The purpose of this paper is to introduce a broad theoretical orientation for the themed section of History of Education Review, “Unstable concepts in the history of Australian schooling: radicalism, religion, migration”. Through the conceptual frame of “contrapuntal historiography”, it commends the practice of re-looking at taken-for-granted concepts and re-readings of the cultural archive of Australian schooling, with especial attention to silences, discontinuities and the movements of concepts.,Drawing on Edward Said’s approach of “contrapuntal reading”, this paper refers to the recent work of Bruce Pascoe as an exemplar of this practice in the field of Australian history. It then relates this approach to the study of the history of Australian schooling as demonstrated in the three papers that make up the themed section “Unstable concepts in the history of Australian schooling: radicalism, religion, migration”.,Following in the style of Said’s contrapuntal reading and the example of Pascoe’s work, this paper argues that there are inerasable traces of historical politics – that is, the records of constitutive exclusions and silences – which “haunt” taken-for-granted concepts like the migrant, the secular and the radical in the history of Australian schooling.,Taken alongside the three papers in the themed section, this paper urges the proliferation of different theoretical and disciplinary approaches in order to think anew about silences, discontinuities and movements of concepts as a counterpoint to dominant narrative lines in the history of Australian education.

中文翻译：

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追溯澳大利亚教育历史上的激进，移民和世俗

本文的目的是为《教育史评论》的主题部分“澳大利亚教育历史上的不稳定概念：激进主义，宗教，移民”引入广泛的理论取向。通过“交往史学”的概念框架，它赞扬重新审视已获准予接受的概念和重新阅读澳大利亚学校文化档案的做法，特别注意沉默，不连续性和概念的运动。 ，借鉴爱德华·赛义德（Edward Said）的“交往阅读”方法，本文将布鲁斯·帕斯科（Bruce Pascoe）的最新著作作为该实践在澳大利亚历史领域的典范。