CANADIAN HISTORY OF EDUCATION ASSOCIATION (CHEA) 17th BIENNIAL CONFERENCE, Oct 18-21

CHEA/ACHE will hold its 2012 conference in VANCOUVER, BC, 18-21 October, sponsored by the Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia. The conference theme is “Rising to the Challenge: History of Education and the Pursuit of Relevance.” The challenge for academic research to be “relevant” is a familiar one. Governmental funding agencies, universities, and local communities increasingly demand that scholars rise to the challenge of demonstrating how and why their research increases knowledge and builds capacity. Historians are, of course, not exempt from these expectations. What do they mean in the context of the history of education? How does history of education engage with ideas of “relevancy”? How do historians of education dialogue with, and talk back to, such expectations? Our conference will provide a space for the presentation of critical research regarding the history of education’s multifaceted engagement with challenges in the field, and in education and schooling, broadly conceived, in the contemporary moment. We are concerned with how the history of education is being reinvigorated through methodological and theoretical innovation, and the contributions that history of education as an academic subject makes to undergraduate and graduate education. We are also concerned with the ways historians of education are engaging with communities, and community capacity building, beyond the academy.