This article examines the campaign of schooling and education reforms for non-Sunni or "heterodox" groups, particularly the Nusayri community, during the reign of Abdulhamid II (1876-1908) in the late Ottoman Empire in Syria and Southern Turkey. Through a detailed examination of Ottoman archival documents, missionary reports, and…

Georg Kerschensteiner (1854-1932) was a world-renowned proponent of the work school concept ("die Arbeitsschule"). His educational philosophy was adopted not only in Europe but also in other parts of the world, both in the fields of primary school and vocational education. This study aims to analyse how Georg Kerschensteiner's views on…

This paper examines how the religious education of Turkish children in the "old letters" became an area of everyday contestation between the state and families and communities in the late 1920s and 1930s. Since children were seen as the nation's future, state authorities were adamant about teaching the new generation the new alphabet and…

Turkey witnessed many educational and cultural policy innovations between 1938 and 1950. Realising strictly secular practices against religion and traditional culture pre-1946, political elites of the time aimed to construct a "humanistic culture" unique to Turkey. Educational policies were considered the most efficient tools in reaching…

This study demonstrates how the cultural role of Ottoman women began to change during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as well as considering emerging conflicts due to their altering roles in society as they were educated in the "Darulmuallimat" (teachers' college for women) and acquired social positions as woman instructors. The…

This article examines the cultural construction of the school in Turkey in relation to the construction of Turkish nation-ness. By looking at how the modern school was fit together with a network of interrelated discourses available in early twentieth-century Turkey, the article investigates the ways in which the school became an object of thought…

In a significant 1925 essay, "Western Education in Moslem Lands", Paul Monroe addressed the emerging cultural and political forces faced by American educators in the Middle East. Monroe was widely recognised at the time as editor of the Cyclopedia of Education and director of the International Institute of Teachers College, Columbia…