17. Histories of Education
Paper
International Organisations and National Educational Policy: The case of Spain under Franco Regime 1953-1970
Tamar Groves1, Mariano González-Delgdao2
1Extremadura University, Spain; 2La Laguna University, Spain
Presenting Author: Groves, Tamar
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.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedWe carried out an historical research, collecting data from a long series of archives and official publications related both to the Spanish educational administration and the activity of the UNESCO in Spain. In our interpretation, following the disciplinary characteristics of history we took into account longitudinal developments and cultural contextualization. For our archival work we visited the following archives: Archivo Central del Ministerio de Educación y Formación Profesional (ACMEFP, Ministry of Education). Archivo de la Comisión Nacional Española de Cooperación con la UNESCO (ACNEC-UNESCO, Spanish Commission for collaboration with the UNESCO). Archivo del Instituto San José de Calasanz de Pedagogía, Residencia de Estudiantes (ISJC, Institute of Pedagogy); Archivo General de la Administración (AGA, General Administartion Archive); Archivo General de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid (AGUCM, Complutense University, Madrid). The main educational journals published by the educational administration and used for this study were: Revista de Educación, Bordón or Revista Española de Pedagogía.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsUsing archives and educational journals to study the activities of international organisations in Spain under the Franco regime enabled us to demonstrate how the UNESCO, in collaboration with the OECD and the WB cast their net of influence into the country’s educational system. This historical perspective reveals the long-term planned effort of these organisations to slowly widen their contacts, collaborations and capacity to influence national educational policy. With Spain’s official integration in UNESCO in 1952, the educational institutions of the country began echoing the main ideas spread by the organisation such as the importance of literacy, developing international understanding, and the importance of education for economic development. In the 1960s, these ideas were implemented based on UNESCO’s belief in the importance of educational planning. By the end of that decade, UNESCO had assumed responsibility for revising and controlling the level of cooperation with its plans. Appointments of UNESCO specialists accompanied by funding schemes strengthened the close relationship between Spanish educational authorities and UNESCO, as a new committee arrived to accompany the planning and implementation of educational reforms. Many of the activities designed to facilitate these reforms were UNESCO-dependent, such as financing of educational projects, grants for training abroad, seminars, publications, and expert visits. In this sense, we can see how Spain organised its education system following normative ideas from international organizations like UNESCO. For the Franco regime, this collaboration with UNESCO and others offered a unique opportunity for international rehabilitation and an access to technical know-how that the country lacked at that time. This clarifies the synergies between dictatorial Spain and international organisations and explains the capacity of the latter to have strong and steady influence on the development of Spain’s educational policies.
ReferencesChisholm, L. (2020). Transnational colonial entanglements: South African teacher education college curricula. In G. McCulloch, I. Goodson & M. González-Delgado (Eds.), Transnational Perspectives on Curriculum History (pp. 163-181). Routledge.
Christensen, I. L. & Ydesen, C. (2015). Routes of Knowledge: Toward a Methodological Framework for Tracing the Historical Impact of International Organizations. European Education, 47(3), 274-288. https://doi.org/10.1080/10564934.2015.1065392
Droux, J. & Hofstetter, R. (2015). Constructing worlds of education: A historical perspective. Prospects, 45(5), 5-14. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11125-015-9337-2
Duedahl, P. (2016). Out of the House: On the Global History of UNESCO, 1945-2015. In P. Duedahl (Ed.), A History of UNESCO: Global Actions and Impacts (pp. 3-25). PalgraveMacmillan.
Elfert, M. (2021). The power struggle over education in developing countries: The case of the UNESCO-World Bank Co-operative program, 1964-1989. International Journal of Educational Development, 81, 1-19. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2020.102336
Flury, C., Geiss, M., & Guerrero-Cantarel, R. (2020). Building the technological European Community through education: European mobility and training programmes in the 1980s. European Educational Research Journal, 20(3), 348-364. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1474904120980973
Fuchs, E. (2014). History of Education beyond the Nation? Trends in Historical and Educational Scholarship. In. B. Bagchi, E. Fuchs & K. Rousmaniere (Eds.), Connecting Histories of Education: Transnational and Cross-Cultural Exchanges on (Post-) Colonial Education (pp. 11-26). Berghahn Books.
Jones, P. W. (2006). Education, Poverty and the Wolrd Bank. Sense Publishers.
