Abstract
The promise of the new underpins much educational reform discourse, from utopian strands and grand gestures to more formulaic rhetoric found in declarations of new policies for new times. Informed by genealogical and feminist approaches, this essay introduces some conceptual frameworks for analysing such expressions of hopefulness and newness in educational discourse. While its initial impetus is debates about the education of adolescents in interwar Australia, it extends to a consideration of relations between future-oriented utopian aspirations in the past and educational discourses and practices in the present. It calls for more reflexive problematisation of the past–present relationship in historical and sociological studies of education, and outlines an argument for taking account of the ‘untimely’ in educational discourses and practices. The essay concludes with an overview of the articles featured in this volume.
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