Valérie LUSSI BORER, ERHISE, Université de Genève, Suisse; Véronique CZAKA, ERHISE, Université de Genève, Suisse

With more than 20 cantons having each their own educational system, Switzerland manages since 1874 a system of government in the educational field combining a lot of cantonal prerogatives and a few federal prerogatives (Criblez, 2008; Hofstetter, sous presse). Currently, Switzerland pursues a policy of harmonization of its educational system that began a century ago. This policy is based on several data that are progressively shaped to serve this aim (Jost, 1995). Why do we need data and what are these? Who needs, who collects and who shapes them? For which purposes? How are benchmarks and indicators gradually established to have a better overview and to compare the different educational systems? Giving more and more prerogatives to the federal government or to intercantonal organizations, could the Swiss case study, in reduced scale, help to better understand the processes currently happening at the European level? We will look at the processes of collecting, comparing and shaping data through the Journal published by the Swiss Conference of cantonal ministers of the public education (CDIP) between the years 1887 and 1978 (Badertscher, 1997). This journal has been the first to produce yearly statistics about education at the Swiss level at the end of the 19th century. We will compile and compare the two versions of the Journal – the German and the French one –and focus on two periods which seem particularly relevant: 1) from the end of the 19th century to the First World War; 2) from the end of the Second World Wart to the Seventies: “The Glorious Thirty”. How the two Journals, which are in fact quite different (the French version is not a translation of the German one but an adaptation taking into account the French--‐speaking area particular need and interest), try both to maintain the "Swiss Consciousness" and to introduce the innovations suggested by other countries or international organizations? How do the cantons take into account the experiences of others cantons in their own reforms? How are they comparing the cantonal educational systems with each other and with what kind of data? What are the influences coming from European and foreign countries on the Swiss educational system (Waldow, 2009)? Through the journals of the Conference of ministers of education in Switzerland, we will analyse the shaping of data used for the management of cantonal educational systems, a work in progress during the century. We will observe where come the data from, how they are taken into account by the cantons, how they circulate into the country and how an harmonization of educational policies in Switzerland is gradually introduced with the creation of new intercantonal organizations.

The Science From the State. The Production of Data by the Statisticians of the French Ministry of Education From 1957 to 2007

Xavier PONS, University of East-Paris Créteil, France

In this communication, we propose to analyse the institutionalisation of the production of statistical data by the central administration of the French ministry of education from 1957 to 2007 . Our main hypothesis is that this production does not depend only on cognitive requirements and technical evolutions but also on bureaucratic and political considerations. To do so, we focus on four main analytical dimensions: the formal organisation of the statistical production, the statistical methods, technics and tools which are implemented, the composition of the central statistical office and the main professional cleavages among the members of this office. These analytical dimensions allow us to understand the interdependencies between statisticians and their main partners within the ministry and so to highlight four main historical configurations of this institutionalisation process. Through these configurations, four main figures of a specific “State science” emerge: an hand-made recording activity (1957-1972), a specialised statistics (1973-1987), statistics as a structuring and synoptic description (1987-1997) and a growing politicised statistics (1997-2007). The empirical material for this analysis is drawn mainly from one qualitative PhD research study conducted between 2004 and 2008 on policy evaluators in France in education. Concerning the statisticians themselves, the latter was based on various methods of analysis: − 32 sociological semi-conducted interviews, − a document analysis of the literature produced by the statisticians on their own history and activity, − an analysis of a dataset of 439 publications in evaluation edited by the statistical office between 1967 and 2007, − the enforcement of a questionnaire cross-checked with the exploitation of the yearbook of the office between 1992 and 2007, − and the analysis of three kinds of archives (official, oral and personal).

[Part 1: session 2.12.]

Transgressing boundaries of citizenship. Constructions of active pupils in School Radio broadcasts in Sweden in the 1930s

In Scandinavian countries and Britain, special departments for school radio programs were organized in the late 1920s or early 1930s. In general these programs were in line with the overall curriculum. However, in Sweden the new subject citizenship, was given a particularly radical formulation in the school programs. This meant that children who listened to educational programs on the radio, discussed the programs, and did assignments on them, encountered views of society that differed from prevailing traditional middle-class representations. The article focuses on the communicative practices children and adults participated in. Different conversational strategies related to different contemporary pedagogical ideals, and they positioned children as more or less autonomous. I want to suggest that the highly politicized, but non-commercial public school broadcasts gave children voice as competent and active citizens in new ways – especially in programs produced by female teachers. In particular ways, these programs transgressed traditional boundaries on notions of childhood, gender, education and citizenship.

Instruction and Modern Technology: The Emergence of the Educational Film in the Interwar Period

Eckhardt FUCHS, Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany

Textbooks were introduced into the lower secondary school in the course of the 19th century and replaced simple reading books. Since then they have been the main instructional tool up to the present. However, the introduction of new teaching materials frequently led to discussions about the way in which these materials would modernize or not modernize instruction. The history of educational media shows that new teaching and learning aids have consistently been developed in the wake of technical inventions and innovations, and that, although their introduction has led to controversy, they have generally been rapidly adopted. My presentation will discuss the emergence of the educational film in the interwar period. Taking the example of Germany I will sketch the technological development, the debates within the teaching community, and the institutional ways in which the new technologoy spread within Europe. This will be based on three hypotheses:

1. 
   The introduction of film as a novel medium resulted primarily from new technical inventions and a new form of popular culture;
   
