Through a close analysis of the links between nineteenth-century Protestant missionary thought and the British and Foreign School Society (BFSS) this article suggests that to distinguish Enlightenment educational and social reform from evangelism is mistaken. Emblematic of the social reform projects which emerged in England as responses to the…

A general lack of scholarly works on various aspects of the history of the lives of female teaching religious has recently been highlighted by Hellinckx, Depaepe and Simon. This paper, which reports a preliminary study, is offered as one contribution to addressing the deficit identified. The hope is that it will provoke further scholarship in the…

Historians have documented the dramatic battle over the mass introduction of IQ testing waged by Chicago's unionised teachers in 1924 against Superintendent McAndrew and the Chicago Board of Education. The efforts of Chicago's mid-level district administrators and their work with principals and teachers to address the real and perceived…

This article explores the material culture of kindergarten in the United States in relation to the production and consumption of materials and kindergarten theory and pedagogy. The focus is on Friedrich Froebel's building gifts as they were manufactured and sold by the Milton Bradley Company from 1869 to 1939. A review of trade catalogues over the…

How late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Protestant children supported and interacted with foreign missions is still a relatively undeveloped field of scholarly research. Missionary societies actively recruited children's money, energy and sensibilities for the missionary cause. Sunday school pedagogy and rhetoric focused on cultivating a…

The present article is the fruit of research on the circulation of Brazilian books from the "Atualidades Pedagogicas" collection at the "Biblioteca Museu do Ensino Primario" (Primary Education Museum-Library) in Lisbon. This library was headed by Adolfo Lima, one of the exponents of the Portuguese New School, and gave form to…

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries a group of intellectuals and Spanish scientists found it necessary to resume cultural relations with Latin American countries that had been Spanish colonies in the past. In order to do this, they promoted a school of thought called "Hispano-Americanism", which aimed to create a…

International exhibitions provide a good arena in which to study the circulation and transfer of educational ideas and practices in the second half of the nineteenth century. Structured around themes of industry, progress, and civilisation, and defined as ephemeral museums of the new world of commodities for the consumption of the masses, they…

The rise during the 1950s of a discourse centred on "development," together with the elaboration of the concept of "human capital," led to an altogether new paradigm of economic modernisation. The expansion of education and professional training was now viewed as a key strategy for those countries wishing to join the developed…

Paulo Freire's pedagogy was developed in reaction to the state of "periphery" of illiterate farmers in Brazil and Chile. However, his thinking, which illuminated capitalism's oppressive nature in the classrooms, was enthusiastically accepted in the "centre" and he became a global point of reference for social action. In this…

There has been little study of political exile as a means for transferring pedagogic ideas and models, which has been important in Latin America, especially in the case of the Spaniards exiled in Mexico after the defeat of the Second Republic at the end of the 1930s. The Mexican government's sympathy with the Second Republic allowed many teachers…

In this article we wish to propose a debate on postcolonialism and its role in the history of Latin American education. Our starting point is the acknowledgement of the reality that postcolonial historiographic perspectives have yet to be applied in studies of one of history's great empires, namely, the Spanish Empire. This is surprising for…

In this article Copeland's model of visualising the classification of children with learning disabilities is applied in examining the development of special education schools in the Netherlands during the interwar period. Central are three intertwined social practices: the teacher's professionalism (in pedagogic and practical concerns), the…

In this article, the authors examine policies and interventions concerning special children in the United States and Europe from 1900 to 1960. They focus on concerns about, and interventions on, children defined as having "special needs". They explore interventions, both in the form of words and practices, and examine their effects on…

American attitudes and policies toward children with disabilities changed significantly between the 1920s and the 1950s. Drawn from a larger study of the history of child protection in the United States, I argue that a redefinition of disabled children occurred in this era. Earlier fears that feeble-minded children posed a menace to American…