Daniel Tröhler

University of Vienna | UniWien · Institut für Bildungswissenschaft

The general thesis of this article is that 'nation' and 'state' are often understood as almost equivalent and that this understanding has led to aberrations in educational research, not only with regard to citizenship but also with regard to questions of modernity, claims of globalization, visions of a coming world culture, or even the proclamation...

This introduction starts from the assumption of a proliferating culture of an “educationalization of social problems” that paved the way for the educationalization of nation-state building in the 19th century and ultimately for the “educationalization of the world” and the modern self which may be seen as the overall outcome of the 150 years that t...

This paper explores the unheeded religious roots of the modern conviction to standardised, scientific education policy and its inherent sciento-social epistemology. In doing so, it traces the discursive roots of this hierarchical but non-governmental idea of social governance from its 16th century Scottish Presbyterian predecessors to its advocates...

This Introductory chapter of the World Yearbook of Education 2022 addresses a fundamental epistemological problem of contemporary analyses of educational issues currently being discussed at the global level. The thesis is that there is an unjustifiable pre-occupation with real or supposed phenomena related to “globalization” and that, as a result,...

This article argues that the worlds which comparative education has explored and is exploring are characterised by three main political patterns. The first and oldest is the competitive nation-state as the starting point of the comparison, an educationalised nation-state, one whose relative global strength in economy and military prowess is attribu...

This article casts a spotlight on various stages of the entangled history of German Protes- tantism and psychology from the 16th to the 19th centuries to make visible the hitherto neglected religious past of this discipline and the educational aspirations tied to it. In broad strokes, it retraces how the idea of psychology emerged in the wake of th...

In view of an upsurge of nationalist movements and thus academic interest in understanding the emergence and prevalence of nationalism in the past 30 years, this study examined the most prominent theories of nationalism regarding their use of educational ideas. The most recognized monographs on nationalism by 28 esteemed scholars in this field were...

Contributing to interdisciplinary discussions on nationalism, the book explores how educational systems and practices contribute to the phenomena of nationalism and nation-building. Using nine comparative case studies from four continents, the book elaborates a theoretical understanding of nationalism from the perspectives of comparative education...

This is – in German – an entry on Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi – in the online "socialnet Lexikon"

Journal for the Historiography of Education 2011-2022

We are assembled here at this workshop on the occasion of the 80 th anniversary of the institutionalization of a professorship in education research and of an educational research center at the University of Oslo in 1938 that was named "University of Oslo" only a year later, in 1939. Anniversaries are, as we know, excellent opportunities to bring h...

About 35 years ago, when the end of the Cold War with the fall of its European symbol, the Iron Curtain, was becoming foreseeable, all sorts of people began to imagine the world to come. The magic word used by many performers of the near and distant future was the term "globalization." Economists needed this term to legitimize their strategy of ent...

This is the introduction to the edited volume "The Nordic Education Model in Context: Historical Developments and Current Renegotiations", edited by Daniel Tröhler, Bernadette Hörmann, Sverre Tveit and Inga Bostad. It argues from a cultural constructivist understanding of the "North" and introduces the three sections of the book, "Trajectories", "C...

Educational aspiration in the Age of Enlightenment

The guiding thesis of this article is that international comparisons have been shaped by nationalist, and thus potentially imperial, religious and consequently also latent missionary, motives. By means of selected milestones in the last 250 years, this thesis is made plausible by asserting a historical development of nationalism that started from a...

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice : Product or...

The entry attempts to analyze the complexity of curriculum and to reflect on what this means for curriculum theory in four steps. First, the history of the development of curriculum studies as an educational sub-discipline is reconstructed in its specific cultural milieu characterized by particular ideological preferences which became heavily conte...

With the end of the Cold War in 1989, a view of current and future world affairs that assumed harmony, uniformity, and stability took hold. The magic word used to conceptualize this view was “globalization.” “Globalization” was the epitome of the supposed analytical description of world development after 1989, which, in the meantime, called for an...

Daniel Tröhler is an international heavyweight in Educational Sciences who has published, edited, or co-edited over 50 books or Special Issues in Journals, more than 100 journal articles, and more than 150 book-chapters. His book «Languages of Education - Protestant Legacies, National Identities, and Global Aspirations»(Routledge, 2011) was transla...

