The Research Community 'Philosophy and History of the Discipline of Education' was established in 1999. First an overview is given of the two main areas into which the more than 180 chapters published in 12 books can be grouped. In general the papers are addressing 'internal' educational research topics and more 'external' relations. The suite of…

The Research Community 'Philosophy and History of the Discipline of Education' was established in 1999. The academics involved in this worldwide network share the belief that there is a place within the discipline of education for so-called foundationalist approaches. This is not, however, to answer a need for a (new) foundation, but to…

In May 1941, two progressive educationalists, Jozef Emiel Verheyen and Leo Roels, published a new pedagogical journal, "VlaamschePaedagogiek" (Flemish Pedagogy, 1941-1944). The journal aimed to contribute to the development and proliferation of a pedagogy that rooted in the Flemish soil and national character. Verheyen and Roels were…

The present epilogue, concluding a special issue on the development of our field in lesser-known geographical contexts, takes the opportunity to air some of the author's personal views. After all, with the publication of this issue, his years as editor of Paedagogica Historica are over. In a sense, therefore, the reflections brought here are…

Research into the history of colonial education in Congo has shown that, for a long time, it was dominated by the idea of gradual development of the masses. Here, the problem of selecting an intellectual elite hardly arose. It was only in the 1950s that a growing number of voices began to clamour for the Congolese to be permitted to study in…

Generally speaking, colonial education in Congo did not engender a very great widening of consciousness among the local population. Mostly, it resulted in inevitable submission through discipline and order. This was particularly the case for girls, for which fewer initiatives were taken than for boys. Moreover, gender stereotypes from the 'mother'…

An analysis of the history of primary education in Belgium by Depaepe et al. in 2000 has demonstrated how the idea of "order" structured classroom reality in the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This "order" is not only visible in the internal organisation of schooling (e.g. division into year classes, a…