Adrian ASCOLANI, Universidad Nacional de Rosario / CONICET, Argentina

Pendant la première moitié du XXe siècle, l'histoire de l'éducation dans la formation des enseignants en Argentine a été un objet d'étude présenté dans un format universaliste, en raison de l'influence en Amérique latine des manuels d'étude qui ont eté produits en Europe et aux Etats-Unis d'Amérique. Ces manuels ont été distribués en Argentine, comme dans de nombreux autres pays, grâce à des traductions en espagnol, avec l´objectif de modéliser la formation d'éducateurs et d'enseignants, formés dans les universités et les collèges. Ils ont servi comme un modèle pour établir le contenu des programmes et de la formation pédagogique et ont été imités par des auteurs nationaux de manuels d'histoire générale de l'éducation jusqu’aux années 1940. Dans le présent article, nous analysons la circulation de ces livres, leur présence dans le curriculum et dans les références bibliographiques des manuels ultérieurs mais également dans les représentations du passé pédagogique. Nous observons des variables essentielles comme: les tendances philosophiques ou historiographiques à laquelle ils adhèrent; la notion de civilisation et de progrès social qui s'y applique; les échelles de valeur utilisées; les auteurs mis en évidence et ceux dont on doute; les lignes pédagogiques qui sont favorisées et qui influenceront l'avenir. L'approche de ces œuvres prend en compte toutes les dimensions possibles de ces artefacts culturels pour tenter d’expliquer leur rôle dans la culture scolaire ou académique qui les a incorporés. L'histoire intellectuelle et institutionnelle qui a façonné la pratique de la lecture de ces livres constitute une autre dimension que nous discutons dans notre étude.

[Part 1: session 3.14.]

The Efficiency Expert and the Intelligence Tester: 20thC developments in governing education systems in the US and Europe

The subject of this paper is the gradual rise of expertise in the early to mid 20thC, in the US and Europe, which was used to audit and govern education systems at school, regional and national levels. The first part is concerned with the growth of the school survey movement in the US between 1900 and 1925: this approach was dominant in the new field of doctoral dissertations, and was connected to the growth of educational expenditure, large migrant flows and the rise of educational management. The second part is focused on the growth of intelligence expertise in Europe, and its movement, via experts and tools, from national projects and contexts into European consortia and programmes, initially based on Hamburg and the UNESCO Institute in the 1950s. A competence in statistics was developed in US education from 1904, in particular under the influence of Edward Thorndike, the educational psychologist at Teachers College, Columbia. The point of measuring education was to deny imprecision and vagueness, and to ascertain exactly the achievements of people, methods or systems. Measuring, in Lagemann’s analysis of Thorndike, created a new relation in education between the measurers, the managers and the teachers. The American school survey, influenced by Thorndike’s scientific approach, was based on fieldwork, tests, interviews etc with the object of making schooling transparent to outsiders. The key element was its treatment of the education office, in the city, as a research office. Written within the context of the American efficiency movement in education, Sears places the ‘measurement movement’ as a study across mental measurement and school management and by the mid 1920s he argued that ‘we measure cost, teaching efficiency, progress through school, success in studies, mentality, buildings, equipment, textbooks and attendance by methods and devices almost unknown only a dozen years ago’. Research departments and regional laboratories grew across the US, all engaged with measuring education. Testing and its devices flowed across borders into other systems of education, and the publication of test results and standards of work ‘travelled’ across scientific communities, especially if the academic also travelled, for training or inquiry, to American sites of work. European test expertise, used mainly in research projects, began to coalesce post war when national experts, like Wall in the UK and Husen in Sweden, were encouraged to apply these practices to the modernisation of German and western education systems, in a period of Cold War. The second part of the paper will deal with the growth of European inquiries clustered and networked around the new Hamburg UNSECO Institute in the 1950s, and created the IEA [the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement], and the rise of statistics as the basis for significant governing knowledge about education.

"Comparaison n’est pas raison" – Towards a sociology of comparative knowledge production

Juergen SCHRIEWER, Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany

The presentation is meant to adopt a sociology-of-knowledge approach informed by concepts from cultural anthropology, historical sociology, and present-day social theory. In light of these concepts different styles of comparing social phenomena will be distinguished. In particular, social science comparative enquiry aiming at contextualisation and explanation will be contrasted with highly selective styles of collecting, ordering, and interpreting international data. Based on the growing opportunities for worldwide cross-referencing to social and educational phenomena provided by modern information and communication technologies, the latter styles of handling international data tend either to transmute them into policy-relevant models for reform or to statistically re-arrange them into structured series of information which, by the mere weight of their ranking order and the purported rationality such rankings imply, fuel international competition and lead to streamlining educational policies at the regional, continental, or world level. The presentation seeks to highlight the specific aspects of knowledge construction inherent in these styles of doing comparisons and, thus, to identify the crypto-normative and predictive surplus value they involve.