Taking the example of Asia and Europe over the last 300 years, this chapter reflects on the question of how strongly global dialogues have to do with motives of imperial hegemony. It argues that the fact that large parts of East Asia have not been sustainably Christianized could lead one to speak prematurely of failure of Western imperialism. But t...

This chapter is concerned with how the production of educational knowledge based on competing epistemologies has been channeled through such institutional apparatuses as universities and, since around 1950, also through nonuniversity organizations, "think tanks," and interest groups, as well as how it has been administered by professional associati...

This book offers a geographically unique cultural comparative lens to examine the issue of transnational curriculum knowledge (re)production. Prompted by the ongoing competency-based curriculum reforms on a global scale, this book examines where global frameworks like the OECD’s core competency definitions are rooted and how they are borrowed, resi...

This Special Issue is dedicated to a social phenomenon that can deliver so much impact precisely because it is largely ignored: Nationalism, and more specifically everyday or banal nationalism and its relationship to education. Concerned people and researchers often discuss globalization or its supposed opposite, aggressive and ostentatious nationa...

This Special Issue is dedicated to a social phenomenon that can deliver so much impact precisely because it is largely ignored: Nationalism, and more specifically everyday or banal nationalism and its relationship to education. Concerned people and researchers often discuss globalization or its supposed opposite, aggressive and ostentatious nationa...

In diesem Beitrag, der sich um den Begriff der Pädagogisierung dreht und der auch den Untertitel Warum und wie wir denken, dass Erziehung und Bildung die Lösung aller möglichen Arten von Problemen ist tragen könnte, geht es nicht primär um Erziehung und Bildung, nicht um Kinder, nicht um Schulen oder Lernen, und auch nicht um Lehrpläne oder Lehrbüc...

This article argues that crucial elements of the three most important theoretical models of twentieth-century education can be traced back to three Protestant denominations that were developed in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. First, rather than to look in depth at the Protestant Reformers’ own educational ideas, the paper exami...

The core argument of this paper is that Luxembourg’s location between the larger European nations of France and Germany is constitutive of skill development in this small state. On the one hand, Luxembourg continuously borrows educational models and principles from its two large(r) neighbors – which both represent major European models of skill for...

The twentieth century brought profound and far-reaching changes to education systems globally in response to significant social, economic, and political transformation. This volume draws together work from leading historians of education to present a tapestry of seminal and enduring themes that characterize the many educational developments since 1...

Internationality" has become the pathetic buzzword of research with which one can hardly go wrong. However, the fact that as an ideal it is more lip service than an actual research program can be shown by the epistemological power of the national research associations and the publication organs often closely associated with them, in the academic ca...

History of education was initially and for a long time predominantly written as the history of ideas, developed for teacher education. The early scholars in this field were, as a rule, German theologians and/or philosophers interested in the origin and historical manifestations of eternal (educational) ideas. These ideas were characterized as descr...

Since the emergence of history of education around 1800 in Germany, approaches to writing history of education have been developed, altered, and diversified, and have eventually become complex, not seldomly challenging or competing (with) each other. Initially, history of education began by reducing the complexity of the issue by focusing on idea(l...

Man erwartet heute ausserordentlich viel von der Erziehung und vor allem von der Schule. Sie sollen die junge Generation befähigen, sich in der Berufswelt zu bewähren, darauf einstellen, mit Andersartigen sozial umzugehen. Die Heranwachsenden sollen kompetent, verantwortungsvoll und loyal werden. Fehlt es der Gesellschaft an Toleranz, wird Toleranz...

This handbook offers a global perspective on the historical development of educational institutions, systems of schooling, ideas about education, and educational experiences. Sections deal with questions of theory and methods, ancient and medieval education, the rise of national school systems, the development of universities in different contexts,...

Mit dem Begriff des 'linguistic turn' wird eine Vorstellung beschrieben, dass die Welt, so wie sie uns erscheint, sprachlich konstruiert ist. Dabei wird die Abkehr von der Vorstellung einer vom Subjekt getrennten objektiv vorgegebenen Welt und deren Erkenntnis impliziert, die erst in der Folge versprachlicht wird. Nach der überblicksartigen Einführ...

Der Beitrag ist in fünf Teile gegliedert. Zunächst wird gezeigt, wie das, was heute 'international operierende empirische Bildungsforschung' genannt wird, ein über die OECD vermitteltes Produkt einer epistemologischen Kolonialisierung ist (1.), um anschließend auf die darauffolgende, widersprüchliche PISA-Reaktion in Deutschland einzugehen (2.). De...

