Reflecting From the Margins of Education Faculties: Refiguring the Humanist, and Finding a Space for Story in History

Notwithstanding their traditional characterization as a foundations subject, history of education courses are marginal in pre-service teacher education. This marginalization is framed here in light of a broader concern for the discipline’s turn away from the humanities. History of education’s fundamental purpose, it is argued, lies in the exploration of what it means to be human, and how education has historically been shaped by our values, authority, contexts, and norms. Using stories drawn from literature and memoirs in the teaching of educational history is one means of exploring intersections of education with human cultures and societies across historical contexts. History is etymologically linked with story telling, and both history and literature share narrative features; the two should not be conflated, however, due to distinctive disciplinary features of history, such as the requirement that any claims to truth require what John Dewey referred to as warranted assertability.