Conference Agenda

Since the 1990s, controversial debates on colonial facts have been held in Belgian universities and have focused in particular on Belgium's responsibilities in relation to the colonization of the Congo (the current DRC). Various reports (United Nations, 2019; Parliamentary Commission, Experts' Report, 2021) show the increase of research on these issues and the need to make them more complex. Indeed, most studies still seem to focus on aspects related to "race" without also introducing "gender" or "class" relations in the history of the colonization of Congo (Parliamentary Commission, Experts' Report, 2021). Inspired by the work of intersectional scholars (Crenshaw, 2005), the interest of this presentation is to show how intersectionality can reshape the work on colonial history in Congo, and in particular on the history of education of Congolese girls. In addition to the intersectional lens, the presentation will focus on how a genealogical approach might be of interest to scholars whose goal is to deconstruct past and present (post)colonial discourses and practices. More precisely, the objective of this presentation is to retrace the framework of literature that led to thinking about an intersectional genealogy of educational devices for girls, during the Belgian Congo (1908-1960). Indeed, both genealogy and intersectionality are approaches that open up a new dialogue in the History of education (Coloma, 2011; Rogers, 2019). They allow for the articulation of multiple relations of domination relating to “class”, “gender”, “race” and “age” in order to problematize their historicity within various educational settings addressed to girls. Following Michel Foucault's (1997) methodological lead, combined with intersectionality, this research is structured around the following concern: to understand how schools for Congolese girls, between 1908 and 1960, did rely on an entangled multiplicity of subjugations such as “age”, “class”, “gender” and “race”.

In this respect, research on the history of education of girls has identified a social project addressed to Congolese women developed throughout the first half of the 20th century: girls should be educated in schools to become good Christian mothers, to take care of their children and the households, and to be capable of civilizing their own “African” family and social environment (Kita, 2004; Lauro, 2020). Compared to White middle-class women, perceived as the moral guardians of education and their family, racialized women in Belgian Congo were seen as “illegitimate” mothers and in need of being “educated” to 'Europeanness' (Stoler, 2013). This raises several questions: how have women been implicated in the maintenance of colonial discourse? What are the specificities of the colonial society of Belgian Congo in the representation of women, in terms of “gender”, “race”, “class” and “age”? And what role did educational devices play?

Therefore, the idea of educating a woman who could meet the standards of “motherhood” and “Europeanness” became the issue of 20th century of colonial women's education which reproduced the pattern of civilizing ideology (McClintock, 1995). Such is an ideology that justifies violence against those considered “unadapted” (working classes) and “savage” (colonized classes), in the name of progress (André & Poncelet, 2013). It is precisely this vision of progress that we can relate to and deal with in the contemporary school curricula (Parliamentary Commission, experts' report, 2021).

In the mid 19th century Europe, an increased belief in a democratic, equal education for all was ground for extensive educational reforms. In the Nordic countries, the Welfare model, with ideological as well as pedagogical interconnections to parliamentary democracy, shaped the development of the Nordic school systems (Ydesen & Buchardt, 2020). The overall purposes of education within these systems were to offer equal education, free-of-charge for all, as well as to form a welfare state mentality within the population. The main idea was that this uniform and free education for all children, regardless of background and social conditions, would lead to equality, justice and social cohesion (Arnesen & Lundahl, 2006). With the implementation of the nine year compulsory and comprehensive school, enhetsskolan, the Swedish school system brought about a school-for-all, where all children entered the same school form, where no ability - or intellectually based differentiation were to take place until after the fourth or fifth grade, and then only in terms of second language choice. Many European countries implemented early educational choices and concentration, and well as early grades. In Sweden, it was argued that a later point for differentiation would benefit the students, specifically the ‘less pronounced academic talents’. It is thus a common understanding that in Sweden, as well as in other Nordic countries, educational differentiation took place relatively late in a school child’s life (cf. Tveit & Lundahl, 2022).

We suggest, however, that comprehensive methods for early differentiation of students were used already at the time of school entry. Testing for school readiness was a pronounced form of sorting, which took place in most Swedish municipalities between 1946 and 1975. These tests were motivated as help for the individual child, and as means to identify the right time to start school and to receive educational content. At the same time, there was a widespread ambiguity concerning the concept of school readiness, with different connotations and uses, on national as well as international levels (Ljungblad, 1965; Winter & Kelley, 2008). We here try to understand precisely how the ambiguities of the concept can be seen as a prerequisite for the implementation of the tests. We argue that the concept of school readiness, and the political debates and decisions behind the tests, can be understood as a way to reframe early differentiation to work better with the overall political ambition of the comprehensive school reform.

In order to better understand processes of educational reforms, and in particular the seemingly contradictory positions concerning sensitive topics like diversity and differentiation, we will look at various motives, arguments and actions when it comes to testing for school readiness. Our study is delimited particularly to the political debate in Sweden between 1946-1975, when school readiness was debated in the parliament and put into use through various reforms, to finally become abandoned. Our overarching questions concern how school readiness was conceptualized and put into use, despite it seemingly being in conflict with the idea of a diversified comprehensive school for all. In this respect we treat school readiness as a boundary object.

Theoretically we argue that the concept of school readiness, and different attempts to understand and apply it, became a way to ‘make sense of the world’, but, and this is the main point here, with a fair amount of ambiguity (Strang & Meyer, 1993, p. 499; see also Lundahl & Waldow, 2009). This ambiguity actually contributes to the attractiveness of ‘school readiness’, as advocates of different positions can unite behind it. Analytically we will treat school readiness as a boundary object (Star & Griesemer, 1989).

Towards the end of the nineteenth century Western education became exposed to new international ideas about how to organize a school, how to arrange a classroom and how to teach children (Depaepe, 2000). These reform pedagogical or progressive educational ideals were centered around the child, societal life and progress (Reese, 2001). In this presentation we want to expose the existing histories about progressive education to ideas and perspectives coming from new disability history and sound studies.

In line with the new cultural history of education historians of education started to reconsider the existing historical narratives about progressive education. If throughout the twentieth century historians of education often (implicitly) praised progressive educational reforms, new cultural scholarship emphasized the need to critically invest these reform pedagogical undertakings. (Depaepe, 2000; Oelkers, 1995; Stolk, 2015). Recently historians of education have also become interested in issues of diversity when examining the history of reform pedagogy. Weiler, for instance, has looked at the American history of progressive education through the lens of gender (2006). In this presentation we want to take up the new cultural history of education’s critical interest in the history of progressive education from a disability perspective.

Reform educational methods have often been developed on the basis of experiences with the education of children with disabilities (for instance Decroly and Montessori). Strangely enough, both progressive educators have received a lot of attention from historians of education (Wagnon, 2013; Van Gorp, 2005; Stewart-Steinberg, 2007; Moretti, 2011), but up till now no studies do exist that have thoroughly examined the impact of their educational methods on the history of special education for children with sensorial disabilities.

Besides looking at the history of reform pedagogy from a disability perspective, I also would like to examine the history of new education from an acoustic point of view. In a recent special issue published by Paedagogica Historica we have argued that historians of education can and should include the notion of soundscapes in their historical toolboxes as it is helpful in reconstructing and disentangling the complex ways in which education has shaped human beings (Verstraete, Hoegaerts & Goodman, 2017). Zooming in on educational soundscapes indeed enables historians of education to better identify and grasp shifting world views and societal expectations towards teachers and pupils. In this research proposal we aim to apply the notion of educational soundscapes in combination with disability to the history of progressive education. That a combination of sound and disability is a fruitful way to explore historical research questions has been proven by Scales and Sykes. Rebecca Scales, for instance, has pointed towards the intriguing role played by the radio in the rehabilitation of French blinded soldiers of the First World War (Scales, 2008). Ingrid Sykes created awareness for the important place occupied by the literal voices of blind beggars in the history of the Paris institute for blind beggars called Quinze-Vingts (Sykes, 2011).

What I will do concretely in this presentation is to present the work of Alexander Herlin. Alexander Herlin was a Belgian special educator who worked in one of the existing institutes for “deaf-mutes” that existed around 1900. Inspired by the work of Ovide Decroly Herlin developed what he called a demutisation method. It is this method – its origins, emergence and development – and its impact on the special educational soundscapes that I would like to analyse in this presentation.

Cinema became part of the culture of the 20th century all over the world and its educational potential was soon recognized. In Portugal, the cinephilia of António Ferro, Secretary of National Propaganda/Information (1933-1949), was decisive in providing cinema with strong symbolic support, which only materialized in financial support after the end of World War II (Ó & Paz, 2022). Although cinema had been part of the violence prevention strategy (Rosas, 2019), and the leader of the Estado Novo, António de Oliveira Salazar, owed the cult of his personality to the creation of his image (Matos, 2004), his disgust for cinema was well-known (Piçarra, 2006) and he himself was recognized for his iconophobia (Gil, 2017). It's just that Salazar originally militated on the Catholic fronts, which were adamantly opposed to the advance of the dictatorship of the image.

