Editorial

Abstract

This present issue of Reflecting Education celebrates the work of some students who have participated in a graduate History module. The module is called ?ǨSocial Histories of British Education?ǨѢ and it covers the period from 1800 to 1980. It aims to bring together examples of historical research on formal and informal agencies of schooling, pursuing themes such as changing governance of education, curriculum, selection, education and equality and inequality, teachers and teaching. Among other things, we consider the history of educational policies and practices at different system levels, as a means of interpreting the social relations of education (including power relations), the role of education in civil society and in the life chances of different groups in society. Emphasis is placed on learning as an active, goal-oriented process of constructing knowledge, meaning and understanding. Seen from the angle of personal ?Ǩexperience?ǨѢ, participants reflect critically on the complex relationship between the historical and the contemporary. Sometimes hotly debating what we have learned about educational processes and what should be left in the past.