Against the background of newer developments in educational historiography this edited volume on School Acts and the Rise Mass Schooling is published at the right time, as this concluding chapter argues. This is for two interrelated reasons that both have to do with contemporary historiographical trends that for different reasons neglect the import...

This chapter analyzes the cultural conditions that gave rise to curriculum studies and later to curriculum history, and the ways that curriculum history could become a cooperative research program for understanding the development of schools in their respective cultural and national contexts. It makes a distinction between a global and an internati...

This chapter aims, in five steps, present some evidence for the substantiated and differentiated thesis about the Protestant roots of our educationalized world and the cultural construction of the modern self and its distinct trajectories. First, I will identify specific transformations around 1700 that were almost predestined to trigger educationa...

Der nachfolgende Beitrag vertritt eine These mit zwei in sich greifenden Teilen. In ihrem ersten Teil besagt sie, dass wir im deutschen Sprachraum seit den 1990er Jahren die Konjunktur eines sets von Begriffen im Umfeld von Schule bzw. Bildung beobachten können, zu denen auch der Begriff des Bildungsstandards gehört und die unter sich insofern in Z...

Im folgenden Beitrag, der Antrittsvorlesung an die Professur für Allgemeine Pädagogik an der Universität Wien, wird davon ausgegangen, dass eine Allgemeine Pädagogik dann als akade-mische (Teil-)Disziplin gelten kann bzw. Wissenschaftlichkeit beanspruchen darf, wenn sie international anschlussfähig ist. Diese Anschlussfähigkeit gelingt ihr, wenn si...

Entstehung, Verbreitung und Folgen einer globalen bildungspolitischen Sprache 1 Daniel Tröhler Der Begriff ‚Bildungsstandard' wurde im deutschsprachigen Raum schon vor über 100 Jahren verwendet und bezog sich dort ganz allgemein auf das Niveau der Bildung der Jugend bzw. von Studierenden, was man an historischen oder inter-nationalen Vergleichen eh...

In general, research findings on the emergence of international assessments focus on the time period after 1990. Indeed, after the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, the internationalization of education policies and particularly the inclination for assessment by so-called international experts became dominant, symbolized not least by the OECD’s pub...

This article reconstructs the rise, the national differentiations and the decline of the genre history of education and outlines subsequently what the history of education could mean if it emancipated itself from the conditions that led to its emergence, religion and nationalism – conditions, that, nota bene, are by no means as dominant as they onc...

This article reconstructs the rise, the national differentiations and the decline of the genre history of education and outlines subsequently what the history of education could mean if it emancipated itself from the conditions that led to its emergence, religion and nationalism – conditions, that, nota bene, are by no means as dominant as they onc...

Bij het grote publiek, in het onderwijsbeleid en in de lerarenopleiding wordt steeds opnieuw de vraag gesteld waarom het eigenlijk nuttig is zich met het werk van personen bezig te houden die al lang geleden gestorven zijn. Die vraag heeft vaak betrekking op de "actualiteitswaarde" van dat werk, met andere woorden op de waarde en het nut voor onze...

Taking the example of the current educational reforms, that is, the harmonization of the Swiss education systems, this chapter engages with the paradoxical character of modern education policy that believes it enhances its agency by referring to the unshakeable basis of their policy, the " crystal-clear " facts or " data, " incorruptibly portraying...

The following article reconstructs the curricular story of physical education between the Prussian prohibition (1820) and reintroduction (1842) and broad dissemination of ‘gymnastic exercises’ between 1842 and 1871 and its full implementation around 1900 in Germany, focusing on the interrelation between constitutional reforms, nationalism and the d...

This article reconstructs the rise, the national differentiations and the decline of the genre history of education and outlines subsequently what the history of education could mean if it emancipated itself from the conditions that lead to its emergence, religion and nationalism-conditions, that, nota bene, are by no means as dominant as they once...

This article seeks to advocate the genre Curriculum History as a most promising way to conduct international and comparative research in education. Advocating Curriculum History as a Camino Real in education research this article is organized around two major questions or challenges: first, the historiographic challenge between the national and the...

“Progressivism” is a collective term used in historiography to characterize historical phases in which particular ways to think about progress are detectable. Hence, “progressivism” is more a historiographical label used by historians than a term used by those thinkers identified as being part of a progressive phase in history. Even though importan...