In line with Catholic countries, although with fewer resources, conditions were also being created in Portugal for national cinematography and for the reception of films from all over the world. But the attraction for American fiction films was undeniable and unstoppable. Within the Catholic action movement led by Cardinal Cerejeira, a personal friend of Salazar, the [Catholic School Youth] Juventude Escolar Católica (JEC) organized in 1935 (and renamed later in 1980 Movimento Católico de Estudantes) soon became aware of the urgency of acting in the face of the so-called immorality of everyday life. JEC organized to respond to Pius XI's encyclical Vigilantis Cura (1936), which sought to understand the phenomenon of cinema attraction and invited a screening of films, highlighting the educational potential of the seventh art.

From the outset JEC's official magazine Flama (1937-2009) raised a Campaign for the Moralization of Cinema, as a form of pressure on the government. Several journalists, chroniclers and readers considered that the censorship schemes on national foreign filmography were insufficient and lenient, and that even the films sponsored by the Propaganda Secretariat were remiss to Catholic principles. In this cause, a new profile of cinema spectators is created, active, knowledgeable, and intervening (Paz, 2020).

However, the unexpected happens. Similar to what happened in France with young people around Action Catholique by promoting the joint viewing of films, the creation of a nominal file of films and the support of a solid opinion, Catholic youth quickly ended up forming the first active and interventionist film buffs, some of whom later emerged as film critics (Vezyroglou, 2004/5; Leveratto & Montebello, 2011).

In this paper I propose, to question the subjectification processes in which this attraction for the different and otherness was built, which was initially rejected outright. It is necessary to ask which films are recommended and rejected and on which arguments are based these statements. But the main question is: how does Flama discuss this approach and establish this approach to what is different, whether in culture, habits or religion, does allowing for a specific subjectification of education through cinema.

This approach derives from cultural history as Peter Burke (2008) conceives it, also from a settling of the visual turn (Burke, 2001; Miezner, Myers & Peim, 2005). If the history of the moving image has been the prerogative of research all over the world (Dussel & Priem, 2017), in Portugal the relationship with cinema has been mainly explored from the intentions of the government (Torgal, 2000) and in creation of a differential abyss with the colonial other (Piçarra, 2016). This work is expected to contribute to filling a gap in knowledge of cultural practices towards diversity and inclusion, whereas understanding how can an approach to otherness emerge within a strong Estado Novo’s politics for sameness (Rosas, 2019).

In recent years historians of education have been employing a transnational lens to study women educators whose lives and work extended beyond national boundaries. Briggs McCormick and Way (2008, 633) propose that a 'transnational sensibilty lets scholars see the movement of goods, individuals and ideas happending in a context in which gender, class and race operate simultaneously'. Women educators transnational careers feature in recent edited books as well as special editions of historical jounrals but mostly focus on the nineteenth and early twentieth century (Fitzgerald and Smyth 2014, Mayer and Arrendondo 2020). Following th Second World War, the increasing professionalisation of transnational humanitarian organisations provided a new field of work for women teachers and public health and social work professionals: Fielden (2015) states that nearly 200 new child welfare agencies were working overseas between 1945 and 1949 alone, but little is known about women teachers in these organisations.

Fitzgerald and Smyth's (2014) edited collection highlights solidarity, collegiality and leadership among women educators working to influence social change. However, social change is not always progressive. Some educators imposed and cultivated cultural and educational practices in their host countries (Briggs, McCormick and Way 2008; Fielden 2015; Mayer and Arrendondo 2020). Although the complexities of female agency are highlighted in the aforementioned research, insifficuent attention has been paid to the ways in which nationla identity mediates women educators' work at home and aboraod. Grosvenor (1999, 244) posits that 'there is a constant interpaly between Self and Other in the construction of national identity'. Continuing in thie vein, my presentation explores Minette jee's working life as a progressive educator across multiple sites in Britian, Morocca and Australia from the late 1930s to the 1980s.

The presentation is framed as a transnational history and explores three specific periods of Jee's transnational work, each of which is located in its temporal, geographic and socio-politcal context. The first section focuses on Jee as a teacher educator at the Malayan Teachers Training College on the outskirts of Liverpool in 1950s Britain. The second section interrogates her work as a 'daycare consultant' in Morrocco from 1959-1962 when she was employed with a transnational humanitarian organisation called the American Joint Distribution Committee. The fianl section shifts ot Jee's works as an administrator in the Kindergarten Union of South Australia from 1976-1978.

Jee's working life was enmeshed in national and international politics and I demonstrate that there was a constant struggle between Self and Other in her work. She subscribed to a hierarchical world view that some peoples and nations were more 'backward' than others, and her assumptions carried over into her relationships and work in Britian and overseas. Jee's decision-making about progressive education was intertwined with her national identity in each context.

Where History of education is often associated with historians doing research on various aspects of education – schooling, policy documents, and a wide scope on educational institutions –, education-in-history is a diversified field of study explored in a variety disciplines like pedagogy, religious studies, intellectual history, literary studies, philosophy, aesthetics, medicine, economics, sociology etc. This has advantages, as multiple disciplinary perspectives contribute to the study of the field, but also challenges, as disciplines take little notice of each other (disciplines also discipline us).

The overarching aim of this panel debate is to elaborate on the potentials for dialogue between histories of education. The question at stake is how these multiple perspectives and inquiries on education and history can shed light on the historical dimensions of education as a field of research and in this sense, make the methods and questions more complex and at the same time gain access to critical and productive perspectives on the historiographies of education as a diversified field. This includes elaborations on epistemological and methodological foundations of education in a wide sense, as well as aesthetic and political perspectives on constitutive practices of research.

A starting point for this discussion is the understanding of education as a central dimension of social, cultural, and political life that transcends research on the school and its stakeholders, while also seeing research on education and history as objects of research. Hence, while history of education already exists as an interdisciplinary field of research, less focus have been made on the often conflicting historiographies, i.e., practises of writing history that are an asset for self-critical and meta reflective discussions. The diversity asked for in this respect does not only concern the object of research but not the least, a meta reflection on practices of historiography as a concern for histories of education.

The panellists will expose different perspectives of history of education as a field of historiographies and research. Here, diverse ways to approach education from national, international, spatial, temporal, and other disciplinary perspectives will be exposed. Further, the participants will raise questions they find urgent regarding the contemporary scene of research on history of education. The discussion will invite to a wider deliberation on how to understand and develop history of education as a complex, dynamic and diversified field of research.

The panellists and discussant all work within the field of history of education while representing perspectives from History, Sociology, Gender studies, Religious studies, and Intellectual history. The panelists represent a diversity from senior scholars to a PhD student. Further they also work with diversified methods such as genealogy, discourse analysis, documentary- and network analysis.

With this presentation I would like to contribute to the understanding of the way prehistory has been taught in textbooks over a period of just over a hundred years, and how both society and archaeological research have contributed to changing the way prehistoric people are represented in the textbooks.

Scandinavian prehistory has so far received little attention in history didactics. In Swedish schools, prehistory is taught in the lower grades according to the traditional periodisation: Stone Age, Bronze Age, Iron Age and Viking Age. The aim of this paper is to give an overview of Scandinavian prehistory as it is presented in history textbooks of the 20th and early 21st centuries, and to trace its development and revision. The study highlights archaeology and gender studies in relation to the subject of history and connects textbooks with historical culture, prehistory and gender.

Textbooks are closely linked to historical culture because they are an imprint of their contemporaries (Rüsen 2004). Our knowledge of the prehistoric period is therefore partly time-bound because it is shaped by the theories currently in force, and in this way our image of prehistory becomes a reflection of our own time (Baudou, 2004). As presented in these books, prehistory is seen as an expression of a historical culture valid in a particular era. The study shows how historical cultural change becomes visible through two categories that run through the entire period under study: Cultural memory and gender.

Cultural memory: The German Egyptologist Jan Assmann has addressed the question of how memory can be linked to a period as far back in time as prehistory, and how the past is recalled in social memory. Since it is a historical period very distant from our own, we cannot share these memories through interaction, but need specialists, such as teachers, to help us (Assmann, J, 2010). Aleida Assman sees our memory as highly selective and when it comes to cultural memory, forgetting thus becomes part of social normality. In a society, new information needs to be processed and new ideas emerge to help us deal with the present and the future, while at the same time, society faces new challenges (Assmann, A, 2010). Memory can thus be seen as a reconstruction of the past created in the present (Selling, 2004). In this study, the concept of cultural memory serves as a tool to explain how some stories have remained in the textbooks during the long period under study, and which ones have changed or are no longer included for various reasons.

