Abstract

The book begins with a discussion of the debates on history education as they developed in Great Britain during the last decades of the previous century. In these debates, reference is often made to the views of the philosopher and historian R. G. Collingwood. However, according to the author, his philosophy of history is usually misunderstood. Besides correcting the various misinterpretations of Collingwood's views on history, special attention is paid to his theory of (historical) imagination. In the final part of the book, the relevance of Collingwood's philosophy for more general educational issues is discussed and compared with the views of Hirst, Bloom and Bruner.