Public History of Education. A brief Introduction

Abstract

This volume has an unusual structure that traces my experience as a lecturer and researcher chronologically: my first encounters with public history, mainly made up of North American literature, the first paper on these topics presented at an international conference of educational history scholars, the attempts to outline a theoretical and practical profile for public history in education, and, in tandem with all this, my own trials as a public historian, mainly within master’s and postgraduate university courses. As you can see, it is a biographical journey, a kind of ego-histoire, which I did not want to rework in an abstract way by removing the thread of memory, the various passages that have made the role that public history can play in education increasingly clear to me. I believed it was very useful to retain this chronological, sequential, personal and biographical order of my progressive awareness as my experiences and contacts with other interested colleagues (inside and outside the university) became more frequent. If others also recognise themselves in this path, or in some of its components, we can more easily collaborate, exchange ideas and comments, criticism and proposals for improvement. So rather than hiding it, make it open, in the typical style of public history... [introduction by Author]