Capacity building and communitas in the history of education

This article explores the Histories of Education Summer School Conference for Postgraduate Students, 2010–2015, with regard to its impact on networking and identification with the field of the history of education. It is concluded that the impact of the Summer School is transformative on the social level. The structure in which the Summer School is organised and the positive atmosphere resulting from it support capacity building in the field. PhDs, who in some parts of the world increasingly work in isolation, meet international representatives of the scientific community. Often for the first time, they have a feeling of community. This small-scale two-day venture personally addresses the PhDs and engages them in an intergenerational dialogue in a non-hierarchical space. It is also concluded that the Summer School offers participants an experience of communitas (Turner) on their threshold. This article consists of six parts: after (1) an introduction, subsequently (2) a brief history of the Summer School is outlined and an explanation is given as to how the Summer School was established in relation to perceptions on the field, (3) goals and visions are explained, as is (4) the structure of the Summer School, (5) the concepts of community and liminality are applied to the experiences participants shared, and, finally, (6) the future of this Summer School moving forward is discussed

Communitas · Feeling · Field (mathematics · Liminality · Outdoor education · Pedagogy · Physical education · Sociology · Transformative learning · Viewpoints · Vision · Visual arts · Educator Training and Historical Pedagogy · Global Education and Multiculturalism · Global Educational Policies and Reforms · Psychology · Social Psychology

• Community and the education market

  Open Access•D Beach, Begoña Vigo-Arrazola et al.•Journal of Rural Studies•2020

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