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In this chapter we have broadly sketched the educational history of Aotearoa New Zealand to show that this historical backdrop offers a fascinating insight into contemporary debates. In the following chapters we adopt a thematic approach to the history of teacher preparation in Aotearoa New Zealand. We do not offer an institutional or chronological historical narrative, but rather, the chapters are interconnected as they re-trace, recall and re-tell this educational history. Our core thesis is that across the long history of teacher preparation these themes permeate the shifts and changes in educational policy and practice and that ruptures at particular historical moments are not unique. We draw on a number of historical examples to underscore the oftentimes personal impact of the wider policy environment and the educational stories of aspiring teachers. Importantly, we have documented the methodological approaches employed and the archival research that has influenced our reading of the materials.

This chapter explores the potential of transnational history for researching global higher education policy. It begins with an overview of transnational history as a perspective, demonstrating how it is, in part, a response to processes of globalization that have also transformed contemporary higher education. Second, it reviews key features of transnational history as a perspective that can enhance global higher education policy research. The third part takes dimensions of contemporary global higher education and discusses how these can be approached through a transnational historical perspective drawing on the features outlined. The chapter concludes by highlighting how a transnational historical approach can enable new insights and research questions as well as some challenges presented by this perspective. The spatial focus of the chapter is predominantly European higher education, though the implications are more general.

In this chapter, the authors provide a historical overview of the development of comparative and international education societies throughout the earth. In most cases, these societies have gradually grown and continue to thrive; in other cases, some comparative education societies have become dormant and a few no longer exist. A historical analysis that outlines the rise and fall of comparative education societies is provided. An overview of the World Council of Comparative Education Societies is also discussed, including its lead organizational role in serving as a historical hub to help comparative education societies preserve and disseminate their respective histories. The chapter concludes with suggestions on how anyone can get involved to help contribute to the history preservation of comparative education at the individual, national, regional, and global levels.

A lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer+ (LGBTQ+) community’s hunger for its history became an arena for creative, unorthodox work involving a library and information science (LIS) educator, librarians and other educators, and even a university library. The result was fundamentally collaborative, involving community and educational organizations; all inspired by social responsibility and community engagement goals, some of which can be found in a university mission statement. The story of these individuals and organizations begins with a drive toward a greater awareness of LGBTQ+ history, a goal that led to creating inclusive high school history curricula. Along the way, these efforts generated information resources such as a community-generated database, a temporary history exhibit, a conference, and a workshop geared to gay straight alliance (GSA) organizations in high schools. GSAs and their statewide supporting organization, the Illinois Safe School Alliance, were also the part of this work. While the larger goal of this work was to help diverse constituencies understand the importance of their history by developing, curating, and utilizing information resources that fulfill overlooked community information needs, this chapter comes to focus on a piece of that work, the development of Illinois’s first LGBTQ+ history elective. Consequently, this chapter can show how librarians and libraries can actualize social justice aims and thereby expand traditional library practices through sustained efforts that may lead to smaller specific goals, some of which may develop in unforeseen ways. The key is to expand the existing aims of libraries into sustained community engagement while remaining open to the opportunities that arise along the way.

For Moldova and Albania, the promise of integration into the European Union (EU) has led to a reimagining of the purpose of schooling. Once charged with producing loyal communist citizens, their schools and educational policies are now focused on producing democratic citizens of an expanded Europe. This chapter examines how educational discourses are reconstituting notions of national citizenship to fit within a broader pan-European identity. We find that despite the adoption of common European standards, the EU imaginary nonetheless produces divergent results in classrooms through the perpetuation of uneven power relations, the displacement of local needs, and the contradictory fusion of new principles and old practices. Thus, in these cases, the social imaginary is invoked to convey the semblance of progress amidst the absence of change.

We present and explain several reasons that special education as a field has not been served well by the lessons of our history, but has the extraordinary opportunity, if not responsibility, to learn from history and use these lessons to guide practice. Our premises include (a) special educators may be less aware of their past than professionals in other disciplines, and thus less likely to build on this past; (b) given the relatively short history of the field as we know it today, we have access to many leaders who shaped policy and practice in special education; and (c) special education faces crossroads in many respects, and these have the potential to drastically re-shape or re-define special education. As such, we believe that contextualizing our present and future direction in an understanding of our past is critical now more than ever.