Reformpedagogik och samhälle : en komparativ studie av pedagogiska reformrörelser i USA och Tyskland från 1890-talet till 1930-talet

Sammanfattning: The study is a comparative, text analytical and humanistic approach to the inquiry into the reform movements in education from the 1890'ies to the middle of the 1930'ies in two countries, Germany and the United States of America. The study also utilizes some newer concepts, as Foucault's concepts of 'discourse' and 'regime of truth'.The comparison is doublesided; it deals with both progressive or reform practice and progressive or reform theory in the two countries. Both practice and theory is (as always) embedded in a specific social and political context. The primary aim is the understanding and mapping of the reform practice and the reform theory, but a second aim is to understand them with account taken to the background of their different contextual conditions. The study will show, that there are some differences between German and American reform practices, but it will also show that the practices in the two countries are much more alike than the theories. It will be shown that the theories are more dependent of the specific historical and cultural traditions, more dependent of a national consensus and a national political basis than is practice. The whole reform movement can, from a social point of view, be understood as the educational answer to the fact of a new industrial era - from an educational point of view it can be understood as an exhange of one curriculum theory for another.The empirical research material, representing reform practice, consists of about a dozen or more rather long discussions of reform schools in each country. In USA these reports and descriptions come from educational researchers visiting schools and in Germany from teachers. The empirical material, representing reform theory consists of philosophical and theoretical issues and discussions among the professors of philosophy and education in each country. A starting-point for the analyses of reform practice is some curriculum principles, expressing the new educational faith in students' freedom, in manual work, and in the need for communication and community life in schools. A starting-point for the inquiry into reform theory is its background of philosohical and ideological views of society and individual, views, that are important features of the theory. During this early reform period several educational sciences were established in both countries. A main interest in this part is first the study of the very kind of sciences which were emerging in USA and Germany, second the differences between them, and third their consequences for the relation between school policy, theory and practice.