Gender: According to Yvonne Hirdman, the concept of gender has been used in anthropology as a descriptive concept to explain the different relationships between the sexes. The system consists of two principles. One is the taboo of separation, which states that the feminine and the masculine must not be mixed. This expression is found, among other things, in the division of labour between men and women, in the idea of what is feminine or masculine, but also in places and characteristics. The second principle is hierarchy: the man is the norm. Men are put on an equal footing with human beings and stand for what is normal and universal. Through this ordering structure, we are helped to orient ourselves in the world according to places, tasks and types (Hirdman, 2004). Gender systems change over time. In every era, there are invisible contracts between men and women that are expressed in ideas about what constitutes the relationship between them (Hirdman, 2004). This study thus describes the process by which the gender system changes and develops.

This study aims to analyse the discourse on the school subject psychology, in upper secondary school subject in the national curricula, during 1970s and 1990s. Two periods during which the psychology as a school subject went through tangible shifts (Blåvarg 2018; Blåvarg, manuscript). The empirical material is drawn from three main discursive spaces that are analysed in parallel: the bureaucratic, which includes governing documents relating to the subject, the practical, which includes the subject's teaching materials, and the professional, which includes texts of the subject teacher associations. In the 1970s there was an intense activity within all three discursive practices concerning the subject and its content and purpose. Perhaps most prominent during this time was what took place within the professional space and the teachers’ debates. During these years, the 1970s, a sharp break with prevailing formation of the subject at the time occurred and a, in many aspects, completely new discourse on the psychology subject took its place. It was a strongly social and humanistic psychology that expanded within all three practices. The subject became mainly about applied psychology and students’ experiences. Psychotherapy and quasi-therapeutic exercises dominated the subject, which was completely in line with the social development at the time, progressive education and developments in health care, especially mental health care. Following this major transformation of the subject came a palpable absence of activity in all three discursive spaces. And in the 1990s an almost complete silence prevailed around the subject. This absence of mentioning is particularly visible in the bureaucratic space where psychological aspects and the subject psychology both almost ceases to exist. But the silence is also reflected to a certain extent in the professional space. In the practical space and its textbooks, certain aspects of the subject are quickly silenced, namely the scientific connection and the subject of psychology as a subject of knowledge recede into the background as applied personal development expanded.

This paper aims to investigate how religious diversity has been integrated at school within religious education in England and Italy. To do so, the paper deals with three aspects, underlining the reciprocal connections between them and the wider social and political context, namely: religious education programmes, teaching aids and teaching practices. As far as the English context is concerned, we will focus more on paradigm shifts in syllabuses and the impact of such changes on textbooks from the 1970s – when multireligious teaching became structural (Copley, 2008; Jackson, 2019; Cole, 1972; Grimmitt, 1973; Parker & Freathy, 2012) - to today. Regarding Italy, we will focus on the implications of school autonomy since the 2000s (and the consequent redefinition of national curricula, which disappear to become locally defined, except for the teaching of the Catholic religion) for the IRC – Insegnamento della religione Cattolica/Teaching of the Catholic religion – discipline. This difference in focus depends on a diametrically opposite situation in the two countries regarding the status of religious education. In England there is not a national RE programme (so it becomes necessary to analyse the differences between syllabuses and their evolution over time, as well as their impact on teaching materials), whereas in Italy, since 2000, national programmes have been abolished, giving way to non-binding ministerial indications, except for IRC, the only discipline for which there is a national programme. Here, the legal basis of the teaching of the Catholic religion (IRC) dates back to the Lateran pacts of 1929, revised in 1984. However, IRC teachers are equally called to "adapt" to the new competence-based approach, like other colleagues. In this context, it becomes crucial to understand (as the programmes have not changed since 1984) how IRC teachers have responded to the new challenge of teaching by skills. The analysis of teachers' practices represents in the Italian context an indispensable element without which the state of the art of the discipline cannot be understood. In the English context, on the contrary, the analysis of the syllabuses and teaching materials, precisely because they are updated every five years, allows us to reconstruct the history of the discipline and the changes in approach and method. For those reasons, in the impossibility of tackling the question in its entirety, we will focus on some key aspects that have been little covered in the two countries, namely the influence of different approaches in RE teaching (exemplified by syllabuses) on textbooks in the UK and teachers’ practices in Italy in relation to school programmes. Some of the research questions are:

- About RE in England: Is there consistency between RE programmes exemplified by the syllabuses and teachers' guides or textbooks for RE teaching? What was the direct impact of syllabuses on textbooks? How did school textbooks introduce the multifaith approach? How did they represent various religions and non-religious worldviews? If so, how has the representation of religious and non-religious worldviews changed in recent decades?

- About IRC in Italy: Has teachers’ ‘freedom’ in structuring their own course favoured a greater inclusion of different religions, in addition to Catholicism? On what factors does the inclusion of religious diversity in the curriculum depend? What happens in class?

This panel has a double aim: on the one hand, it will discuss the methodological intricacies and questions that the study of a unique archive, that of Torsten Husén, raises for archival research and histories of education more broadly. On the other, the panel will consider the conceptual challenges of studying the rise of an international education research community in the 1950s-1990s.

In more detail, by focusing on the internationalization of education research, the panel aims to examine the growth of a ‘disembedded’ laboratory and its constitutive elements, i.e. networks, spaces, materialities, travelling, and translations. As a point of departure, the panel follows a sociology of science theoretical framework in order to offer an analytical but also methodological perspective on the study of transnational research in education: first, through an examination of the making of the archive of the Swedish internationally renowned educational scholar Torsten Husén; and second, through what such a rich resource tells us about the rise of education as a transnational discipline and policy field. The Husén archive is an extraordinary, large and comprehensive archive that contains what seems an entire set of documents, letters and cards that passed through Husén’s desk both at the university and at home. These formal, but also informal documents, bear witness to 50 years of work with global educational research through one of its key players.

The panelists will be examining the decades that saw the slow yet methodical construction of education comparative data for policy-making, the rise of cross border and international comparisons and the role of a modern, comprehensive education in these processes. Through a detailed analysis of the interactions of a range of actors, materials and institutions, the panelists explore the socio-cognitive processes that saw education as the sole pathway towards the governing of ‘a better society’. Such imaginaries of education have been in existence for centuries, nevertheless the notion that education science can and should be informing the making of education policy was a novel idea in middle of the 20th century.

Firstly, the panel will contribute to a methodological discussion of viewing educational research as a disembedded laboratory and how we can use scholarly archives to reconstruct this laboratory. From a methodological point of view, the panelists will focus on archive theory in order to problematize what can be found in the archive but also – and crucially – what some of the absences may be.

Secondly, and from a broader analytical perspective, the panel will shed light on some of the events in the development of an international education research community in the 1950s-1990s, where Torsten Husén was particularly involved:

1) The post war significance of the American support the development of the educational research in Europe for example the American Zone in Germany, American exchanges and sponsored visits to the USA, their support for [modern] comparative research data and linked innovations in schooling, all of which Husén was closely connected with.

2) The emergence of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement [IEA], where Husén functioned as chair for 17 years, and collegial links between internationally known researchers who subsequently invented major comparative knowledge, based on large-scale assessments, (which included organization, knowledge-building, and funding).

3) The panel will finally link the formation of the International Institute for Educational Planning, formed by the UNESCO, the World Bank and the Ford Foundation, to the further development of the field of comparison and commensuration, exemplified previously by the IEA. Although Husén worked in both institutions, they are distinguishable, for the IIEP had the main mission of supporting educational planning capacities in developing countries.

The "new science" of communist Czechoslovakia after 1948 was supposed to be a party, state, directed and controlled (ideologically and power-wise) means of forming a "new society". In particular, pedagogical science was given the "historical task" of educating the "new communist man". (Tenorth 2017, Kestere 2013, 2018) Pedagogical science thus found itself after 1948 in a space of very active ideologization (Marxism-Leninism), instrumentalization for socio-political goals. The role of pedagogical science in the formation of the "new society" affected both the field of pedagogical theory and questions of methodology, as well as the institutional transformation of science. Czechoslovak pedagogy lost much after 1948 - scientific independence, thematic diversity, methodological pluralism and overall international orientation (Kasper 2020). Thus, in the "story" of Sovietization and ideological transformation of Czechoslovak pedagogical science, there was a significant "unification", i.e. the establishment of artificial poverty and homogeneity in theoretical approaches, methodological procedures, personnel "changes", as well as in the research topics themselves. Science has become a space of intense political control and a space of "service" for the realisation of political goals. One of them was the construction of an aesthetic image of a harmonious communist society, where all social, cultural and political differences were overcome and the concept of unity and harmony triumphed. That this was an artificial, imposed and very unfree concept is self-evident.