Graf, L. & Tröhler, D. (2017) Skill Development at the Nexus of the French and German Educational Models: The Case of Luxembourg. IN Jules, T. D. & Ressler, P. (Eds.) Re-Reading Education Policy and Practice in Small States. Frankfurt am Main, Peter Lang, pp. 133-147. http://dx.doi.org/10.3726/978-3-653-02633-7

In the article "The Paradox of Being a Teacher: Institutionalized Relevance and Organized MistrustW Daniel Tröhler describes the paradoxical nature of the teaching profession which arises out of the mismatch between the excessive expectations imposed on teachers and, at the same time, the constant mistrust shown to them for fulfilling these expecta...

Voici qui doit être pris, au fond, pour un grand paradoxe de l’histoire de l’éducation: Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi (1746‑1827) est un pédagogue unanimement acclamé ; il a été fait citoyen d’honneur de la République française en 1792, a dirigé pendant plus de vingt ans, en Suisse romande, l’un des instituts d’éducation les plus célèbres, et son héri...

This article advocates for a particular understanding of curriculum history that enables educational research to emancipate itself from national idiosyncrasies. It suggests focusing, in the frame of a cultural history, on the interrelation between the constitutions, which define the ideal social order and the envisaged ideal citizens, and the curri...

Although it is generally acknowledged that the building of mass schooling systems must be considered in close relation to the emerging nation-states of the long 19th century, few published studies discuss the interrelation between the actual foundation of the (nation-) states and the introduction of the modern school. This article examines the r...

Dieser zweite Sammelband im Rahmen der Reihe „Studien zur Stapfer-Schulenquête von 1799“ beinhaltet vierzehn originäre Beiträge zu der 1799 durch den Helvetischen Bildungsminister Philipp Albert Stapfer initiierten großangelegten Schulumfrage. Gegenüber den Beiträgen im ersten Sammelband konnten diese hier versammelten Studien auf die komplette Ed...

Pendant plus d’un siècle et demi, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi a été tenu pour le père fondateur de l’école moderne. Si cette conception n’est plus celle qui prévaut aujourd’hui, elle reste néanmoins inscrite dans la mémoire collective. Pestalozzi y partage la place avec un autre précurseur venu de Suisse, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, dont l’Émile aurait f...

Pendant plus d’un siècle et demi, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi a été tenu pour le père fondateur de l’école moderne. Si cette conception n’est plus celle qui prévaut aujourd’hui, elle reste néanmoins inscrite dans la mémoire collective. Pestalozzi y partage la place avec un autre précurseur venu de Suisse, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, dont l’Émile aurait f...

This article advocates for a particular understanding of curriculum history that enables educational research to emancipate itself from national idiosyncrasies. It suggests focusing, in the frame of a cultural history, on the interrelation between the constitutions, which define the ideal social order and the envisaged ideal citizens, and the curri...

The catchword ‘educationalization,’ which enjoyed some popularity around 1920, has been used increasingly since the 1980s, first in the German and then in the Belgian and English discussions. Although the uses of and intentions behind the term are far from identical, they all express a perceived intersection between distinct social practices, one o...

Curricula als Inbegriff der institutionalisierten Organisation von Schulung sind insofern keine Antithesen zu Kindheit, als sie genuines Wissen über Kinder enthalten, Wissen über Kinder, die auf verschiede Bildungskarrieren mit ihren Selektionsregimes angesetzt sind, denen man verschiedene Lehrpläne und Lehrmittel zumutet und die dereinst Rollen al...

In diesem Beitrag geht es darum, die 1799 in der Schweiz unterrichteten Lehrpläne zu identifizieren und sie in ihrem Kontext zu analysieren. Die Analyse folgt insofern den übergeordneten historiographischen Leitlinien des Stapfer-Projektes, als sie sich von der traditionellen Schulgeschichtsschreibung distanziert, die zu gerne zwischen gut und schl...

This paper starts from the assumption of the emergence of an educationalized culture over the last 200 years according to which perceived social problems are translated into educational challenges. As a result, both educational institutions and educational research grew, and educational policy resulted from negotiations between professionals, r...

As contemporary education becomes increasingly tied to global economic power, national school systems attempting to influence one another inevitably confront significant tensions caused by differences in heritage, politics, and formal structures. Trajectories in the Development of Modern School Systems provides a comprehensive theoretical and empir...