Master of Arts in Global Histories of Education [MAGHE]

The sixth Global Histories of Education Dialogue was held on 21 October 2024 and allowed MAGHE students to connect with two excellent scholars. The topic centred around educational reform in early twentieth-century China. Professor Liou Wei-Chih from National Taiwan Normal University challenged the idea that John Dewey’s child-centred pedagogy had a strong influence on China. Instead, she argued that the social efficiency strand of progressive education had a much deeper and long-lasting impact. Dr Henrike Rudolph from the University of Göttingen in Germany examined how Chinese reformers introduced German understandings of vocational education. She also underlined the significance of vocational training for Germany and China nowadays. (31 October 2024)

The MAGHE programme has welcomed its third cohort of students. The Programme Orientation was held on 2 September 2024 by Programme Leader Dr Klaus Dittrich. A total of fifty-eight students has enrolled for the academic year 2024-2025. MAGHE students this year will profit from an extended offer of elective courses, more professional development workshops and alumni sharings as well as new seminar sessions of the Global Histories of Education Dialogue series with scholars from all over the world. (30 September 2024)

MAGHE’s Programme Leader Dr Klaus Dittrich also joined this year’s European Conference on Educational Research which was held at the University of Cyprus in Nicosia from 27 to 30 August 2024. In the framework of this conference, he continues to serve as one of the co-convenors of Network 17 “Histories of Education”. His presentation dealt with the Paris International Assembly. This was an innovative and experimental lecture series organised by experts from various countries in four different languages at the universal exhibition in Paris in 1900. It was a major achievement of international cooperation in education at that time. (6 September 2024)

MAGHE’s Programme Leader Dr Klaus Dittrich and the postdoctoral fellow Dr Stella Wang made a trip to Brazil! Both attended the International Standing Conference for the History of Education (ISCHE) 45: (De)coloniality and Diversity in the Histories of Education which took place at the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Norte in Natal from 18 to 21 August 2024. Both gave three presentations! While Dr Dittrich presented aspects of his ongoing book project on the transnational circulation of educational knowledge at nineteenth-century world exhibitions, Dr Wang featured new insights from her research on girls’ education in Republican China and colonial Hong Kong. (5 September 2024)

MAGHE’s Programme Leader Dr Klaus Dittrich made his first conference trip to Indonesia. He participated in the International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS 13) that was organised at Universitas Airlangga in Surabaya from 28 July to 1 August 2024. His paper was entitled “Revisiting the Educationalisation of Japan: The Confrontation of Three Languages of Education, 1868-1890”. The paper re-examined the institutionalisation of a new education system in Japan during the early Meiji period and paid special attention to the different educational models, or “languages”, that Japan appropriated from Euro-American backgrounds. (7 August 2024)

The Education University of Hong Kong held the International Postgraduate Roundtable and Research Forum cum Summer School (IPRRFSS) from 9 to 12 July 2024 with the theme “Innovations and Sustainability: Shaping Education and Global Futures”. This conference regularly takes place on the campus of the Education University of Hong Kong to provide a platform for postgraduate students to exchange their ideas in Education, Social Sciences, Liberal Arts, and Humanities. This year, two excellent MAGHE students participated in the forum. They had an opportunity to present their research accomplished during the academic year and to connect to a vibrant global community of scholars. (17 July 2024)

Dr Stella Wang, postdoctoral fellow and member of the MAGHE teaching team, conducted an innovative film project connected to her course. Students were thereby encouraged to reflect upon and video-record their personal and academic journeys. They produced academically and artistically impressive results. In order to conclude the project, a film symposium “Slices of Everyday Lives: Space, Migration, and Homemaking” was held on 24 May 2024 when the films were presented in a festive atmosphere. Dr Stacilee Ford, professor of American Studies at Hong Kong University, was invited to give comments and engage in conversations with the students. (11 July 2024)

On 20 June 2024, MAGHE’s Programme Leader Dr Klaus Dittrich attended the international conference “The World at School or Study Travels as Part of Education: Transformations in Pedagogical Knowledge, School Curriculum and Teacher Professional Development” that was organised by the National Pedagogical Museum and Library of J. A. Comenius in Prague, Czech Republic. The conference theme well connected to Klaus Dittrich’s research agenda. He gave a paper on a French educational administrator of the mid-nineteenth century who developed an avant-gardist concept of international education. Although this historical actor is not well known, his ideas are of high relevance even today. (8 July 2024)

