Although most of the members of our research team knew each other from previous conference contacts and/or collaborations, this was the first time our research group was able to meet in its entirety, in person. Group members travelled to Berlin from three corners of the globe (as seen from Europe, at least), and we took advantage of the opportunity to meet several times around the edges of the 40th International Standing Conference for the History of Education (ISCHE) to discuss our preliminary research findings, plot out details of our book-in-progress, and engage in some (friendly yet productive) arguments about the theoretical foundations of the kind of analyses we’re conducting. Our conversations spilled over from one conference session to the next, across meals and coffee hours. This was no surprise: the diversity of the individual experimental schools we’re examining – their contexts and durations, their purpose and management, their connections to each other and to broader networks of educational reform – meant that we had a great deal to discuss and to work out. Our own conference panel at ISCHE provided a great opportunity for us to see each other in action, to hear for the first time about each others’ schools and the archival findings in some detail.
Re-imagining teaching 