The paper deals with the analysis of pedagogical science in the time of "crisis and reform of society". After the period of the so-called 1950s, when the "disintegration" and discontinuity of Czechoslovak pedagogical thought and scientific life was actively worked on during the Stalinist period, Czechoslovak society found itself in a crisis after 1960 - economic, but especially political and legitimizing. This "crisis" was to result in a "positive" programme for the renewal of society and science, without leaving the roots of Marxist pedagogy behind. During the period of social "thaw" (1960-1967), many voices were heard in the Czechoslovak pedagogical, as well as in the wider cultural and political debate, calling for the rejection of the "logic" of uniformity and social and cultural homogeneity, and calling ( carefully, but nevertheless) for approaches that took into account individuality, personality, independence, and the activity of children and adolescents in the processes of education and training. Although 1968 was not the year of the "youth revolt" in Czechoslovakia (as will be pointed out in the analysis of the actors of the Czechoslovak year of 1968 in pedagogy themselves), it was a cultural and social milestone in time and space, when efforts to respect difference and diversity in education and upbringing resulted. How the voices calling for the "breaking" of the power unity of Marxism-Leninism in pedagogical theory, science and methodology were structured, what practices were promoted, how they were presented, how they were justified and who were the actors - these are the topics of the analysis of the "diversity stream of pedagogical thinking" in the period of the "pre-war" and the Prague Spring in our paper.

In the Hungarian socialist education science several people suffered discrimination in the beginning of the 1950s (loss of job, refusal to obtain a scientific degree), but it was only Árpád Kiss that was sent to the internment camp at Kistarcsa. Kiss' sin, which led to his three-year imprisonment, was also related to scientific diversity and interdisciplinarity since Kiss represented an interdisciplinary-multidisciplinary approach within the Hungarian socialist educational science in contrast to the Soviet-Stalinist model - which denied all diversity. This meant that he cultivated sciences with Western roots, such as sociology and psychology, at least the branches of those related to education science. In the Cold War situation of the early 1950s, this interdisciplinary-multidisciplinary diversity approach, which was also a political stance - in contrast to the Soviet-Stalinist model, siding with the Western model - was equivalent to the most serious crime of the era, the charge of anti-Marxism, which in any case led to exclusion and discreditation.

In connection with this, in one of the directions of our research - on macro level - we examine to what extent diversity, or its opposite, was present in the Hungarian socialist education science between 1945 and 1965. In another line of our research, we also examine how the diversity between educational science and its border sciences appeared in the work and recollections of a member of the Hungarian socialist education science, Árpád Kiss (on micro level).

According to our hypothesis, regardless of the stages of political history within the Hungarian socialist education, let it be the Rákosi era (1950-1956) or the Kádár era (1957-), Árpád Kiss always represented the interdisciplinary-multidisciplinary approach in contrast to the Hungarian socialist educational science, which was only open to interdisciplinarity when it was legitimate in its various phases of political history.

Our main sources for examining the diversity (or lack thereof) of the education sector are the educational policy decrees of the Socialist-Communist Party at the time (Kardos-Kornidesz 1990). In the other line of our research, which analyses Árpád Kiss's relationship to scientific diversity within socialist education science, we use Árpád Kiss's works published between 1945 and 1965 as a source. Also, our relevant source is the Pedagogical Review (Pedagógiai Szemle), the dominant pedagogical journal of the era, since in the mid-1960s, the recollection of Árpád Kiss (1964) were published here together with those of several other Hungarian socialist education scientists (György Ágoston, Sándor Nagy, Béla Jausz, etc.). In order to get to know the Hungarian socialist education science and the life of Árpád Kiss better, we use the pedagogical lexicons (Báthory-Falus1997, Nagy 1976-1979).

Overall, what we can say is that during our study we are interested in how interdisciplinarity-multidisciplinarity appeared in the different and not at all homogeneous stages of the political history of Hungarian socialism. We are also interested in how these macrostructural changes in relation to interdisciplinarity-multidisciplinarity appeared in the life-work of a relevant member of Hungarian socialist education science, Árpád Kiss.

In historical terms, cultural diversity was and still is a reality present in different societies, and Multicultural education is a crucial component in fostering social and cultural awareness and is essential for creating a respectful and inclusive society. But what is the impact of this reality on social dynamics at school and in the educational policies? To answer this question, we turn to the works published by the comparatist Wolfgang Mitter (1927-2014).

Renowned researcher and expert in the field of comparative education, with focus on multiculturalism and national educational policies, his studies invite us to reflect on cultural diversity and inclusivity in educational settings. Mitter believes that multicultural education is a crucial component in fostering social and cultural awareness and is essential for creating a respectful and inclusive society.

The childhood of Wolfgang Mitter was in the former Czechoslovakia, in the predominantly German-speaking part of Bavaria, and is later drafted into military service in Germany. After the war, he is transferred to the U.S. zone where he is engaged in language and literature studies. In his scientific career he explores the topic of educational policies in multicultural contexts, at the same time as he assumes teaching and research functions and Chair of General and Comparative Education at the Paedagogische Hochschule.

In this exploratory study, we aim to verify how the subject of cultural diversity is explored in the investigations of Wolfgang Mitter and what reflections he points to on the relationship between multiculturalism, multilingualism, educational dynamics and national educational policies. We also intend to verify how his works about multiculturalism and multilingualism at school point out reflections about educational policies and teacher training.

The school is a social microcosm where the political-cultural and economic-social panoramas are reflected. In this context, teachers' memory narratives can be observed in a sociodynamic perspective. The memories that emerge in teachers' narratives reflect their interpretation of past events and biographical experiences in constant dialogue with their present. In this article, we intend to explore the social memory of school in the time of the Estado Novo (1933-1974) in Portugal, focusing on how teachers' testimonies reveal the social and temporal dialogue of school memories.

The “Estado Novo” dictatorship period in Portugal characterized by authoritarianism, strict censorship, corporativism and a lack of political freedoms. During this time, the Portuguese education system was heavily influenced by the ideology of the regime, which emphasized the values of "Deus, Pátria e Família" (God, Homeland, and Family). This ideology was disseminated throughout the education system and had a significant impact on the experiences of students and teachers alike.

This study aims to observe how national political dynamics have affected the memory of the school and how teaching experiences emerge in teachers' narratives and reveal interviewees' perceptions of the national context of education.

At ECER 2022, I sketched the “posthumanist” framework of a recently initiated research project which also informs the current paper proposal. In this project, I venture into what Bruno Latour (2004) would perhaps have considered “articulations”, associations/translations/adaptations in ongoing erratic movement, but what Karen Barad (2007) would figure as iterative entanglements or “enfoldments”, of “education” and “street art” imbued with “history” which have come to help shape the city of Porto, Portugal in ways similar to yet different from other European cities. “Troubling time/s” (Barad 2017, 2018), this project views “historical eras” as “multitemporal” (Serres & Latour, 1995: 60), rather than singular and successive, although it upholds the importance of precise incisions into their fabric. Likewise, “history” emerges from it not as a representational study of the past linearly distanced from it in the present but as performative practices of simultaneously “knowledge seeking and -effecting” (Thyssen 2023; Thyssen et al. 2023, 2021) that help mark/embody (cf. Barad 2007) temporalities in education and street art enfolding.

At ECER 2023, I wish to explore methods to help “re-turn” (to) or “cut together-apart” (Barad 2014; Thyssen & Herman 2019; Thyssen et al. 2023) such enfoldments of history, education and street art, some of which pertain to as early a period as the 1850s as much as they do to the early 2020s. I intend to highlight tools of analysis (“contemporary” audio-visual as well as more traditional textual-archival ones) which may have innovative potential for the historiography of education and education research more broadly when used “diffractively” (Barad 2007, 2014), that is: when employed purposely to allow results from these to be analysed through one another as ways of “re-membering”/reconfiguring (Barad, 2017, 2018) enfoldments such that particular inclusions-exclusions embodied therein, “mattering (...) simultaneously [as] )...) substance and significance” (Barad 2007, ix), are teased out. I plan to explore, in one and the same move, such methods’ potential on the premise of an approach geared at grasping matters “compositionally”, in their immanence, as matters worth “assembling” (around), precisely because of their bodying forth of inclusions that are also exclusions (Latour 2010).

My proposal takes a cue from António Nóvoa (2015: 49, 50), who urged scholars researching education historically to engage in “risk-taking and transgression”, so as to help “discover new problems (…) left hidden, in silence, by (…) educational historiography”. With reference to its etymology, I have suggested elsewhere (Thyssen et al. 2021, 2023; Thyssen 2023) that historio-graphy can be figured as “drawing(s)-together” of knowledge effecting concerning education. Here, I wish to explore particularly the potential of “street-wise” drawing together of knowledge effecting, not so much from an interest in the street itself as an educationally relevant “place and space” (Smith 2001) and/or “object” (Watt 2016), as from a fascination with (non-formal and) informal education (of various kinds) as it has been emerging with street art, which may help understand historically education, however conceived, in different, more formal contexts as well.

