Purpose

This paper introduces key themes and debates in education and educational history that engage education's complicity in injustice and violence, as well as those that continue to position education as a vehicle for positive change and possibility. The paper introduces the papers that comprise the special issue “Challenges of Contested Spaces: Constructing Difference and its Legacies in Educational History”.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper canvasses pertinent historiographical, theoretical and methodological debates that shed light on education's dual capacity to empower and oppress.

Findings

Papers in this collection reveal the many ways that agendas justified in the name of education, training and reform have often invoked that name as justification for actions that harmed, discriminated or oppressed, and yet also, how despite this, education can still be imagined as a space of possibility and transformation.

Originality/value

The paper offers a summative introduction to the themes and papers of the special issue.

中文翻译：

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赋权或压迫：接近教育史上的二元性

目的

本文介绍了教育和教育史中的关键主题和辩论，这些主题和辩论涉及教育与不公正和暴力的共谋，以及那些继续将教育定位为实现积极变革和可能性的工具的主题和辩论。该论文介绍了组成特刊“竞争空间的挑战：构建差异及其在教育史上的遗产”的论文。

设计/方法/方法

该论文探讨了相关的史学、理论和方法论辩论，这些辩论阐明了教育赋予权力和压迫的双重能力。

发现

本集中的论文揭示了以教育、培训和改革的名义证明议程合理的许多方式，经常援引该名称作为伤害、歧视或压迫行为的理由，然而，尽管如此，教育仍然可以被想象为一个充满可能性和转变的空间。

原创性/价值

该论文对特刊的主题和论文进行了总结性介绍。