The Disciplinarity of the Specialized Administration. Knowledge Acquisition, Knowledge Production and Knowledge Practices of the mid-level Prussian Primary School Administration, 1817-1919
(DFG project supervised by Marcelo Caruso)
Project Description
The research proposal examines the development and consolidation of the disciplinarity of the specialized primary school administration in Prussia between the period of its establishment in 1817 and the dissolution of the previously dominant clerical school supervision in 1919. Here, disciplinarity denotes the interweavings of various paths of knowledge acquisition, knowledge production and knowledge practices which allowed the school administrations’ office holders to gain legitimacy for solving a twofold task: governing schools via bureaucratic norms and – at the same time – respecting the idiosyncrasies, inherent logic and specificity of pedagogic interactions characteristic of school contexts. Hence, disciplinarity is comprised of a legitimatory and factual level. With regard to the former, disciplinarity is utilized to approach the specific constellation in which a professional administration is established without drawing references from one particular disciplinary context. The research design reconstructs the emergence and consolidation of a contested disciplinarity that was not only shaped by pedagogy, but also by the fields of theology and law. Concerning the factual level, the project examines how mid-level primary school authorities balanced out bureaucratic, pastoral and pedagogic modes of thinking and acting. This occurred within a context which called for a school supervision that not only monitored the schools (executive power), but also advised and guided the teachers (formative power). The research proposal aims to produce a comprehensive overview of the disciplinarity of Prussian school administration while simultaneously conducting systematic regional comparisons (provinces, administrative districts, urban districts), which ultimately challenge the seemingly homogenous image of the workings of Prussian school administrations.
Project Financing
Project FinancingThe project is funded by the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, DFG).
Project Head
Project Team
Research Assistant: Daniel Töpper (Koordination), Jan Uredat, Anna Lindner
Student Assistants: Lea Pratschke