History is supported by archives and sources. Since ever historians have placed a significant emphasis on using sources as the cornerstone of their research. It was often the case that the discovery of a single new document, regardless of its intrinsic value, was sufficient justification for publication. The general belief was that we would learn new things about a subject or a period if new records were brought back to light.
Gradually, the relationship between historians and archives was reshaped. Archives have never ceased to be essential. However, in addition to the description of archival materials and the creation of narratives based on its content, historians began to devote greater attention to the search for interpretations, comparisons, and attempts to synthesize theoretical models.
In recent years the search and use of sources and archives has been declining. A key reason is the extensive literature that has been gradually built up. This has resulted in, and continues to result, a tendency among some scholars to believe that a renegotiation of views is sufficient to produce new historical knowledge. A second, equally fundamental reason is that there has sometimes been an underlying assumption that research is more important for the mindset it expresses and the viewpoint it supports than for the information it provides and its evidentiary power based on evidence. And finally, a further reason is that contacting the sources requires a large investment of time, while other processes in science run at a very fast pace. This process has also been furthered by the fast technological evolution and the exponential growth of the world wide web, which have made it less and less essential to travel to a physical location to find sources.
Partly for these reasons, as well as because of the growing influence of other branches of knowledge and the emergence of new historiographical trends, over the past few years the history of education has begun to use a wider range of sources. Voices, objects and images have begun to be used as sources. This is causing a genetic mutation of our discipline and posing new methodological challenges to it, which we need to reflect on as a community.
The theme of ISCHE-Athens aims at challenging historians of education to reflect on their relationship with archives and sources. To express their formed views on the past about the relationship between themselves and sources, as they emerged from their research experiences. Also, to discuss their relationship with the sources right now. But also about their hopes and fears regarding the resources and their use in the future.
The proposals for this conference could be based on several axes:
- defending historiographical biodiversity: methodological perspectives and historiographical traditions compared;
- the use of unpublished primary documentary sources in public or private collections;
- the use of published primary documentary sources: newspapers and periodicals (or journals), novels, short stories, children’s books, comics, school textbooks etc;
- the use of images as sources in the history of education: engravings, paintings and photographs;
- the use of material sources, especially in the area of school material culture researches and studies on the historical heritage of schools;
- oral histories: voices and memories of people, communities, stakeholders;
- life histories and biographical research: autobiographies, diaries, letters;
- television and cinema as sources: which way of representing the school’s past?
- school museums as reserve of historical sources and as sites of memory;
- the public space as a source for the history of education: monuments, epigraphs and statues;
- new frontiers: use of digital sources, sources’ data bases, use of artificial intelligence in historical research: potential and risks;
- digital histories: new forms of historical narrative;
