Educational sciences, morality and politics: international educational congresses in the early twentieth century

Internationalism became one of the keywords in the international intellectual and political debates at the end of the nineteenth century. As a political, cultural and social movement it also included science and education. The desire for international cooperation and global understanding was caused by the growing economic interdependence in the world and the threat to peace by nationalistic politics of the imperialistic powers. Within the context of discipline formation and fragmentation, cultural critique, social reform and pacifist movements, academic educationists, teachers and educational and social reformers in various countries tried to establish an international network to promote scientific cooperation, peace, mutual understanding and professional collaboration. In this article, the author will try to place the phenomenon of internationalism within the context of the formation of educational sciences in the early twentieth century. Drawing from the example of other scientific disciplines at this time, such as geography, meteorology and physics, one can assume that the internationalizing of education also increased its professional and scientific standards. The "disciplinarization process" 1 1 Whereas this term is used by Hofstetter and Schneuwly, Van Gorp, Depaepe, and Simon prefer the notion "discipline-formation process". See Rita Hofstetter, "The Construction of a New Science by Means of an Institute and Its Communication Media. The Institute of Educational Sciences in Geneva (1912-1948)", and Angelo Van Gorp, Marc Depaepe & Frank Simon, "Backing the Actor as Agent in Discipline Formation: An Example of the 'Secondary Disciplinarisation' of the Educational Sciences, Based on the Networks of Ovide Decroly (1901-1931)", both in this issue. of educational sciences was closely intertwined with the genesis of an international scientific network through special institutions. In order to investigate this assumption, the genesis, structure, contents and effects of international cooperation in the field of education in the first decades of the twentieth century will be considered. This international cooperation took on different shapes. It included, among others, the international exchange of teachers and students, international educational exhibitions, international congresses, transnational institutions, multilateral standardization and international journals. The focus will be on the main agents of institutionalized internationalization, namely international congresses and associations, and individual forms of international communication and cooperation will therefore not be dealt with. The article begins with a short overview of the different kinds of international educational congresses. Two types of internationalization within this institutional setting will then be introduced: the research-oriented, "scientifically" based model of academic educationists ("new educational sciences") and the instruction and reform-oriented, "politically and morally" based model of a social movement (New Education). Finally the geographical extension of internationalization will be analyzed briefly before the main argument is set out in the concluding remarks, namely that the internationalization of education through international institutions found its driving force in moral and political assumptions of the teaching profession and its goals of school reform within the New Education rather than in an international scientific paradigm of the academic "new educational sciences".