Eleven students who chose to replace two courses with an independent research project presented their findings on 16 May 2024. The presentations covered a broad range of topics related to different dimensions of global histories of education: the study room of Manchu emperors; the impact of Christian missionaries on girls’ education in China; the pioneering role of Nanjing Higher Normal School in the early 1920s; professional careers and the Chinese modern girl; the training of Buddhist nuns; trans-Pacific circulations of the novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin; the fight against drug addiction in the Kowloon Walled City; education and nation-building in Singapore; past and present of the gaokao; UNESCO’s approach to sexuality education; and the idea of sustainability in business education. (20 May 2024)

The fifth Global Histories of Education Dialogue took place on 10 April 2024 and discussed the materialities of schooling. Dr Frederik Herman from the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland and the Schwyz University of Teacher Education presented theoretical frameworks for understanding objects in education and presented empirical case studies on the school desk, school architecture and classroom biographies. Professor Li Lin from East China Normal University introduced his current research projects on the history of the blackboard. The discussion highlighted that even today, in a world of distance learning and AI, the material setting of students learning from teachers in a classroom still matters. (15 April 2024)

The MAGHE programme makes efforts to bring the leading scholars in history of education to the EdUHK campus. After having participated in the fourth Global Histories of Education Dialogue, Professor Christian Ydesen from Aalborg University in Denmark gave another talk on 1 March 2024. Professor Ydesen introduced the book that he co-authored in 2023 with Maren Elfert entitled Global Governance of Education: The Historical and Contemporary Entanglements of UNESCO, the OECD and the World Bank. The talk discussed the role of international organisations in shaping educational policies and highlighted the importance of history for understanding present-day education. (7 March 2024)

Dr Stella Meng Wang, postdoctoral fellow and member of the MAGHE teaching team, has recently published her first book Space and Everyday Lives of Children in Hong Kong: The Interwar Period. The work weaves together different aspects of education in 1920s and 1930s Hong Kong, such as school hygiene, vocational education and the Girl Guides movement. In order to celebrate this great achievement, a book launch event was held on 29 February 2024. In the presence of numerous colleagues and MAGHE students, Stella gave an inspiring talk that insightfully introduced the main arguments of her monograph. (6 March 2024)

The fourth Global Histories of Education Dialogue was held on 28 February 2024. Professor Christian Ydesen from Aalborg University in Demark outlined his concept of the educational governing complex. Professor Zhao Weili from Hangzhou Normal University discussed China’s curriculum reforms since the 1990s. The presentations showcased how international organisations have been co-shaping education since the twentieth century. The talks also spotlighted how countries such as China reformed their education system in dialogue with global developments. The following day Professors Ydesen and Zhao engaged in discussions and conversations with MAGHE students. (4 March 2024)

Dr Stella Meng Wang, postdoctoral fellow and member of the MAGHE teaching team, has recently published her article “The ‘New Woman’ in the Periodical Press: Portraying Usefulness at St. Stephen’s Girls’ College in Hong Kong, 1921-1941” in the journal History of Education Quarterly. The article showcases how a Hong Kong girls’ school promoted a new understanding of womanhood for early twentieth century China. Moreover, the publication connects to the course “History of Gender and Education” that Stella is teaching in the programme. (30 January 2024) 

The third Global Histories of Education Dialogue took place on 15 November 2023. Dr Zhou Ying from Xiamen University in Mainland China and Dr Thorben Pelzer from Leipzig University in Germany came to our campus to present their research and engage in discussions with colleagues and students. Both scholars gave cutting-edge papers on the reception of the American philosopher and educator John Dewey’s ideas in Republican China. Dr Zhou focused on citizenship education, whereas Dr Pelzer showcased how Dewey’s approach also played a key role for the training of Chinese engineers. (24 November 2023)

MAGHE is starting into its second year! The new students met for the first time during the Programme Orientation conducted by the Programme Leader Dr Klaus Dittrich on 22 August 2023. Fifty-two students are enrolled in MAGHE for the academic year 2023-2024, marking a growth of almost 25% compared to the previous year. The new students are looking forward to exciting courses taught by committed lecturers. They will also profit from tailor-made professional development workshops and a seminar series with guest lecturers. (29 August 2023)

