Volume 2,Issue 3
Class, Education and Social Change: A Study of Brian Simon’s Historiography of Education
Brian Simon was one of the most influential British educational historians of the twentieth century, and he developed a new type of research in British educational history based on a Marxist school of thought. From 1780 to 1990, in his Studies in the History of Education, he systematically examined the institutional development of British education and used the theme of class struggle to show the dialectical relationship between schooling and broader changes in society. Simon's educational historiography has been systematically studied in the three areas of its formation conditions, basic features and research methods; this paper seeks to reveal the internal relations among class, education and social change in his ideas. Simon’s system of historical writing offers a new path for the research of educational history and may provide some inspiration for tackling problems of educational equity and reform at present.
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