Call
We welcome submissions in the forms of individual papers, symposia, research workshops, panel discussions and posters which address one or more of the following questions/themes. We are open to a range of historically engaged approaches and strategies, including multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary ones. Our special call invites theoretically and methodologically daring submissions based on established perspectives and new trends. Network 17 is particularly interested in novel approaches to constructing research topics and exploring lesser-known sources to deepen our understanding of body-sensory as well as intellectual experiences related to learning. References are offered below as starting points and inspiration. We encourage participants to explore:
Learning, individuals, and communities
Historical and temporal contributions can contribute to our understanding of highly individualised contexts of learning for the future, as well as communal ones. We invite contributions which explore possibilities of dialogue and synergy between individual and collective goals for learning, potential tensions between experiences and demands of individual learning and a learning community, and tensions and intersections between different learning communities. We also invite critical attention to the assumed benefits of a community and its impact on different individuals. Is a learning community just productive or also potentially dangerous? Are communities open to all people and to new ideas?
Learning, technology, and humans
We invite historical, temporally enriched perspectives on the impact of technology on learners and learning. We invite contributions that address questions about different experiences of technology use, and how learning has changed (or not changed) due to interaction with technological innovation. Technology, with its respective impacts, raises important ethical and existential questions. What have been past ethical debates around technology and its impacts? How have teachers navigated balancing risks and benefits? Do past visions about technology eliminating the need for human teachers reverberate in the present?
Learning democracy
Learning for a democratic future has been formalised through curricula and texts, but also undertaken in informal and non-institutional contexts. Past attempts at conceptualising and operationalising such learning raise important questions. What is democracy? What is the role of the teacher in learning? Does democratic education have to replicate democratic procedures? What are the limits of democratic initiatives in authoritarian or politically unstable contexts? Does democracy demand measurement and regulation, and what is the impact of such a demand on learners and learning?
Learning future sustainability
We invite critical exploration of past experiments in learning that have aimed to create a socially and environmentally stable future. How have different learning contexts and approaches embodied ideas of sustainability (for example, inclusive practices, as well as ‘return to nature’)? Have ideas of sustainability been universalised or context specific? We also welcome exploration of tensions between hope and fear in relation to past visions of sustainability, between anxieties about a sustainable future and environmental and species survival, and hopes of imagining and bringing into being a desirable future.
Contact Person(s)
Tamar Groves (tamargroves(at)unex.es)
Susannah Wright (susannahwright(at)brookes.ac.uk)
Ana Luisa Paz (apaz(at)ie.ulisboa.pt)
Geert Thyssen (geert.thyssen(at)hvl.no)
References
Aldrich, R. (2010) Education for survival: An historical perspective. History of Education, 39(1): 1-14.
Baker, Z. and Gehlbach, H. (2022). Policy dialogue: Teaching environmentalism on a warming planet. History of Education Quarterly, 62(1): 107-119.
Charkin, E. (2014). “Building the natural society of the future”: The Peckham Experiment (1943) as an anarchist account of childhood and education. Paedagogica Historica, 50(4): 414-432.
Conde, J. J. (2025) Education for sustainable development: The iron fist of capitalism in the era of climate emergency. Australian Journal of Environmental Education, 41(4): 985-1002.
Flury, C., & Geiss, M. (2024). Making a case for computer literacy: The German Informatics Society and the emerging field of computer education, late 1960s–early 1990s. Paedagogica Historica, 61(5), 815–833.
Gardner, P. (2007). The life-long draught: From learning to teaching and back.History of Education, 36(4): 465-482.
González-Delgado, M., Lorenzo, M.F. and Machado-Trujillo, C. (2020). The concept of the state in textbooks: Analysis and reinterpretation during the Spanish transition to democracy (1976-1986). British Journal of Educational Studies, 68(3): 331-347.
Grosvenor, I. and Pataki, G. (2017). Learning through culture: Seeking “critical case studies of possibilities” in the history of education. Paedagogica Historica, 53(3): 246-267.
Hines, M. (2016). Learning freedom: Education, elevation, and New York's African-American Community, 1827-1829. History of Education Quarterly, 56(4): 618-645.
Hof, B. (2018). From Harvard via Moscow to West Berlin: Educational technology, programmed instruction and the commercialisation of learning after 1957. History of Education, 47(4): 445-465
Puaca, B.M. (2005). 'We learned what democracy really meant': The Berlin student parliament and postwar school reform in the 1950s. History of Education Quarterly, 45(4): 615-624.
Sierra Blas, V. (2015). Educating the communists of the future: Notes on the educational life of the Spanish children evacuated to the USSR during the Spanish Civil War. Paedagogica Historica, 51(4): 496-519.
Somogyvári, L. (2025). Do we need democracy in schools? A historical analysis of a political debate in 1985 socialist Hungary. Dialogues in Education, 1 (6),1-17https://doi.org/10.31262/2989-3577/2025/1/6
Spencer, S. (2013). Boarding school fictions: Schoolgirls' own communities of learning. Women's History Review, 22(3): 386-402.
Van Ruyskensvelde, S., Thyssen, G., Herman, F., Van Gorp, A., & Verstraete, P. (Eds.)(2021). Folds of past, present and future: Reconfiguring contemporary histories of education. De Gruyter.
Westberg, J. (2021). What we can learn from studying the past: The wonderful usefulness of history in educational research. Encounters in Theory and History of Education, 22: 227-248.