History of education is a well institutionalised and internationalised discipline. MAGHE staff contributes to this community. Dr Klaus Dittrich has recently been appointed a member of the editorial committee of the journal Histoire de l’éducation, the leading Francophone journal on history of education. Dr Klaus Dittrich is also currently serving a four-year term as co-editor of Palgrave Macmillan’s Global Histories of Education book series. Furthermore, he is engaged in the European Educational Research Association’s (EERA) Network 17 “Histories of Education” where he functions as a co-convenor. This latter network meets annually at the European Conferences on Educational Research (ECER). (1 August 2023)

There is a new publication on Korean history of education by MAGHE staff! Dr Klaus Dittrich, together with Dr Dolf-Alexander Neuhaus from Berlin, has coordinated a special issue of the journal History of Education. The recently published issue brings together eight leading scholars who approach Korea’s ‘education fever’ from the late nineteenth to the early twenty-first century. The articles deconstruct the stereotype that Koreans have a particularly strong passion – or ‘fever’ – for education. It is revealed how Confucianism, foreign missionaries, Japanese colonialism, developmental state policies, democratisation and various other factors constantly reshaped the role of education in modern Korean society. (31 July 2023)

Dr Klaus Dittrich and Dr Stella Wang participated in the International Standing Conference for the History of Education (ISCHE44), the most relevant annual congress on history of education, which took place in Budapest, Hungary, from 18 to 21 July 2023. Dr Dittrich presented a paper “Educationalisation as a Tool for Catching Up: Industrial Schools and Global Economic Competition in Japan, 1870s-1910s” as part of his book project. Dr Wang gave three papers on Interwar Hong Kong entitled “Garden City: Urban Form, Colonial Domesticity, and Spaces of Play for Children”, “Medical Care for the Child: The School Hygiene Branch” and “YWCA’s Public Health Campaigns” respectively. (24 July 2023)

MAGHE's Programme Leader Dr Klaus Dittrich participated in the Seventh European Congress on World and Global History that was held in The Hague, Netherlands, from 29 June to 1 July 2023. He presented a paper on “International Secondary Schools in Mid-Nineteenth Century Europe”. While international education is usually seen as an invention of the twentieth century, the paper focused on passionate debates on international education in the 1860s that have been completely overlooked by research. These debates resulted in the creation of the first international schools in Paris, London and the German city of Bonn. (5 July 2023)

Students of the MAGHE programme have the option to replace two elective courses by an independent research project. Ten MAGHE students of the first cohort had decided to do a research project. On 16 May 2023, they presented their insightful findings to a curious audience of professors and students. Every presenter had twenty minutes, followed by a ten-minute Q&A session. The research projects addressed a wide range of cutting-edge themes in history of education, from female missionary universities in early twentieth-century China to international boarding schools in the Soviet Union. (19 May 2023)

The MAGHE programme organised the second Global Histories of Education Dialogue on 19 April. This edition focused on histories of education and gender in East Asia. Dr Elizabeth LaCouture (HKU) presented on “The Household as Female Knowledge in Treaty-Port China”, discussing key aspects of her recent book on the emergence of the modern Chinese household in the context of Tianjin. Subsequently, Prof Cindy Chu (HKBU) talked about “The Maryknoll Convent School of the American Catholic Sisters since 1925”. In the discussion session, speakers and students agreed that “instead of using existing Western theories to apply to China, we need to create and explore a whole new theory of Chinese women’s history and culture.” (24 April 2023)

The MAGHE programme has launched the “Global Histories of Education Dialogue”. This seminar series will henceforth be organised up to two times per semester and bring renowned scholars to present their work at EdUHK. The first seminar was held on 8 March 2023 and discussed the history and present of international education in East Asia. Aaron Koh and Wu Wenxi (both CUHK) introduced the long-term trajectory of international schools from the nineteenth to the twenty-first century, while Catherine Ladds (HKBU) zoomed in on the schools of the Shanghai Municipal Council in the early twentieth century. (13 March 2023)

Dr Stella Wang has joined MAGHE's teaching team in late 2022. Dr Wang received her PhD from the University in Sydney in 2021. She specialises in gendered perspectives on the history of education and is currently finalising her first monograph entitled "Space and Everyday Lives of Children in Hong Kong: The Interwar Period". Moreover, Dr Wang has started an innovative follow-up project on Chinese female university students in the Republican era. (31 January 2023)