Matasci, D. & Droux, J. (2019). (De)Constructing the Global Community: Education, Childhood and the Transnational History of International Organizations. In E. Fuchs & E. Roldán Vera (Eds.), The transnational in the history of education: Concepts and perspectives (pp. 231-260). Palgrave Macmillan.
Prytz, J. (2020). The OECD as a Booster of National School Governance. The case of New Math in Sweden, 1950-1975. Foro de Educación, 18(2), 109-126. http://dx.doi.org/10.14516/
Sellar, S., & Lingard, B. (2014). The OECD and the expansion of PISA: New global modes of governance in education. British Educational Research Journal, 40(6), 917-936. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3120
Sluga, G. (2011). Editorial –the transnational history of international institutions. Journal of Global History, 6(2), 219-222. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1740022811000234
Sobe, N. W. (2013). Entanglement and transnationalism in the history of American education. In T. S. Popkewitz (Ed.), Rethinking the history of education: Transnational Perspectives on Its Questions, Methods, and Knowledge (pp. 93-107). PalgraveMacmillan.
Sorensen, T. B., Ydesen, C., & Robertson, S. L. (2021). Re-reading the OECD and education: the emergence of a global governing complex–an introduction. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 19(2), 99-107. https://doi.org/10.1080/14767724.2021.1897946
17. Histories of Education
Paper
"As long as the universities are still closed to us ..." Professionalization Strategies of Female Educators in Exclusive Pedagogical Milieus
Katja Grundig de Vazquez
Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena, Germany
Presenting Author: Grundig de Vazquez, Katja
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.
Methodology, Methods, Research Instruments or Sources UsedThe study is conducted from a comparative and transcending educational history perspective. The comparative perspective approach was developed as a new research approach in the research project, taking into account the particular source material. This approach is presented in the paper. It combines hermeneutic and qualitative-quantitative methods with DH-methods.
Conclusions, Expected Outcomes or FindingsFactors of inequality and institutional structures, that made it difficult for female pedagogues to professionalize or participate in their profession are highlighted. Three aspects of diversity are explored and it will be shown how they condition different boundaries that professional actors can be confronted with in their professional work and that can favor or impede the attribution and recognition of professional identities for different groups of actors. Examples will be used to examine the extent to which efforts to establish or recognize professional identities were possible in harmony or conflict with, for example, social or cultural (attributions of) identities, whether and to what extent such efforts may have led to the emphasis, compensation, concealment, or denial of certain aspects of social or cultural identities that were understood as significant or obstructive for the establishment or recognition of professional identities. Finally, in relation to current contexts, it will also be put up for discussion whether or to what extent the attribution and recognition of professional identity(ies) depends primarily or significantly on professional factors such as expertise and professional commitment.
ReferencesThe MAIN SOURCES for this contribution are historical correspondence documents, which are currently being edited, analyzed and prepared for digital publication in the course of the project that the research is part of.
GRUNDIG DE VAZQUEZ, Katja (2020): Thinking Education beyond Borders – The Pedagogic Correspondence Legacy of Wilhelm Rein as an Access to Historical Transnational Contacts and Networks of Educational Reform. In: Historia Scholastica 1/2020, pp. 109-123. DOI:10.15240/tul/006/2020-1-008
KOERRENZ, R.: Reformpädagogik. Eine Einführung. Paderborn 2014.
MAYER, Christine (2019): The Transnational and Transcultural: Approaches to Studying the Circulation and Transfer of Educational Knowledge. In: Fuchs, E., Roldán Vera, E. (Hrsg.): The Transnational in the History of Education. Concepts and Perspectives. Cham. eBook: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17168-1, S. 49-68.
MAYRING, P.: Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse. Grundlagen und Techniken. 12., überarbeitete Auflage. Weinheim und Basel 2015.
MÜLLER, Lars (2019): Kooperatives Management geisteswissenschaftlicher Forschungsdaten. In: ABI Technik 2019, 39(3), pp.194-201.
POPKEWITZ, Thomas S. (2019): Transnational as Comparative History: (Un)Thinking Difference in the Self and Others. In: Fuchs, E., Roldán Vera, E. (Hrsg.): The Transnational in the History of Education. Concepts and Perspectives. Cham. eBook: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17168-1, S. 261-291.
ROLDÁN VERA, Eugenia, FUCHS, Eckhardt (2019): Introduction: The Transnational in the History of Education. In: Fuchs, E., Roldán Vera, E. (Hrsg.): The Transnational in the History of Education. Concepts and Perspectives. Cham. eBook: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17168-1, S. 1-47.
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