Interweaving Educational Sciences and Pedagogy with Professional Education: Contrasting Configurations at Swiss Universities, 1870–1950

Abstract

This article presents some results of research aimed at analysing the emergence of pedagogy/educational science(s) in Switzerland. It focuses on the evolution of academic chairs, their holders, their denominations and their relationship to professional fields and other disciplines. In a first, empirical part, professorial chairs are analysed in four Swiss universities (Basle, Bern, Geneva and Zurich). The data show important differences between Geneva, where autonomous chairs were introduced quite early and where an empirical approach dominated, and the other universities, where pedagogy remained dependent on philosophy and became autonomous only in the 1950s. In order to understand these differences, the evolution of the universities in Geneva and Bern is analysed in more detail, particularly the relationship between the disciplinary field and teacher education. The institutional articulation between teacher education and the academic chair(s) and the orientation toward primary or secondary teacher education seem to be important distinguishing factors that led to different evolutions in the two sites. Other factors, like the relationship to school reform, to political administration, and to teacher trade unionism reinforced the differences. The question of larger cultural influences is raised in conclusion, contrasting the Swiss-German universities, clearly oriented towards Germany, with the Genevan site, which is more multifaceted, and even eclectic.