Drawing on recent academic debates on the concept of “decolonization”, this panel aims at providing new insights into the history of knowledge production and circulation on childhood and education. Up until now, historical research has mainly focused on the way the “sciences of childhood” emerged and evolved in Western countries from the end of the 19th century. In a time of dramatic economic, demographic, social, and cultural change, the child progressively became an object of scientific investigations, both on a fundamental (psychology, educational sciences) and applied level (school and educational policies). Historians have highlighted the process of institutionalization of psychology and educational research in different national contexts, especially through the establishment of centers like the Geneva-based Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute (1912), as well as their progressive codification as academic disciplines within universities. Internationalization processes and the circulation of ideas and practices, especially among Western countries, have also been deeply explored. However, little has been said on the way scientists, pedagogues, and educationalists from the “Global South” – i.e., countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America, including colonial and independent territories – have dealt with this evolution and promoted their own research agenda.

This panel aims at contributing to fill this gap: by gathering scholars working in and on Global South countries (Brazil, China, and India), it will shed light on the way scientific knowledge on childhood and education was co-produced and implemented by southern actors during the 20th century. The notion of “decolonization” will be used here a means to provide new perspectives on what Swedish social reformer Ellen Key defined as the “century of the child”. The point is not to exclude or erase Western knowledge, but to shed light on the way “subaltern” actors have actively integrated global circuits and networks of science, on the one hand, and produced new and original knowledge and educational paradigms, on the other. Based on extensive and recent archival inquiries, contributors will focus on two interrelated dimensions: 1) The channels of knowledge circulation between the West and the Global South. This can include, for instance, missions, travels, research stays, correspondences, translations, but also the role played by international organizations like the New Education Fellowship, the International Bureau of Education and UNESCO, which acted as platforms of exchanges and dissemination of scientific knowledge. 2) The way in which Western knowledge was adapted, reinterpreted, and transformed locally, and how “indigenous” knowledge impact in return Western scholars. By comparing different national case studies, the aim is to show how these processes shaped processes of institutionalization in psychology and education research, as well as the content of teachers’ training and schools’ curricula in different historical, political and cultural contexts.

More broadly, this panel will offer the opportunity to critically reassess the genealogy of disciplines such as the history of education, the history of childhood, and international/comparative education. It will help debunking colonial and Eurocentric stereotypes, and promote an inclusive approach to historical research, more attentive at “indigenous” knowledge and processes. The convener and discussant of the panel, Damiano Matasci, will present these theoretical and historiographical stakes while introducing the session.

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