The idea for this article proceeds from personal, practical, and emotional experience and reflections on holding the position of the Minister for Education and Science during the period of the economic crisis in Latvia (2007-2010). The article consists of three parts. The first part outlines the potential of a position in power with a particular…

Education during World War I has been a relatively unexplored field of research, especially in the case of countries with a neutral stance in that war. The Netherlands is one such country. This article argues that even though the Netherlands was politically neutral, it was and considered itself a part of western civilisation and shared in the…

The progressive education movement was known in Spain from its very inception, and in fact many of its pedagogical theories and practices reached Spain before reaching other European countries. Yet traditional historiography has always maintained that Spain was never integrated in the progressive education movement, a misconception that helps…

In the context of the international exchange of school reform ideas and concepts, the new schools in Hamburg were recognised as exemplary instances of a revolutionary and forceful reform in the public elementary school systems. Based on studies of transfer and their premise that the transnational transfer of ideas, practices and objects does not…

In the period 1919-1933 the experimental and community schools in Hamburg tried to put into practice a new model of schooling without a set curriculum that was based on providing a considerable amount of freedom for pupils and teachers. These experiences were introduced in the Netherlands by way of magazines published by the New Education…

After the revolution in 1918, many reformist teachers were convinced that they could put into practice their dreams of a free and independent school in a democratic republic. Four state schools in Hamburg became anti-authoritarian school communities, in which teachers, parents and students experimented with revolutionary concepts of education. For…

From 1955 to 1975, the French and the Americans were both active in the educational field in South Vietnam, but their objectives were different. The French were concerned with preserving their influence with the Vietnamese elites and relied on the Mission Culturelle--the heir of the colonial Direction of Education--and its prestigious high…

This study has two purposes: the first is to present the general condition of public education in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by showing the reformation process in educational institutes and teacher training, and the relationship between this process and the New Education movement in the Ottoman Empire; the second is to…

Although progressive education was an international phenomenon, historical interpretations of it may be affected on the national level by academic and institutional contingencies. An analysis of how US and English historians of education interpret progressive education reforms in their respective countries identified a strain of condescension…

In the Netherlands, crossing borders to study comprehensive schools was an important strategy in the 1970s, a decisive period for the start and the end of the innovation. According to policy-borrowing theory, actors that engage in debating educational issues are framing foreign examples of comprehensive schooling to convince their audiences.…

This article examines the ways in which the very idea of teacher education in the United States was transplanted from foreign lands. Teacher education, particularly normal school training, was based on a model imported from despotic Prussia, a model that was popularised by French and American visitors to the northeastern German land. Although…

Korea opened up to foreign intercourse in 1876, when the country concluded its first international treaty with Japan. Similar treaties with European and American nations followed during the 1880s. The period until 1910, when Korea was annexed to the Japanese Empire, saw manifold attempts to reform as well as resistance to these reforms. Against…

This article takes as its inspiration Ian Grosvenor's conjectural essay presented for the symposium "Historiography of the Future: Looking Back to the Future" held at the International Standing Conference for History of Education (ISCHE) 33 in July 2011 in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. It contributes to a sensory history of schooling by…

During the 1960s and 1970s, "traditional" secondary educational systems in various Western European countries made way for comprehensive education curricula. In contrast to the reforms within the "intellectual" subjects, the field of physical education (PE) remained largely underexposed in research. This study focuses on PE…

This article is about the deaf education methods debate in the public schools of Toronto, Canada. The author demonstrates how pure oralism (lip-reading and speech instruction to the complete exclusion of sign language) and day school classes for deaf schoolchildren were introduced as a progressive school reform in 1922. Plans for further oralist…