Circulation of pedagogical concepts and practices

What is it about?

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 occur spontaneously, but requires specific mechanisms of transmission, this contribution explores the circulation and exchange of pedagogical practices and concepts within the discourse of New Education by looking at the example of the Hamburg experimental and community schools (Hamburger Versuchs- und Gemeinschaftsschulen). A key question in this process is how the Hamburg schools could acquire the great international importance they held. The analysis includes both personal and institutional communication networks of the experimental schoolteachers, the international journals and conferences of the New Education Fellowship, school visits and various reports and documentations of the schools produced by foreign visitors. Keywords: experimental and community schools in Hamburg; circulation of pedagogical concepts and practices; transnational history; New Education

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Why is it important?

The contribution shows the key role that transnational exchange played in the education reform debates of the 1920s, and it also offers clues to the cultural patterns and beliefs that influenced the circulation and reception of ideas.