Science, Technologies and Material Culture in the History of Education

by Heather Ellis (Editor)

Developed out of a 2015 conference of the History of Education Society, UK, this book explores the interconnections between the histories of science, technologies and material culture, and the history of education. The contributions express a shared concern over the extent to which the history of science and technology and the history of education are too frequently written about separately from each other despite being intimately connected. This state of affairs, they suggest, is linked to broader divisions in the history of knowledge, which has, for many years, been carved up into sections reflective of the academic subject divisions that structure modern universities and higher education in the West. Most noticeably this has occurred with the history of science, but more recently the history of humanities has been divided as well. The contributions to this volume demonstrate the diversity and originality of research currently being conducted into the connections between the history of science and the history of education. The importance of objects in teaching and their value as pedagogical tools emerges as a particularly significant area of research located at the intersection between the two fields of enquiry. Indeed, it is the materiality of education, a focus on the use of objects, pedagogical practices and particular spaces, which seems to offer some of the most promising avenues for exploring further the relationship between the histories of science and education. This book was originally published as a special issue of the History of Education.

136 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 18, 2020

About the author

Heather Ellis is the author of two travel memoirs. Ubuntu: One Woman’s Motorcycle Odyssey Across Africa (Black Inc. 2016) and Timeless On The Silk Road: An Odyssey From London To Hanoi (Phonte 2019). Both books detail my motorcycle travels from 1993 to 1997. Ubuntu is is as much about Africa’s most remote, beautiful and dangerous places as it is about having the courage to do it alone. It is about a life-changing adventure into the soul of Africa where I find Ubuntu— a Bantu word meaning human interconnectedness (‘I am because we are’).
Timeless On The Silk Road is what happens as I ride my motorcycle across Central Asia after I am diagnosed with HIV in London. It is 1995, when death from AIDS is inevitable.
While both my memoirs cover the narrative journey that is filled with 'survival-against-the-odds' adventures, each is also a journey of awakening to the guiding hand of a greater force realised through the influence of chance encounters, coincidences and trust in our intuition. ...a belief... a knowing.

I live with my three children near Melbourne, Australia and I still ride motorcycles, (Triumph Thruxton 900cc, Moto Guzzi V50 and my beloved Yamaha TT600). I'm also an advocate for women living with HIV and an advocate for motorcycle road safety.