Die österreichische Landschulreform von den 1920er- bis zu den 1960er-Jahren. Untersuchung einer vergangenen Schulreformdebatte
| Title in English | Austrian Rural School Reform from the 1920s to the 1960s. An Inquiry on Past Debate on School Reform |
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| Year of publication | 2021 |
| Type | Monograph |
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| Citation | |
| Description | The objective of this book is to reconstruct the debate on the reform of rural schools in Austria (approximately 1920-1965) from the perspective of teachers as a specific group of actors. The main sources are pedagogical periodicals and books. By examining this debate over a period of nearly 50 years and four different regimes, I want to establish a better understanding of debates on school reform in general. Thereby, the debate is not interpreted as a denotation for actual measures of school reform only, but as a phenomenon with its own significance, independent of actual measures. The debate in question was very steady until approximately 1955, considering its topics and the patterns how problems were framed and interpreted. However, it proved very flexible in adopting arguments to changing political contexts. Thereafter, a fairly rapid change could be observed in the way the problems of rural schools were perceived. This cannot be explained by the previous development of the issue itself but rather as the consequence of a basic discursive shift. In this period, the actors themselves lost interest in their original agenda. If rural school reform is judged by the goals it pursued up to the mid-1950ies, it was not very successful. But that does not say that it had no meaning. For the involved actors, the meaning may also lie in the debate itself. Three examples how the debate was meaningful in this regard are: as an opportunity to claim better funding for rural schools; as a stage for elementary teachers – a professional group well educated but located rather low in the social hierarchy – to work on a construction of their professional role that would fit their ambitions; after 1945, as an opportunity to rearrange the previously spoiled terms of the relationship between competing political groups of actors. |
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