Governing without governing – The fabrication of European Educational Policies

António NÓVOA, University of Lisbon, Portugal

The concepts of European construction or integration cannot be taken for granted. The same applies for the European Educational Space. At a formal level, there is no EU policy on education, but only cooperation and inter-governmental policy coordination. But after the Maastricht Treaty (1992), and especially after the Lisbon Strategy (2000), it is hard to understand the resistance to look at these coordination efforts as one of the most effective European policies. This presentation tries to address tensions and ambiguities. My intention is to provide a critical perspective of the formation of a European Education Space that is, at the same time, a process of fabricating a European Educational Policy. It is obvious that this process is interconnected with globalization issues as well as with national policies. But the purpose of this chapter is to illuminate a layer of analysis – the role of the European Union – that is often neglected in the analysis of educational policies. These policies are elaborated through a process of “governing without governing”, that is, of producing data and indicators that through logic of benchmarking and exchanging of “good practices” tend to impose solutions as if they were inevitable and inescapable.

[Part 2: session 7.11.]

Research on the history of educational studies and research has developed strongly over the past two decades with respect to a number of national contexts such as the USA (1) and Scotland (2). Historical understanding of the processes by which educational studies and research became institutionalised in different countries has also been much enhanced (3). As Hofstetter and Schneuwly have discussed, these processes characteristically involve the creation of academic chairs, textbooks, institutions and posts for educational research, publications in specialised journals, and public discourses on education (4). Historians have also begun to explore the international dynamics involved in the history of educational studies and research (5), and it is clear that the field has developed in different ways in different contexts (6), but much more detailed research is required in order to develop the theme of internationalisation in this area in depth. This panel will explore the issues involved in internationalisation in the history of educational studies and research. Contributors to the panel from the UK, Canada and New Zealand will highlight how ideas and practices have travelled between countries around the world, followed by discussion by a respondent based in France. Specific institutions such as the Institute of Education in London have been closely involved in these processes, and key individuals have been responsible for specific approaches becoming prominent and accepted. The role of textbooks, international agencies, conferences, teachers, students and fellowships will all be considered in detail by panel members. Evidence examined will include published tracts, reports, journals, and private correspondence. The truly global nature of these phenomena will be a key feature of the panel, as the internationalisation of educational studies and research is traced between different continents and around the world.

The 1937 NEF conference in New Zealand as catalyst for changes to teacher understanding and government educational policy 1935-1955

Noeline ALCORN, University of Waikato, New Zealand

The 1937 NEF conference in New Zealand, held over two weeks in the four major cities, was an exciting phenomenon for teachers as the country moved slowly out of the Depression under the growing threat of fascism in Europe. The ideas promoted were not new to informed educational leaders in New Zealand’s secular system: indeed, the conference planning committee included a number of key New Zealand educators, most of whom had travelled abroad, some under the auspices of the Carnegie Foundation, who had argued for and implemented changes in schools and universities. Both the fledgling New Zealand Council for Educational Research and the New Zealand Educational Institute were prominent supporters. Nevertheless the ideas were revelatory to many of the over 6000 attendees - an amazing number in a population of only one and a half million. The conference provided the catalyst for a range of study groups and experiments and engendered optimism in the power of ideas to change education and society, a key theme of the NEF in Europe. The influence of the international speakers, who met as a group with the Minister of Education, Peter Fraser, also led indirectly to the appointment of C.E.Beeby to lead the Department of Education and implement major changes at the behest of the Labour government. The fourteen conference speakers, (including only one woman, Susan Isaacs), were in the main progressives who took their Euro-American focus for granted. They were critical of New Zealand society, which they saw as homogenous and English, with an overly formal, narrow and elite education system. They perceived the system as regulated, uniform and bureaucratic, and deplored its crippling examinations, inspection and grading of teachers and the divisions between primary and secondary education. They argued for wider access to secondary schooling and encouraged New Zealand teachers to adapt to their own environment. This paper examines the dominant messages from the edited conference addresses, in newspapers and in a key teachers’ journal. The speakers called for an enriched and generous curriculum, including more involvement in the arts, greater child-centredness, less testing, more education and support for teachers and bringing together the administrative divisions between sectors. The paper attempts to assess both messages most likely to influence teachers’ classroom practice and those that addressed issues that resonated for policymakers, in particular the Minister, who had a long history of respect for and belief in equity and education. The final section of the paper traces and analyses the ongoing impact of the conference messages on teachers and policy makers over the following two decades during and after World War II.