2. 
   Educational films –as did textbooks – were subjected to inherent state control;
   
3. 
   Educational films were developed and implemented internationally.
   

The development of the Atomic Bomb in the Manhattan Project an the Radio Detection and Ranging (Radar) at MIT during the Second World War convinced American stakeholders that fundamental problems are to be solved by interdisciplinary teams, including experts from different academic sciences trying to find solutions for military, social, or economic problems defined by politicians. In the 1950’s this technocratic model was applied to the education system, introducing centralized experts, standards, standardized tests and the focus on sciences and mathematics. Along the cultural logic of this model, that is supported since the 1960’s by the OECD, new teaching tools were developed, first as idea of a Memory Extender (Memex) as early as in 1945 by Vannevar Bush, the former coordinator of the activities of over six thousand American scientists in the application of science to warfare during the Second World War. Against this background the idea of programmed instruction arouse in the 1950’s, with Burrhus Frederic Skinner as most prominent initiator, developing mechanical teaching machines whose purpose was to administer a curriculum of programmed instruction. It contained sets of questions, and a mechanism through which the learner could respond to each question. Delivering a correct answer, the learner would be rewarded and thus stimulated. However, in contrast to educational policy the technocratic momentum sobered in classroom instruction after it had shown sobering results, most recently in the expensive language laboratories in the 1980s.

Lessons learned at the educational exhibitions: Mexico in the Expositions Universelles de Paris 1867 and 1889

The importance of 19th-century international exhibitions in the shaping of public systems of education worldwide has been signalled by a number of groundbreaking compilations (Barth, 2007b; Lawn, 2009) as well as individual studies. In a world interconnected by fewer channels than today, International Exhibitions –and especially educational exhibits within them- were the main hubs in the networks of people, ideas, objects, technologies, and brands of the time. However, whereas much work has been done on the exhibitions as showcases of civilization for the participating countries, more attention needs to be paid to the actual dynamics of exhibiting, learning, adopting and adapting the educational knowledge staged in the exhibitions following the participation of countries in them. In this paper I will look at the ways in which two international exhibitions, Paris 1867 and Paris 1889, affected the further development of primary education policies and practices in Mexico. By means of a variety of sources that range from exhibition catalogues and reports to educational newspaper reports and educational literature produced in Mexico before and after the exhibition, I will examine in particular two aspects: a) how the promoters of innovations in educational methods and technologies intended to construct their legitimacy by appealing to the lessons learned at the exhibitions; b) how some educational institutions tried to revamp themselves according to those lessons learned in order to secure their existence in a rapidly changing educational environment (and whether that strategy worked). The comparison of two points in time will allow me to make my claims stronger and thus enable me to insert my work into a wider, focused discussion on processes of internationalization in education.

Knowledge transfer in the international congresses of ‘school hygiene’ (1880-1920), The hidden imaginary of body measures in hygiene treatises

Maarten VAN DEN DRIESSCHE, Ghent University, Belgium

From the 1870s onwards, there was a succession of international congresses on public health and child welfare. Due to the influence of international congresses, a lot of hygiene treatises were published. These hygiene treatises collect contributions from different knowledge domains such as medicine, pedagogy, statistics, architecture and engineering. In the first part of the paper we’ll draw different schemes to investigate how different disciplinary fields are interrelated. We will focus on the mathematized image of the child’s body. Anthropometric data – in the form of mathematical formulae, statistical coefficients and geometrical grids - play an important part in these treatises. These data are simple, abstract, neutral, and objective; since they detach themselves from the body and can therefore always be interpreted in the same way. Once the average body measurements are known, they become the standard against which variant research hypotheses are tested. In the second part we take a more critical stance. We confront the seemingly objective measures to the pictures and images of children’s bodies, but also to pictures of measuring instruments, furniture and architectural devices. The few pictures of the human body on display in the treatises are monstrous: hunchbacks, one-eyed people, dwarfs, and people with huge heads are the visible deviation from the statistical norm. These images cannot match the abstract quality of mathematical data, since they cannot be generalised. Consequently we hardly see pictures of the ideal or the normal body. We want to argue that the mathematical data refer to a hidden imaginary. While the images of bodies, instruments and architectural apparatuses have their disciplinary specificity. However, both the images and the measures reveal how the interchange between different disciplinary fields and knowledge domains occurs.

Encounter and Entanglement: Global Models and Educational Exhibits at Late-19th Century International Expositions

There is an extensive body of educational scholarship that erroneously dates the emergence of transnational educational policies and the genesis of global educational accountability mechanisms to the period after World War II. In this line of argument, it was the formation of the United Nations and its related institutions (Meyer et al., 1997), the global deployment of human-capital oriented economic development expertise (Resnik, 2006), and an explosion in the number of international non-governmental organizations (McNeely, 1995; Chabott, 2003) that laid the groundwork for the emergence of the “transnational educational policy communities” and the “world culture of education” that researchers and practitioners face today. Overlooked in this, however, is the galvanizing role played by the International Expositions (also known as World’s Fairs) of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The exhibit halls of the fairs were critical sites for the display of the most "modern" practices in areas such as technology, industry, healthcare and education. This intensive "modeling of the future" (Lawn, 2009) reached far beyond the millions of visitors who attended these colossal events. Reports on the fairs (e.g., Buisson, 1878) circulated and re-circulated, thus magnifying and extending the displays and the international comparisons they generated. Around the globe, educators and policymakers both reacted to and anticipated the comparative matrices and systems of classification of the International Expositions. This paper examines the various educational exhibits that were mounted at three international expositions (Vienna, 1873; Philadelphia, 1876; and Paris, 1889) and explores the ways that they disseminated and helped to generate global educational policies and practices.

"Toiling” Together: International Influences on the Development of Teacher Education in the United States

The “Instituto Pedagógico” as a “Sui Generis” Teacher Training Institution. About the reception of German models and discourses in Chile (1885-1920)