Teachers, Teaching and a Fragile Sense of Hope: Reflections on ISCHE46
By Nazlin Bhimani, on 14 July 2025
Last week, I had the opportunity to attend and present a paper at the International Standing Conference on the History of Education (ISCHE46) in Lille. The theme for this year was ‘‘Teachers and Teaching: History on the Move”. This focus on teachers allowed for a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary conversation that linked the history of teacher training and pedagogy, exploring how teachers have been positioned, empowered, constrained and represented across different cultural, political and historical contexts. For me, it was a valuable opportunity not only to contribute research, but to learn from others, build new relationships and reflect on how UCL Special Collections can continue to support and inform this kind of work.
My own paper contributed directly to this theme. I presented research on eugenics and teacher training at the London Day Training College (LDTC) and its successor, the Institute of Education (IOE), during the interwar years. Drawing on materials from the IOE Library’s Special Collections, I demonstrated how the intersection of the existing English liberal tradition with emerging psychological theories, intelligence testing and imperial priorities shaped what Thomas Popkewitz (1985) refers to as the ‘codes’ of teacher training and professionalisation. My research focused on staff members Percy Nunn, Cyril Burt and James Fairgrieve, and explored the ways in which eugenic principles became embedded in teacher training, tracing moments of contestation and change throughout the period. As part of my presentation, I was able to draw attention to the specific items I used from the IOE’s Special Collections, including archival material, course readings, textbooks, policy reports and contributions from the student magazine, The Londinian, to reconstruct the professional knowledge that underpinned the training. Attendees showed interest in these sources, and I was pleased to reconnect with researchers who had previously consulted UCL’s/IOE’s Special Collections. These interactions highlighted the ongoing relevance of these collections for exploring the intersections of education, empire, science and professional identity.
A recurrent theme at the conference that related to my topic was the entanglement of science and education, and there was lively discussion about the compartmentalisation of psychology in teacher education — a shift from earlier models where it formed part of a broader philosophical foundation. Discussions around teachers as nation-builders, especially in colonial and postcolonial contexts, revealed how education functioned as a tool of social engineering and cultural transmission — often in the service of state ideologies. This development, several speakers argued, reflects a broader privileging of scientific authority over pedagogical or philosophical reflection. This is not merely a historical observation, but one that continues to shape the structure and priorities of contemporary education departments today, where measurable outcomes, evidence-based practice and standardised assessment often dominate at the expense of critical, values-based enquiry. These present-day trends mirror the early twentieth-century models I explored in my paper, where eugenic and psychometric thinking reinforced a narrow, biologically deterministic view of education.
Themes of gender and authority also featured prominently, with papers exploring perceptions of female authority, women’s roles as headteachers in boys’ schools and the historical tensions between age, gender and classroom discipline. Other presentations engaged with how teachers have been represented in public discourse and by the press, particularly during political flashpoints like Thatcher’s Britain, when teachers were portrayed in adversarial terms. Conversely, some sessions focused on micro-histories and material culture, using diaries, oral histories, notebooks, and even classroom furniture to reconstruct the lives and work of the ‘ordinary’ teachers, often missing from official records and histories on teachers.
Throughout the conference, I was aware that hope, which itself has a history (Block, 1954–59; Freire, 1992; Burke, 2012), was a recurring refrain among delegates. Despite many papers grappling with exclusion, oppression and inequity, there was a strong current of attention to teacher agency, acts of resistance and the possibilities for transformation. One speaker, Pieter Verstraete, captured this poignantly, drawing on the work of the Dutch educationalist, Lea Dasberg, to suggest that while history looks backwards for points of hope, it can also guide us toward new ones in the present. In that spirit, the work of Australian historians Julie McLeod and Kay Whitehead, whose studies of the education of Indigenous peoples confronting the enduring harms of eugenic policies, stood out. Similarly, the paper by the British academic, Nick Mead, on historical consciousness and neoliberalism in teacher training served as a useful reminder that teachers, as professionals, need to understand the history of their profession. He argued that without embedding historical and moral reflection in training, teachers risk becoming mere implementers of policy. His work underscored the importance of professional narratives that draw on the past — not to romanticise it, but to cultivate critical consciousness and values-based decision-making in future educators. These papers left me with a sense of hope, albeit a fragile one.
My attendance at ISCHE46 was generously supported by UCL’s Eugenics Legacies in Education Project, which has been working to uncover and engage with the university’s historical connections to eugenics. I am also indebted to my own department, Library, Culture, Collections and Open Science, for enabling me to take the time to attend the conference. It was a privilege to promote our collections, share ideas with an international community of scholars and participate in conversations that feel urgent, reflective and filled with a fragile hope that may lead to change.