This paper introduces the work of the Finnish educational philosopher, Urpo Harva (1910–1994), who became the first professor of adult education in any of the Nordic countries in 1946. Harva identified as the first Finnish academic professor that included nature conservation, environmental education, and active debate against the ideal of continuous economic growth to his own teaching (Salo 1994). Already in the 1950s, Harva (1955; Alanen 1994; Salo 1994) wrote about how the most important task of adult education should be nature conservation. Despite Harva’s progressive approach to environmental issues not only in academic but in public discussion with columns and essays published in Finnish newspapers as well, he is nowadays only remembered as a value philosopher. Moreover, his ecological ideas are largely neglected although many in Finland have acknowledged Harva’s efforts to make environmental awareness a key part of adult education (e.g., Alanen 1994; 1997; Mäki-Kulmala 1995; Jaaksi 1997; Vilkka 1997; Värri 1997).

In this paper, I intend to correct this lack of research and assert that Harva should be understood not only as a philosopher of value but also as a theoretician of environmental adult education. Thus, my purpose is to supplement the history of Finnish theory of environmental adult education and to show how strong the presence of environmental issues has been in Finnish adult education in the past. To prove this, my aim is first, define basis of Harva’s environmental theory, and second, to localise Harva’s environmental adult educational theory’s philosophical starting points.

The basis on Harva’s environmental theory needs to be pieced together from his various columns and essays in Finnish and to combine them with his earlier theories because Harva did not publish any one piece specifically devoted to the environmental issues (Vilkka 1997; Jaaksi 1997). So far, the only two pieces of research into Harva’s environmental theory have been by the Finnish philosophers Leena Vilkka (1997) and Vesa Jaaksi (1997), respectively. In this study, I use more extensive material than Jaaksi and Vilkka a quarter of a century ago and I'm aiming for an even broader overview of Harva's thinking.

To localise philosophical starting points of Harva’s environmental adult education theory, I utilise Canadian professor Pierre Walter’s (2009; 2021) definition of five major philosophical approaches guiding historical development of environmental adult education theory and practices since the beginning of 1900s which are liberal, progressive, behaviorist, humanistic and radical. All these approaches include informal learning (Walter 2021). Interestingly, especially self-cultivation, i. e. a voluntary task of developing one’s personality to reach mature adulthood guided by moral principles, the theory of which has a rich history in Finland (Koski & Filander 2013), as a form of informal learning was essential form of adult education for Harva (Harva 1955; 1963; Alanen 1994, 297; 1997, 28)

I this article, I argue that Harva's environmental adult education is based on the civic educational goal of encouraging Finnish into implementing a biophilic attitude, i. e. implementing nurture relationship with the living and non-living things in nature (e. g. Blom, Aguayo & Carapeto 2020, 8–10; Orr 2004, 131–152), achieved by active inner work of self-cultivation. To prove my argument, I analysed 31 columns and essays Harva wrote during 1971 to 1994 focusing on environmental issues with abductive content analysis guided by the following research questions:

1. What are the societal structures Harva thinks should be targeted by adult education in the pursuit of more ecologically sustainable practices?

2. What forms of self-cultivation does Harva think might counteract the values these societal structures represent?

3. How do Harva’s environmental philosophy fit in with the rest of environmental adult education theory?

The Roma ethnic group has been living on the territory of Lithuania since about the 16th-17th centuries (Mróz, 2015), so they cannot be considered newcomers. On the contrary, they are historical neighbours of Lithuanians, with whom Lithuania shares common history. But in spite of this, we are still faced with mutual misunderstanding and sometimes complete ignorance. As an example, cureent presentation gives a brief history of Roma[1] education in Lithuanian capital - Vilnius.

Historically, Vilnius city (where the concentration of Roma students is largest in the country (Romų platforma, n. d.)) faced a paradoxical situation: for more than 30 years, the education of Roma children was very isolated, with only a few schools educating them. This situation was influenced by the geographical location when the former nomad Roma, after becoming a very sedentary, immobile, and isolated community, were educated in the schools closest to the Roma settlement. An interesting and unique field of education for Roma children in Vilnius emerged when by collecting oral history interviews from older and younger generations of the Roma people, teachers and other participants in the field of education, as well as by analysing archival data, strategic educational documents, and visual sources, an attempt was made to distinguish the historical cross-sections that have not only influenced the elements of change in the situation of Roma education, but have also determined the reproductive situation of Roma education today. The field of education in question has been confronted with both local educational challenges and global ones that are characteristic of other European countries educating Roma children: early dropout of school, ethnic marginalisation (Alexiadou, 2019; ERRC, 2017), school absenteeism, low academic achievement, early marriage and childbirth, gender inequality (FRA, 2014, 2016; REF, 2010), etc. These schools, which had educated Roma children for more than 30 years, accumulated a wealth of experience that perfectly illustrates the interesting, localised relationship between the Roma and the others (non-Roma) (Stonkuvienė, Žemaitėlytė-Ivanavičė, 2019). Currently, when referring to the education of this ethnic group in the educational field of Vilnius, examples of both segregation and excellent inclusion, local achievements can be provided, but they are revealed only by studying the historical context.

At present, the situation is drastically changing: the Roma settlement (Kirtimų gyvenvietė) have been liquidated by government decision, almost all the families who lived there have changed their living places, and Roma children are starting to attend new to them schools. Lithuania is also introducing drastic changes to inclusive education policies and practices, which will directly affect the education of Roma children. Non-governmental organisations and day care centres have also contributed to these changes. Therefore, considering how these and other factors will affect future processes of Roma education processes in Vilnius and all over the country remains a challenge.

[1]The term Roma is used here to refer to different groups (Roma, Litovska roma, Polska roma, Ruska roma, Kalderash). It is recognised that Roma are a heterogeneous group, and there is a need to be sensitive to framings that problematise the minority (Matras, 2011).

My presentation attempts to represent a relatively unknown aspect of Cold War history, based on unique sources, which has not been analysed deeply in the history of education. The sources are interviews with children fled from Hungary to Austria between 1950 and 1954, stored in the Radio Free Europe Archive (OSA). The specific aspects of childhood memories gain highlight here, through considering possible official US goals. The result is a «(re)-ideologized childhood»: both Hungarian and US administration could only see the children through the lenses of their own political intentions. The research aims to exceed the simplifying dichotomy of resisting society vs. repressive power with these examples, showing a more complex and dynamic environment. In this situation, I am going to utilize a double, inside/outside perspective, as we can see childhood experiences from a retrospective and transformed view.

When researching everyday educational history in a totalitarian-authoritarian political system, it is difficult to find sources and narratives because of a definite state/party control over public opinion and discourses. If we see for instance the Soviet system in its «’totalizing’ environment (…) everything necessarily became political» (Johnson, 1996, 290) and even self-expression, identity making appeared in a ritualized, Party-like language using, clearly showing the overall influence of the ideology (Halfin, 2000). It is a great challenge to find sources free from the official political implications of the communist period, including personal dimension, with honest feelings and thoughts: private diaries or memories can be good options to do this (Hellbeck, 2006; Paperno, 2009). In this analysis, I am going to portray a kind of counter-ideology of Marxism-Leninism in Hungary in the 1950s, through interviews conducted with emigrant children in Austria and Germany. They fled with their families from the other side of the Iron Curtain. Their situation meant that US officials might have got insider information about the East Bloc. Usually older students were the ones delivering relevant reports on living in a communist country (Sheridan, 2016); children under 14 rarely come into a historian’s sight. I am going to focus on the memories of this age, based on the reports – two sources were over 14 at the time of interviewing, but they spoke about their previous experiences, which allowed featuring them in the study.

My main concept defined in the term of re-ideologized childhood, a typical feature of these interviews. This approach shaped by an English abstract of a Polish doctoral dissertation utilizing the Soviet idea about making a new Man (Kadikało, 2012; to the complex nature of this educating process: Kestere & González, 2021). In his summary Kadikało depicted an ideal development, which started from the early childhood, targeting children through different forms of popular culture: tales, intended values, propaganda campaigns, and content of learning, etc. An equivalent meaning to Kadikało’s ideologized childhood was the leading slogan of «struggle for hearts and minds» in the «Free World» in the bipolar 1950s (Borhi, 2016, 94-103). The reports went through different, usually unknown transformations during the interactions of the interviewer(s) and respondent(s). We cannot be sure, but we can presume that the anonymous western officials controlled these interviews. This a priori aspect and determination is a clear limitation of such analyses: after making, selecting and transcribing these narratives, an explicit counter-ideology (a re-ideologized childhood), and an anti-communist viewpoint developed by the US officials in the 1950s, on the other side of the Iron Curtain.

