This article draws on data and research results from an ongoing research and indexing project conducted by the author in close cooperation with the Bibliothek für Bildungsgeschichtliche Forschung in Berlin (BBF). Funded by the DFG - German Research Foundation - (04/2022-03/2025), the project "Thinking Education Across Borders" aims at the indexing, digitization, analysis, and open access provision of a unique and educationally valuable corpus: The international correspondence estate of Wilhelm Rein (1847-1929), the first full professor of education in Germany. As a source corpus, this legacy offers extensive research potential on the developmental dynamics of educational theory and practice worldwide and international educational networks. It also reveals boundaries and synergies in the professional pedagogical milieu, especially between actors in a highly visible academic pedagogical milieu and pedagogical actors who were primarily active in pedagogical fields that were more distant from universities, such as elementary school teachers, or who had a harder time gaining recognition or attention in academic milieus for various reasons (e.g., gender, social or geographic origin). By exploring these contexts, a contribution can be made to generating exemplary insights into dynamics in professional milieus more generally.

One of the research focuses is on the exemplary identification and investigation of different connotations and objectives of the motif of pedagogical reform. (1) From a transcending perspective, the significance of this motif for a professional exchange across (e.g. professional, temporal, socio-cultural and gender) boundaries will be examined. (2) Comparatively, it examines how geographical, economic, political and socio-cultural factors have determined connotations, objectives and practices of pedagogical reform and produced different approaches to reform-oriented pedagogy. (3) Terminologically, the question of interest is whether pedagogical reform always has progressive connotations or whether reformist (theoretical and practical) approaches in pedagogy can also be conservative or regressive.

The motif of pedagogical reform is understood as a fundamental systematic signature of pedagogy (cf. Koerrenz 2014), in the sense that all pedagogy is in itself and always reform pedagogy (cf. Oelkers 2005) and sets itself the task of changing a society experienced as crisis-ridden or imperfect for the better through education or creating the foundations for empowering people to become mature. Thus, all pedagogical theory and practice can be interpreted as a work of hope. By researching the historical connotations and objectives of pedagogical reform and by tracing their interplay in an exemplary manner, the aim is to contribute to making pedagogical reform understandable as a timeless pedagogical motif and to remind us of historical solutions and examples of good pedagogical practice with regard to current social and pedagogical challenges. Insights into the diversity of possible pedagogical reform claims and objectives, into the historical development of such connotations of pedagogical reform, as well as the search for timeless patterns in the interplay of pedagogical and (social) reform claims, can contribute to understanding, critically reflecting on, and questioning current objectives of and claims to education and educational reform. Insights into factors that have enabled and hindered understanding between different actors and groups of actors in historical discourses on the tasks, goals and perspectives of pedagogy can help to shape current pedagogical discourses more effectively, to understand them better and to bring together actors with different objectives on the basis of common pedagogical concerns (e.g. educational justice). Finally, historical findings on pedagogical reform concerns can point to persistent grievances or the need for reform, inspire approaches to solutions or allow critical reflection on whether current theories and practices are falling behind historical developmental progress in pedagogy.

The study is conducted from a comparative and transcending educational history perspective. The transcending perspective was developed as a new research approach in the research project, considering the particular source material. This approach is shortly presented in the paper. The methodology combines hermeneutic and qualitative-quantitative methods with DH-methods (e.g. Collocation and co-occurrence analysis, topic modelling via text mining and digital supported methods of network analysis.

Using the evaluated source material as an example, different connotations of pedagogical reform are presented in a historical context. The diversity of possible pedagogical reform claims and objectives will be demonstrated and timeless patterns in the interplay of pedagogical and (social) reform claims will be shown. In this context, it will be argued that pedagogy in general must be regarded as an essentially and fundamentally reformist social development phenomenon and that pedagogical theory and practice are always both the result of historical efforts and hopes for better futures as well as an expression of constant work on the present or on future presents or future utopias. These connections will be reflected on with reference to factors that have enabled and hindered an understanding between different actors and groups of actors in historical discourses on the tasks, goals and perspectives of pedagogy. It will also be shown by way of example that a historical awareness of the development of pedagogical approaches can sharpen the focus on tried and tested approaches and general pedagogical principles in the sense of best practice and generally valid pedagogical theories as a touchstone for (avoidable) pedagogical innovations.

The MAIN SOURCES for this contribution are historical correspondence documents, which are currently being edited, analyzed and prepared for digital publication in the course of the project that the research is part of. DROUX, J., HOFSTETTER, R. (2014): Going international: the history of education stepping beyond boarders. In: Paedago-gica Historica 50, Nr. 1-2, S. 1-9, DOI: 10.1080/00309230.2013.877500 GRUNDIG DE VAZQUEZ, Katja (2020): Thinking Education beyond Borders – The Pedagogic Correspondence Legacy of Wilhelm Rein as an Access to Historical Transnational Contacts and Networks of Educational Reform. In: Historia Scholastica 1/2020, pp. 109-123. DOI:10.15240/tul/006/2020-1-008 KOERRENZ, R.: Reformpädagogik. Eine Einführung. Paderborn 2014. MAYER, Christine (2019): The Transnational and Transcultural: Approaches to Studying the Circulation and Transfer of Educational Knowledge. In: Fuchs, E., Roldán Vera, E. (Hrsg.): The Transnational in the History of Education. Concepts and Perspectives. Cham. eBook: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17168-1, S. 49-68. MAYRING, P.: Qualitative Inhaltsanalyse. Grundlagen und Techniken. 12., überarbeitete Auflage. Weinheim und Basel 2015. MÜLLER, Lars (2019): Kooperatives Management geisteswissenschaftlicher Forschungsdaten. In: ABI Technik 2019, 39(3), pp.194-201. OELKERS, Jürgen (2005): Reformpädagogik. Eine kritische Dogmengeschichte. Weinheim. POPKEWITZ, Thomas S. (2019): Transnational as Comparative History: (Un)Thinking Difference in the Self and Others. In: Fuchs, E., Roldán Vera, E. (Hrsg.): The Transnational in the History of Education. Concepts and Perspectives. Cham. eBook: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-17168-1, S. 261-291. ROLDÁN VERA, Eugenia, FUCHS, Eckhardt (2019): Introduction: The Transnational in the History of Education. In: Fuchs, E., Roldán Vera, E. (Hrsg.): The Transnational in the History of Education. Concepts and Perspectives. Cham. eBook: https://doi.org/10.1007 /978-3-030-17168-1, S. 1-47. SKIERA, E.: Reformpädagogik in Geschichte und Gegenwart. Eine kritische Einführung. 2. Ed. München 2010.