The International Bureau of Education (1925-1968)

This open access book offers a critical analysis of the history of the International Bureau of Education (IBE) from its founding in 1925 to its integration into UNESCO in January 1969. Based on the conceptual and methodological tools of the transnational turn and on archives, fully exploited for the first time by the research team, this book enriches knowledge of the phenomena of globalization. It does so in a field, education, which is currently one of those most invested in globalization, but whose sociogenesis in the era of its first period of institutionalization remains to be explored more profoundly. The authors do this by analyzing how the actors of the IBE tried to realize their aspiration towards universal aims in education, the contradictions they were confronted with, the causes they invested in, their operating mode and the governments and international organizations with which they cooperated. Rita Hofstetter is Professor inHistory of Education at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. She is Director of the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute’s archives, and coordinator of ERHISE (Social History of Education Research Group). She conducts research particularly on the history of education sciences (including Rousseau Institute), the construction of the teacher state and teaching professions, international networks in education. Bernard Schneuwly is Honorary Professor of Language Didactics in the University of Geneva, Switzerland. He is former Dean of the Faculty of Psychology and Educational sciences and former Director of the Teacher Education Institute. He conducts research on the history teaching first language in the context of the evolution of education systems and on Vygotsky’s theory.