Benedetto Croce recounts that during a lecture a student asked Labriola how he would educate a Papuan. Labriola replied that he would provisionally enslave him and then see if with his grandchildren and great-grandchildren he could teach him something.

Antonio Labriola (1843-1904) was an important Italian philosopher and educationalist. His studies marked the second Italian 19th century: he was the first recognised interpreter of Marx and Engels' thought and his works influenced thinkers such as Gentile, Gramsci and Croce.

Starting from this famous provocation on the education of the Papuan, we intend to analyse the theme of diversity by defining it within Labriola's thought.

We will not rely only on his most famous and significant writings, but we will provide examples of how this thought threaded through many of his communications and correspondences.

We will analyze the sources trying to understand in what terms the theme of 'different' is grasped in Labriola's theoretical framework and how it is linked to his ethical, political and pedagogical framework.

The problematic nature of this theme and these links was grasped by Gramsci himself when he commented on Labriola's statement on the Papuan in his quaderni dal carcere. In this case, it will be interesting to see how the theme of the 'different' is dissect in a sharper and more defined manner from the perspective of the 'spirit of the split' and the emancipative value of educational action.

All networks hold a meeting during ECER. All interested are welcome.

In recent years we have witnessed the growing impact of international organisations on education research, policy and public opinion. Education researchers have argued that the role played by international organisations is part of a ‘global architecture of education’ (Jones, 2006, p. 48), also referred to as global governance of education (Sellar and Lingard 2013). Historians of education have argued about the importance of historical research to understand the dynamics behind the consolidation of this world wide educational discourse and practice. We can thus find important contributions to understanding the historical trajectories of international organisations (inter alia, Sluga, 2011; Christensen & Ydesen, 2015; Sorensen, Ydesen & Robertson, 2021), and the influence of, and wider implications arising from, international organisations in national educational contexts (Flury, Geiss & Guerrero-Cantarel, 2020; Elfert, 2021). Different studies within the history of education have also focused on understanding how educational expertise handed down from international organisations has influenced local networks of educators and experts in local contexts (Duedahl, 2016; Droux & Hofstetter, 2015; Prytz, 2020). Another series of investigations looked at local actors demonstrating the need to pay attention to the phenomena of interconnections (within, beyond, and across borders) through what has been called entanglement history or histoire croisée (Sobe, 2013; Chisholm, 2020).Although recently there are more case studies on this topic, in general, we find a tendency to overlook the reception and impact of the policies advanced by international organisations at the national, regional, and/or local levels (Christensen & Ydesen, 2015). As Fuchs writes, ‘Unquestionably, there is a need to examine how the complexity of interrelations between global developmental processes and national or specific cultural configurations can be analysed and explained from a historical perspective’ (2014, p. 21). This is needed to avoid far reaching generalisations or abstract analysis that overlook the spaces used by international organisation to advance their policies (Matasci & Droux, 2019).

In this paper we focus on a single case study regarding UNESCO’s role in the development and implementation of educational policy in Spain under the Franco regime. We trace the organisation’s attempts to establish collaboration with the Spanish government even before Spain became an official member in 1952 and follow its strategies in order to expand its influence on Spanish educational circles until its direct involvement in drafting the most important educational reform in Spanish history: The General Law of Education of 1970. With our analysis, we use the Spanish case in order to identify key aspects of an emerging global educational governance as manifested through UNESCO’s work, highlighting their complexities, which, taken together, illustrate many local-global dynamics still present today.

This article draws on data and research results from an ongoing research and indexing project conducted by the author in close cooperation with the Bibliothek für Bildungsgeschichtliche Forschung in Berlin (BBF). Funded by the DFG - German Research Foundation - (04/2022-03/2025), the project "Thinking Education Across Borders"aims at the indexing, digitization, analysis, and open access provision of a unique and educationally valuable international correspondence estate. As a source corpus, this legacy offers extensive research potential on the developmental dynamics of educational theory and practice worldwide and international educational networks. It also reveals boundaries and synergies in the professional pedagogical milieu, especially between actors in a highly visible academic pedagogical milieu and pedagogical actors who were primarily active in pedagogical fields that were more distant from universities, such as elementary school teachers, or who had a harder time gaining recognition or attention in academic milieus for various reasons (e.g., gender, social or geographic origin). By exploring these contexts, a contribution can be made to generating exemplary insights into dynamics in professional milieus more generally.
This paper examines the development of professional identities and the opportunities for female pedagogical actors to participate and contribute in exclusive professional pedagogical milieus in an international context in Europe, the United States, and South Africa between 1869-1929. Emphasis will be placed on what norms and conventions female actors had to comply with, or what detours they had to take or concessions they had to make in order to achieve professionalism in exclusive pedagogical milieus, to be able to be professionally effective, and to give visibility to their effectiveness. Which factors could contribute to the fact that female actors, firstly, saw themselves as pedagogical experts, secondly, that they were perceived as such, and - which is not the same thing - thirdly, that they were accepted as such? Which conflicts between different (own and foreign) professional identity attributions can be identified and described? What significance did professionalism in the sense of professional aptitude and a high professional quality of work have in this context, and what other factors (e.g., social or cultural norms and conventions) were relevant to the attribution and acceptance of professional identities. In particular, the importance and influence of connections of progressive pedagogical milieus to social reformist circles, such as the women's rights movement, will be addressed, and the role played by networks between influential, represented, and typical pedagogical actors on the one hand, and pedagogical fringe groups, or underrepresented or atypical pedagogical actors on the other, will be examined.
In this context, three aspects of diversity are addressed, which are assumed to be relevant for the development, dissemination and reception of (not only) pedagogical theory and practice and which are therefore also of importance for the attribution of pedagogical professionalism.

Looking back on a tradition of more than 100 years, Waldorf or Steiner schools (and to a lesser extent kindergartens) are one of the most persistent organizations in the education system. However, their reputation and popularity vary between different societies. Even more remarkable is the often strong controversy over the ideological foundation, methods and other aspects of Waldorf education. Examples and triggers for these public controversies and discussions are numerous: the publication and discussion of “What they don’t tell us” of two Waldorf-estranged parents in Norway in 2010, proximity to right-wing extremist ideas of Waldorf teachers in Germany in 2015, the failed Ofsted inspections of Waldorf schools in the UK in 2019. Most recently, at the end of 2020, the discussion around French philosophy teacher Grégoire Perra’s critique of Anthroposophists’ proximity to conspiracy theorists was in the news as well as the partly close connection between Waldorf schools and teachers and the deniers and conspiracy theorists around Covid-19, especially, but not limited to Germany.

Meanwhile, Waldorf education is only a marginal topic in the academic discourse. Sometimes it is part of historical discussions on progressive education around 1900 or in relation to other reformers (mainly Maria Montessori), sometimes it is used as a typical case for private schools today. This anthology gathers perspectives around the world to discover how Waldorf education is perceived and discussed in both the public and academic discourses. Education systems are one of the last national refuges in a globalized and interconnected world (due to national or state-based legislation and curricula), thus they are a rational starting point for global research on this very topic. Moreover, local, regional or national languages are important reference points for discourses and the adoption and translation of Steiner’s ideas alike.

In terms of content and contributors, the panel is docked to a international research project with 15 case studies from European, Asian, African and American countries. The aim of this panel is to give first insights in identified and reconstructed places, structures and modes of discourses about Waldorf education based on the examples of Germany, Austria, France and Poland. With the panel and the project in general we will also serve as preliminary work on further research within the field of international Waldorf movement, e.g. on actors and actor networks, discourse sovereignty etc. One of the unique features of this work is the internationalization of academic Waldorf research, which until now has been chiefly limited to singular phenomena or countries. This contribution fosters comparative studies of a seemingly uniform pedagogy and its discussion and addresses the question of continuity and change of ideas and practices of Waldorf education in different constellations. Therein, it recurs, on the one hand, to the global dissemination of ideas and, on the other, to the historical concept of ‘progressive education’ as an international movement.

This contribution and the related compilation is the first international comparative attempt to analyse the Waldorf movement and its diverse appearance. The international cases have different methodological approaches regarding different research states and levels of public or academic discussions. The common bond of the contributions are mainly two guiding questions: First, (how) Waldorf education is perceived and discussed a) in the public and b) in academia, so if it is a concept that is accepted/respected/canonized and/or part of (public) teacher training or vocational training; second, what the differences and similarities between “public” and “academic” discourses are and if there are influences between the two.

