The multiple temporalities of policy-oriented sociology of education: recuperating the historical, Reinhart Koselleck, and the historical imagination of policy sociological work

This paper argues that Reinhart Koselleck’s theory of multiple temporalities is a useful basis for a historical imagination to work alongside the sociological imaginations in policy-oriented sociology of education work. More recently within the social and humanistic sciences there has been a turn towards temporal considerations. Often this is animated by critiques of modernist or linear conceptions of progress, or a sense that earlier progressivist sensibilities have been overshadowed by discourses of ‘crisis’. It is into this questioning moment that this paper responds to policy sociological and sociology of education discussions on the temporal, and specifically to the invitation to think with multiple temporalities as historical imagination. Using a case study of contemporary policy developments in Danish higher education, this article illustrates how Koselleck’s approach, specifically the unfolding of the historical preconditions that make possible the emergence of particular policy moments, can provide a basis for a historical imagination that work alongside more sociological imaginations in the analysis of education policy.