A History of Popular Education: Educating the People of the World

Sjaak Braster is Associate Professor for Sociology of Education at Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands, and was Emeritus Professor of History of Education at Utrecht University, The Netherlands from 2003 to 2010. In 1996 he published his Ph.D. thesis on the identity of public education. Previous publications include The Black Box of Schooling. A Cultural History of the Classroom (2011) (with Grosvenor & Del Pozo), and Passion and Pragmatism. The Educational Inspectorate and the Rise and Fall of Classroom Teaching (2011).

Frank Simon, is Professor Emeritus in the Foundations of Education Department at Ghent University, Belgium. His research deals with pre-school and primary education in Belgium (education policy, teacher unions, the teaching profession). For the last decade, he has worked in collaboration with the Centre of the History of Education at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. His research focusses on everyday educational processes and practice, classroom and curriculum history, education and cultural heritage, and Progressive Education, in particular looking at the biography of Ovide Decroly. He was Editor-in-Chief of Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education from1992-2007, and chairperson of the International Standing Conference for the History of Education (ISCHE) in 2006-2009.