Even though societies have always been diverse, and modern educational institutions have been organized differently according to the standards of these different societies, there are also commonalities between them. One such example where diverse societies come together is in the telling of stories of heroes and their foes. The theme of historic stories’ good hero versus an evil foe, such as the trope of the Bible’s David versus Goliath, made its way into modern national curricula and historiography in similar ways across state borders: for centuries, nations have been inspiring their folk with tales of singular, renowned heroes who saved their nation against some outside foe. What we are going to do in this paper is present how three seemingly diverse nations – the Swiss, the Danish, and the Scottish – actually followed the same historic story-telling tactics to bring their nation together against a common foe.

William Tell, Niels Ebbesen, and William Wallace were three mythological heroes whose stories were based on actual historical figures (Ebbesen and Wallace) or folk tales (Tell). They were all regional “freedom fighters” who stood up against a larger outside force that wanted control of their “homeland.” But they were not unsung heroes. On the contrary, national Swiss, Danish, and Scottish historiographies have written their heroic, mythical stories for centuries, no matter whether those stories were actually true or not, and melding them into the historical consciousness of their societies. Songs, art, and children’s stories have been made about them, and their feats have been written into the curricula with textbooks turning them into national heroes whom students should revere (and emulate). They were the Davids versus their respective Goliaths. And just as David, they became renowned as fighters for the “right cause” who bravely faced the odds at any cost.

In our paper, we will discuss not just the “heroes” but also, especially, the “foes.” While children have been socialized around their national “David,” how were they learning to discern and depict their “Goliath?” When William Tell resisted Austrian Habsburg rule, Niels Ebbesen stood up to the intrusive Germans, and William Wallace stood up to the English throne seekers, they were fighting with principle against some “evil,” outside enemy force that caused suffering and pain. Drawing upon Ernest Renan’s remark that “suffering” unites as much as “joy,” we argue that “arch foes” are important in two respects: they give the “heroes” a “foe” to rise against while at the same time the suffering they caused united the people behind those “heroes.” The “Goliaths” were thus just as necessary to the stories as the “Davids.”

The contribution intends to present the italian Project of Relevant National Interest "Education and Economic Development in Southern Italy from the Unification to the Giolitti Era" (1861-1914), which is part of the research inspired by the contribution of Carlo Maria Cipolla entitled Literacy and Development in the West. The project, funded by the Ministry of Research, aims to reconstruct the policies implemented in the post-unification period aimed at creating the conditions for the economic and social development of southern Italy by leveraging on the channel of a school public and widespread.

The project focuses on the complex relationship between literacy and development as examined through a quantitative collection of analytical data relating to schooling processes particularly in most of the southern Italian regions (Sardinia, Campania, Basilicata, Calabria and Sicily).

The contribution focuses on the activities carried out by the researchers of the University of Messina and on the potential of quantitative investigations to understand the dynamics of local, regional, national and global geographies.

It is based, in particular, on a survey relating to a vast area of Campania, the "Principato citeriore", better known as the Province of Salerno.

Carloforte is a city located on the island of San Pietro, in the extreme south-western part of Sardinia, in Italy. The island of San Pietro remained uninhabited until 1738, when a group of Genoese settlers who lived in the city of Tabarka in Libya inhabited it with the approval of the Savoys. Since then begins the story of a new city that is characterized by a culture and a language that is profoundly different from that of the main island. Between Carloforte and the territory of Sulcis there is therefore a deeper border than the sea that separates them.
Carloforte, although it rises on a small island of only 51 km2, exceeded 8,000 inhabitants in the first decade of the twentieth century. It is an economically rich and productive centre, particularly in the fishing and processing of tuna, of coral and maritime transport. In this it differs from the rest of Sardinia, still mostly dedicated to sheep farming and poorly industrialised.
Studies on teacher mobility in Sardinia show that there is a tendency for teachers to work in their countries of origin, particularly at the beginning of the twentieth century. This trait is found marked early in Carloforte, a sign of a clear desire to pass on a cultural imprinting.

Internationalism in the Soviet Union was not only a political doctrine and an idea that subordinated national interests to the common interests of nations or a social class, but it was also one of the basic principles of communist education. However, from the beginning, the term “internationalism” was unstable (Babiracki, Jersild, 2016). Proletarian internationalism based on Marxist ideology, with the slogan "Proletarians of all countries, unite!" calling for world revolution and the establishment of communism throughout the world, was eventually replaced by more moderate forms of internationalism. Particularly significant changes were observed after Stalin's death. According to Appelbaum, a significant change in the policy of USSR based on the ideology of internationalism had two goals: to create an autarkic, transnational, socialist community that would counter the West in the Cold War, and to bolster Soviet power in an increasingly turbulent Eastern Europe (2019, p.128). Inside the Soviet Union, these changes were associated, among other things, with increased russification and the ideologies of the "fusion of nations" and the "creation of a new Soviet man" (Ivanauskas, 2007, 2010; Grybauskas, 2013).

In this presentation, the aims, principles, and forms of internationalist education in the schools of the Lithuanian SSR will be analysed in the context of other countries of the Eastern Bloc (the German Democratic Republic, the People's Republic of Poland, the Socialist Republic of Czechoslovakia) and the Soviet republics. An attempt will also be made to answer the question whether these aspects contributed to the preservation of diversity or, on the contrary, led to unification.

*The slogan “Socialist internationalism with a human face” is used following the slogan “Socialism with a human face” and refers to the reformist and democratic socialist programme of the First Secretary of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia Alexander Dubček in 1968 (Stoneman, 2015).

The paper deals - in the region between the Eastern Alps and the Northern Adriatic - with the issue of education of pupils in their native language as well as different national education policies regarding language and attitudes towards national minorities. Today's Slovenia and its neighbouring areas experienced changes in national borders, political systems, and school policies in four countries after World War I and World War II.

In views of the school situation - in the 1910s (Austro-Hungary) and 1920s (Italy / Kingdom of SHS - Yugoslavia / Austria / Hungary), the paper presents a change in attitudes towards language issues and (minority) education policy. The research focuses on the question of how Slovenian-German linguistic and school relations have changed since the times of Austria-Hungary, where German was the leading state language in the Austrian half of the country, and then became a minority language in the Kingdom of SHS / Yugoslavia at the end of 1918.

After the First World War, education policy in all countries advocated teaching in the state language, with little or no sensitivity for linguistic and ethnic differences in each country. How did national minorities in four countries (Kingdom of SHS - Yugoslavia, Italy, Austria, Hungary) exercise their right to diversity and education in their mother tongue? How can we make a comparison of the educational situation of language minorities along the eastern borders of Italy (Slovenian, Croatian, German) with the German minority education in the Kingdom of SHS - Yugoslavia and the education of the Slovenian minority in Austria?

Due to major changes in language and school conditions, the final part will briefly present how the changes during and after WW2 with the migration of the German population (1941, 1945) and of the Italian population (1954) influenced the linguistic and national image of the region and the minority education. Knowledge of the dilemmas of modern primary school education also influences historical research. Does the primary school curriculum of the modern era, with openness to English as a foreign language from the beginning of school lessons, pose different challenges to teaching in the mother tongue? In the case of immigration, what is the challenge of modern initial teaching of elementary school students whose language of instruction is not their mother tongue?

Conceptions of citizenship education are always constituted by ideals about how a community ought to be. In pluralist democracies, the politics of citizenship education are thus bound to be controversial (Biesta, 2011; Gutmann, 1999). Yet, recent (European) citizenship education research and policy has shifted the focus from definitions, their contentiousness, historical contingency, and inherent normativity, to questions of governance and didactical implementation (Gunter, 2015; Plank & Boyd, 1994). Citizenship education is largely portrayed as an authoritative instrument meant to convey universal and seemingly uncontroversial values such as “freedom, equality, tolerance and non-discrimination” (European Commission, 2017, p. 17).

By adopting an explicitly historical and political focus, this panel aims to (re-)expose the normativity ingrained in citizenship education. The panel will present and discuss selected findings from our working group’s years of work on heterodox understandings of citizenship education in Europe. It will do this by leveraging a carefully selected sample of historical case studies of political and educational actors ranging from Catholic organisations to secular movements to educators, which ask: what aspects of dominant understandings of community and citizenry did these actors contest and what counter-ideals did they propose? Which conceptions of citizenship education complemented these ideas and how did these actors seek to introduce them into the educational debate and implement them in practice?

The panel relies on this common set of questions to investigate the relationship between education and political ideals. The contributions focus on specific actors, whose activities span the 1920s to the present, and the European continent from Spain to the Hungary, and from the UK to Italy. The discussion will highlight comparative insights and their implication for European citizenship education, its theory, politics, and history.

The panel promises significant empirical and theoretical contributions. Empirically, by focusing on the educational views and strategies of thus-far overlooked movements, it contributes towards a history of 20^th century European citizenship education from the bottom up. It fosters an approach to citizenship studies that is aware of frictions and controversies, and which integrates potential contributions of actors that act outside state and supra-national institutions. From a theoretical perspective, the Special Issues will refine our understanding of contingency of, and politics behind, understandings of citizenship education, including those dominating the current debate – thus shedding light on the relationship between educational and political views more generally.

