Jane Schuch/Heinz-Elmar Tenorth/Nicole Welter
Historical Educational Research – Innovation and Self-Reflection
An Introduction
Marcelo Caruso
Technological Change on the Road to a „Grammar of Schooling“ – The reform of the Volksschule (state-supported primary school) in Spain (1767–1804)
Applying a historical perspective, the author takes a critical look at the concept of a “grammar of schooling”, a grammar of schoolwork referring to supposedly unavoidable components of the modern school. In literature on the history of education, the failure of ambitious educational reforms is explained with the help of this concept. On the basis of an investigation of technological change in Spanish elementary schools around the end of the 18th century, however, the author posits the thesis that this grammar itself had to be produced historically and that the determination of changes on the level of classroom technologies may not take the form of a coding of success and failure. Thus, new historiographic perspectives are revealed in the field of a history of technology in schooling.
Friederike Kuster
Orders of Nature – The foundations of gender-distinct education in Rousseau’s work
In consistence with his cultural criticism, Rousseau, during the 1760s, outlined a comprehensive program for social reform. This program comprises a concept of education, central ideas on the relation between the sexes and the generations, and the formulation of constitutional principles. Rousseau’s democratic republicanism is based on premises which are rooted in the order of the sexes and the family. In contrast to the classical abasement of the home as opposed to the state, the private sphere experiences a fundamental revaluation with Rousseau. In this, a central role is assigned to the education of girls with regard to the role of women as citizens. In “Émile”, Rousseau tries to explain the moral relationship of the sexes by referring to “orders of nature”.
Rita Hofstetter/Bernard Schneuwly
Educational Science as a Subject of Historiography – A discipline in the area of tension between disciplinary, professional, and local/(inter)national fields
In a first part, theoretical and methodological concepts and working hypotheses are developed, in order to describe and understand the emergence and development of a discipline such as educational science, which develops in very close relation to the social and professional fields of reference and which can be regarded as pluri-disciplinary. In a second step, the concepts and hypotheses are then examined on the basis of a concrete example: the development of educational science in Switzerland. Here, different academic traditions cross paths, which led to different developments in educational science during the first half of the 20th century. Three contrasting configurations are determined, the differences between which are explained by cultural and regional factors.
Eckhardt Fuchs
Historical Educational Research from an International Perspective: History – State of the Art – Perspectives
The author sketches the history of historical educational research since the end of the 19th century. With the three central periods in that development as a frame of reference, he presents the respective main agents, major works, institutional contexts, and theoretical-methodological debates. This historiography-historical part is followed by an outline of the present state of the art and important trends, with the analysis being based on an evaluation of educational-historically relevant journals from around the world. The central finding of this analysis is that, at present, historical educational research constitutes a recognized field in historical research; however, it is going through an institutional crisis and searching for a new disciplinary identity.
Jürgen Reyer/Diana Franke-Meyer
The Reform of Preschool Education and the Scientific Status of the „Pedagogy of Early Childhood“ as a Sub-Discipline of Educational Science
With the first reform of preschool education during the 1970s and following several semi-academic precursors, the first contours of a pedagogy of early childhood emerged as a sub-discipline of educational science. With the end of the reform movement, this theoretical construct stagnated on a rather low level of elaboration within the disciplinary structure of sociopedagogics. With the present reform of preschool education, the question arises whether the pedagogy of early childhood could profit from this reform movement and whether it could thus continue to develop into a consolidated independent sub-discipline.
Georg Cleppien
Overtaxing the Self in Entrepreneurial Times
Andreas Soltau/Malte Mienert
Uncertainty in the Teaching Profession as a Cause for the Lack of Teacher Cooperation?
A systematization of the present state of the art in research on the basis of the transactional model of stress
In research literature, the often lamented lack of teacher cooperation at German schools is explained by the so-called uncertainty of the teaching profession. The authors develop a systematization of the present results of school-related research on uncertainty on the basis of the transactional model of stress according to Lazarus (1991), thus providing a gateway to this topic, which has so far been underrepresented in German-language research. The usefulness of this model of uncertainty for the formulation of complex research hypotheses and for the interpretation of empirical data is illustrated on the basis of a re-analysis of the record of PISA-2003 I Plus.