L’influence de l’Europe francophone sur les destinées de la formation des maîtres au Québec: le rôle joué par Charles Joseph Magnan après son voyage d’études en France, Belgique et Suisse au début du siècle

Charles Joseph Magnan (1865-1942) est une figure importante dans le domaine de l’éducation au Québec. Auteur de manuel scolaires, rédacteur de la revue L’enseignement primaire, polémiste sur les questions touchant l’instruction obligatoire, auteur de nombreux ouvrages, il s’est surtout fait connaître par son rôle dans le domaine de la formation des maîtres, entre autres à titre d’inspecteur général des écoles normales. Cette communication se centrera sur l’étude de son ouvrage intitulé: Les écoles primaires et les écoles normales en France, en Suisse et en Belgique: rapport présenté au Surintendant de l'Instruction publique et aux membres du Comité catholique. Cet ouvrage est le résultat d’une mission éducative en Europe francophone afin d’y puiser des influences permettant d’améliorer le système d’éducation québécois, et plus particulièrement les écoles primaires et les écoles normales. L’intérêt de se centrer sur cet ouvrage est multiple. D’une part il illustre les liens étroits entre l’Europe francophone et le Québec, à une période où les moyens de communications n’étaient pas ceux d’aujourd’hui et où les responsables du système éducatif élargissaient le champ de leur cercle à d’autres pays que la France. D’autre part, il permet de cerner les aspects des systèmes étrangers qui ont frappé cet éducateur émanant d’une société très fortement contrôlée par l’Église catholique. Enfin, il éclaire des facettes méconnues des transformations de la formation des maîtres au Québec à une période où des mouvements de fonds important étaient en cours sans qu’ils aient nécessairement défrayé la manchette des réformes éducatives de l’époque. Ce regard croisé entre des éducateurs européens et québécois éclairera un aspect peu connu de notre histoire scolaire. Quoique centrée sur l’ouvrage de Magnan, la communication mettra en rapport l’état du système de formation de maître avant et après cet ouvrage ainsi qu’une exploration de son impact sur le système scolaire dans son ensemble, particulièrement l’enseignement primaire.

L'éducation française en Chine: l'exemple de l'Université l'Aurore

L’Université l’Aurore est créée en 1903 à Shanghai par les Jésuites français qui souhaitent, par la voie de l’éducation, toucher les hautes classes de la société chinoise, et par le père Ma Xiangbo (Joseph Ma Siang-pei) (1840-1939). Elle comprend quatre départements: littérature, philosophie, mathématiques, sciences naturelles, qui ont été reconnus par les nouvelles autorités dès les débuts de la République en 1912. L’enseignement, d’un niveau remarquable, s’enrichit en 1914 de trois facultés: Lettres-Droit, Médecine, Génie civil. L’organisation et le contenu des cours sont similaires à ceux proposés en France et, les élèves étant formés par des professeurs étrangers, les diplômes sont reconnus par les gouvernements chinois et français. Les étudiants chinois s’inscrivent à l’Aurore afin de recevoir un enseignement de qualité et d’origine occidentale, non par conviction religieuse. C’est à l’Aurore que l’on forme des élites et dirigeants chinois. Formés en langue française et selon une méthodologie française dans les domaines du droit, de l’économie, de la médecine, de la mécanique, les étudiants diplômés s’assurent un avenir prometteur au sein des entreprises étrangères, des banques ou des institutions chinoises. Bien que le français ne soit pas une langue largement utilisée en Chine et que l’influence française n’ait pas été un facteur important dans les affaires du pays, l’Aurore a trouvé le genre d’enseignement qui convient aux jeunes chinois des hautes classes et a réussi sur une échelle limitée dans la création d’une synthèse entre le modèle français d’enseignement supérieur et l’environnement chinois. Une exploration des archives a servi à éclairer le rôle important joué par les Jésuites dans la connaissance de la civilisation chinoise, la transmission du savoir français et l’action philanthropique auprès de la population chinoise. Les entrevues avec des diplômés de l’Aurore ont permis d’expliquer pourquoi, avec un effectif de diplômés relativement petit, l’Aurore peut être distinguée par ses normes académiques rigoureuses et représenter l’université française la plus importante en Chine, et comment ses programmes d’enseignements des sciences et des technologies ont insisté sur l’application des connaissances pratiques pour aider à la modernisation de la Chine, tandis que ceux des sciences humaines ont formé un «pont» entre la culture française et chinoises, et comment aujourd'hui, le rayonnement de l’Aurore, devenue la faculté de médecine de l’Université Jiaotong de Shanghai, perdure à travers des associations d’anciens élèves.

Diffusion, Exchange, and Transfer: Reconceptualizing Education Borrowing Across the Atlantic, 1824-1888