In 1969, Hungary firstly participated in a western educational project since the communist takeover (1949); it was the Six Subject Survey, initiated by the IEA. Civic Education produced a big problem in the research, as Professor Árpád Kiss, the driving force of the Hungarian team wrote in a letter to Neville Postlethwaite: we couldn’t record these tests, «because our aims and objectives in Civic Education deviate from yours in so many respects»(Kiss, 1969). Our question is targeting to this core point: What are the meanings of the umbrella term civic/citizenship education in a non-democratic society? The timeframe of our overview will last from the restauration of the communist power after the revolution (1957) to the crisis of the existing socialism (mid-1980s), the so-called Kádár Era. We would like to highlight the discrepancies between the official (and idealistic) images of conscious, active socialist citizens and the reality of different reactions to these needs from apathy to imitate the requested attitudes. The ideological scheme was stable during these decades, but the interpretations of the key notions (socialist democracy, socialist citizenship, internationalism, and so on) differed in many ways. According to an overall accepted hypothesis in Hungary, the state incorporated and nationalized its citizens through the obligatory political socialization of the schools after WW2 (Szabó, 2000; Jakab, 2022). The direction was opposite to the practice of Western countries in that time: civic education did not speak about rights, autonomy and individual conditions needed to defend from the encroachments of a strong state, but to subordinate these to the Marxist-Leninist ideology. Contemporary analyses about the history of Hungarian citizenship education usually started the detailing story from the 1990s (Dancs & Fülöp, 2020; Hera & Szeger, 2015; Holle & Ványi, 2022): we would like to show the roads leading to here.

Dancs, K. & Fülöp, M. (2020). Past and present of social science education in Hungary. Journal of Social Science Education, 19(1), 47–71. Hera, G. & Szeger, K. (2015). Education for Democratic Citizenship and Social Inclusion in a Post- Socialist Democracy. In Majhanovich, S. & Malet, R. (Eds.), Building Democracy through Education on Diversity. Leiden, Brill, 41–56. Holle, A. & Ványi, É. (2022). Conceptualizing Citizenship. Eastern European Inputs to the Contemporary Debates. Insights from Hungary. Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, European and Regional Studies, 21(1), 1–24. Jakab, Gy. (2022). Demokrácia demokraták nélkül? Oktatási reform és állampolgári nevelés [Democracy without democrats? Educational reform and citizenship education]. Gondolat, Budapest. Kiss, Á. (1969). Letter to Neville Postlethwaite. Hoover Institute, IEA Archive, Vol. 59. Szabó, I. (2000). A pártállam gyermekei [Children of Party-State]. Új Mandátum, Budapest.

The approval in 1978 of the Spanish constitution is considered the closure of the tense negotiations which permitted the birth of the democratic monarchy we know today. Article 27, dealing with education was especially controversial and as result the different democratic governments passed seven comprehensive educational reforms; some aspiring to strengthen an egalitarian model of public education while others favored the freedom of parents to choose private schools, mainly catholic, supported by public funds. Both models have provoked wide social protest along the years. The social contestation against the progressive and egalitarian reforms was championed by associations of Catholic families and teachers who saw in education legislation, not only a violation of the principle of freedom by limiting the system of private subsidized schools, but also the implementation of a plural ideology that endangered the Catholic identity communal values. This paper strives to analyze the relationship between these Catholic associations and the state from 1978 until 2006. During this period, they had to adapt to the loss of their privileged status under the dictatorship, readjust to the new political setup and finally adopt a frontal opposition to many of the educational policies advanced by the government. In their struggle they have challenged the state’s concept of citizenship as it has been articulated in the educational laws and the civic education curriculum associated with it. Looking at the associations’ publications both in the press and inner circles, as well as interviews with leading figures, we trace the way they have been negotiating their notion of citizenship vis a vi the state, paying special attention to their opposition to citizenship education and the mechanisms they have used to prevent its implementation by the state.

González, P. M. (2022). La educación concertada en España: origen y recorrido histórico. Historia de la Educación, 41, 405-425. Muñoz Ramírez, A. (2016). ¿Qué ha sido de Educación para la Ciudadanía con el Partido Popular? Foro de Educación, 14(20), 105-128. https://doi.org/10.14516/fde.2016.014.020.007 Prats, E. (2012). ¿Educación cívica o educación para la ciudadanía? Lo que acontece en Europa. En J. C. González Faraco et al. Identidades culturales y educación en la sociedad mundial. Servicio de Publicaciones, Universidad de Huelva. Sánchez Agusti, M., & Miguel Revilla, D. (2020). Citizenship education or civic education? A controversial issue in Spain. Journal of Social Science Education: JSSE, 19(1), 154-171. Vázquez Ramil, R., & Porto Ucha, Ángel S. (2020). Temas transversales, ciudadanía y educación en valores: de la LOGSE (1990) a la LOMLOE (2020). Innovación Educativa, 30, 113-125. https://doi.org/10.15304/ie.30.7092

Many voluntary associations during the interwar years, promoted international understanding among children and adults alike in the hope of avoiding another global war. The League of Unions in Britain was one of these. It lobbied the government to advocate for the newly founded League of Nations, whilst also seeking to convince and educate a wider public, promoting a ‘world citizenship’ that crossed national boundaries. Children and young people were a key constituency for the LNU’s promotional efforts as they would be the ones to take its agenda forward in the future. To create world citizenship among this younger generation, the LNU argued that “new knowledge” alone was insufficient; a “change of feeling and purpose” was also required. The LNU sought to change hearts as well as minds. Recognising this potentially troubles analyses of citizenship that focus on knowledge and dispassionate discussion as a basis for political action in national and international contexts (e.g. Habermas 1989, Case 2018), but chimes with recent analyses both of internationalism (e.g. Scaglia 2019) and citizenship in a range of broader contexts (e.g. Kingston et al. 2017) which emphasise affective dimensions. Relevant emotions include feelings of sympathy and empathy, optimism and anticipation, and also fear. This paper builds on previous scholarship on the LNU, education, and the young (e.g. Wright 2020, McCarthy 2011), to focus in on the emotional components of the LNU’s world citizenship as envisaged for and experienced by the young. Drawing on selected exemplars from the LNU’s publications and records, teaching periodicals, and accounts by members of its junior branches, it explores ways in which emotions were incorporated within the ways that world citizenship was envisaged for and described by the young internationalists who encountered the LNU.

H. Case (2018) The Age of Questions. Princeton: Princeton University Press. J. Habermas (1989), The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, Thomas Burger, Cambridge Massachusetts: The MIT Press [trans from German, orig. published 62] R. Kingston et al. (2017) Emotions, Community, and Citizenship: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. League of Nations Union (1927) Declaration Concerning the Schools of Britain and the Peace of the World. London: LNU. H. McCarthy (2011) The British People and the League of Nations. Manchester: Manchester University Press I. Scaglia (2019) The Emotions of Internationalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press S. Wright (2020) 'Creating Liberal-Internationalist World Citizens: League of Nations Union Junior Branches in English Secondary Schools, 1919-1939', Paedagogica Historica, 56:3, 321-40.

Education systems are “sorting machines” (Domina et al. 2017). By defining and ranking categories of teaching and learning, and sorting individuals into these categories, educational structures contribute to shaping the identity and stratification of modern citizenries. Unsurprisingly, then, the reform of educational structures ranges among the fundamental components of agendas aimed at re-structuring Western European societies after 1945 (Heidenheimer 1997). While reforms were usually contentious and specific outcomes vary, experts, as well as left and centre-right parties agreed that at least some standardisation and de-stratification was necessary for education systems to foster more equal and liberal societies (Furuta 2020). But what about those who disagreed with this vision of society? Do fundamentally different visions of the citizenry also come with different preferences for educational structures? This paper investigates the relationship between visions of the citizenry and educational preferences by focusing on a thus-far often overlooked educational actor: far-right movements. Using qualitative content analysis on an extensive collection of archival documents, we systematically relate the views on educational structures expressed Western European far-right parties as well as by influential German, Italian, and French far-right intellectuals and activists since 1945 with their ideals of society and citizenship. By focusing on the nexus between educational and social structures as seen by one of the most vocal opponents of the post-WII liberal consensus, this paper promises to theoretically refine both our understanding of the relationship between education and citizenship, and of the far right as an educational actor.

Domina, T., Penner, A., and Penner, E. (2017). Categorial Inequality: Schools as Sorting Machines. Annual Review of Sociology 43, 311–30. Furuta, J. (2020). Liberal individualism and the globalization of education as a human right: the worldwide decline of early tracking 1960-2010. Sociology of Education, 93(1), 1–19. Heidenheimer, A. J. (1997). Disparate Ladders. London: Routledge.