8-10 June 2023
The 13th History of Education Summer School, originally launched as a pilot project of the EERA (European Educational Research Association), took place at the University of Zurich and Schloss Au from 8-10 June. The local organising committee consisted of Anne Bosche (Zurich University of Teacher Education and Pestalozzianum Foundation), Lukas Boser (University of Basel), Patrick Bühler (FHNW University of Teacher Education), Frederik Herman (Schwyz University of Teacher Education) and Michèle Hofmann (University of Zurich).
After having been a participant myself in 2018, I was now invited to act as a tutor and to give a workshop for the participating PhD students. It was an honour to be part of the summer school together with my esteemed colleagues Lisa Rosén Rasmussen (Aarhus University, Denmark), Björn Norlin (Umeå University, Sweden), Ian Grosvenor and Siân Roberts (University of Birmingham, UK), Angelo Van Gorp (University of Koblenz-Landau, Germany) and Tom Woodin (IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society, UK and History of Education Society, UK).
The aim of my one-hour workshop named ›Think outside the Box!‹ was to encourage the participants to develop ideas on how their PhD topic can be read in the context of the given theme of ›optimisation‹. The background to this was, on the one hand, that the current academic world repeatedly demands researchers to position themselves on certain current topics and readings, for example for conferences or articles in scientific journals, but also for job applications. On the other hand, such considerations – which may initially be associative – often lead to looking at one’s own research topic from a different perspective. Thinking outside the box can bring new insights, changed approaches and, in any case, a stepping outside of one’s own boundaries.
Lilli Riettiens 