Histories of educational technologies. Introducing the cultural and social dimensions of pedagogical objects

ABSTRACT

At the beginning of the twenty-first century, Spanish scholars started to pay particular attention to the history of schools’ material culture, defining this as “etnohistoria de la escuela”. Reflections on the “materiality of schooling” and “school heritage” continued in the years that followed. Teaching tools or, more widely, “school objects” challenge the concepts of space, time and sociality. They speak of school practices, cultural history, and ideology. School artefacts are either handmade products created by pupils and teachers, or the school equipment that is made up of commercial products, which also respond to an industrial and economic logic, linked to the achievement of mass schooling. The aims and means of education are intermingled, but if educational theories have long attracted scholars’ attention, the history of educational objects can be further explored from different angles. This paper shows the connection between educational models and pedagogical tools, but also between ideology and the cultural dimension of pedagogical objects, and between economy and pedagogical artefacts. ISCHE 43 was dedicated to the histories of educational technologies and the articles in this special issue of Paedagogica Historica represent some of the leading papers presented at the conference, which was held for the first time as a hybrid event at the Catholic University of Milan from 31 August to 6 September 2022.

KEYWORDS:

• History of educational technologies
• history of learning tools
• material history of education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ Dominique Julia, “La culture scolaire comme objet historique”, in The Colonial Experience in Education: Historical Issues and Perspectives, ed. Antonio Nóvoa, Marc Depaepe and Ervine W. Johanningmeier (Ghent: Paedagogica Historica – Supplementary Series I, 1995), 353–82; Marc Depaepe and Frank Simon, “Is there any Place for the History of ‘Education’ in the ‘History of Education?’ A Plea for the History of Everyday Educational Reality in‐ and outside Schools”, Paedagogica Historica 31, no. 1 (1995): 9–16; and Ian Grosvenor, Martin Lawn and Kate Rousmaniere, eds., Silences & Images: The Social History of the Classroom (New York: Peter Lang, 1999).

² André Chervel, La culture scolaire: Une approche historique (Paris: Belin, 1998).

³ Diana Gonçalves Vidal and André Paulilo, “School Culture”, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education (2018), https://doi-org.ezproxy.unicatt.it/10.1093/acrefore/9780190264093.013.59.

⁴ Inés Dussel and Marcel Caruso, La invención del aula, una genealogía de las formas de enseñar (Buenos Aires: Santillana, 1999).

⁵ Juan Alfredo Jiménez Eguizábal et al., eds., Etnohistoria de la escuela. XII Coloquio nacional de historia de la educación (Burgos: Universidad de Burgos- SEDHE, 2003); for a criticism on the concept of “etnohistoria de la escuela” see Juri Meda, Mezzi di educazione di massa. Saggi di storia materiale della scuola tra XIX e XX secolo (Milano: FrancoAngeli, 2016), 21–2; cf. Agustín Escolano Benito, ed., La cultura material de la escuela (Berlanga de Duero: CEINCE, 2007).

⁶ Martin Lawn and Ian Grosvenor, eds., Materialities of Schooling: Design, Technology, Objects, Routines (Oxford: Symposium Books, 2005); Sjaak Braster, Ian Grosvenor and Maria del Mar del Pozo Andrés, eds., The Black Box of Schooling: A Cultural History of the Classroom (Brussels: Peter Lang, 2011); and Maria João Mogarro, ed., Educação e património cultural: escolas, objectos e práticas (Lisbon: Ed. Colibri, 2015).

⁷ Tomáš Kasper, et al., From School Inspectors to School Inspection: Supervision of Schools in Europe from the Middle Ages to Modern Times (Bad Heilbrunn: Verlag Julius Klinkhardt, 2022).

⁸ Latour’s theory about actors and networks may be useful in this respect: Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social. An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005). In the words of Lawn and Grosvenor: “Technology moves from the shadows and into an effect, and even into a relational position, connecting people and objects into a close series of affiliations and actions”; Lawn and Grosvenor, Materialities of Schooling, 10.

⁹ For a critical review of the historiography of material school culture in different countries, see Vera Lucia Gaspar da Silva, Juri Meda and Gizele de Souza, eds., “The Material Turn in the History of Education”, special issue, Educació ihistòria: Revista d’història de l’educació 38 (2021).

¹⁰ Agustín Escolano Benito, Etnografia della scuola (Parma: Junior, 2023).

¹¹ Meda, Mezzi di educazione di massa.

¹² Inés Dussel, Visuality, Materiality, and History, in International Handbook of Historical Studies in Education, ed. Tanya Fitzgerald (New York: Springer, 2019), 144. See also Frederik Herman, Iconography and Materiality, ivi, 329–47.

¹³ Martin Lawn, Abandoned Modernities (Lisbon: Education Instituto, 2015).

¹⁴ Luís Grosso Correia, “Spaces and Places of Education: Prelude”, Paedagogica Historica 57, no. 1–2 (2021): 1–10.

¹⁵ See for instance, about the application of Herbart’s method: Edvard Protner, Herbartianism and its Educational Consequences in the Period of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy: the Case of Slovenia (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 2014); about the Habsburg text books for elementary school teachers from Felbiger to Peitl: Simonetta Polenghi, “Habsburg Legislation on the Training of Elementary and Ginnasio-Liceo (Secondary) Teachers and its Implementation in the Italian Territories across the 18th and 19th Centuries”, in Kulturen der Lehrerbildung in der Sekundarstufe in Italien und Deutschland. Nationale Formate und “cross culture”, ed. Rita Casale, Jeannette Windheuser, Monica Ferrari and Matteo Morandi (Bad Heilbrunn: Verlag Julius Klinkhardt, 2021), 19–32; and Simonetta Polenghi, “Elementary School Teachers in Milan during the Restoration (1814–59): Innovations and Improvements in Teacher Training”, History of Education & Children’s Literature VIII, no. 1 (2013): 47–166.

¹⁶ Juri Meda, “The ‘Agony of the School’ in Southern Italy in the Images of Italian Photojournalists, 1940s-1950s”, in They did not stop at Eboli. UNESCO and the campaign against illiteracy in a reportage by David “Chim” Seymour and texts by Carlo Levi (1950), ed. Karin Priem, Giovanna Hendel and Carole Naggar (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2019), 198–220; Juri Meda and Simonetta Polenghi, “The Impossible Schools: Rural Classrooms in the Paintings of Italian Artists During the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century”, in Media Matter. Images as Presenters, Mediators, and Means of Observation, ed. Francisca Comas Rubí, Karin Priem and Sara González Gómez (Oldenbourg: De Gruyter, 2021), 203–74.

¹⁷ Avi Assor and David Gordon, “The Implicit Learning Theory of Hidden‐curriculum Research”, Journal of Curriculum Studies 19, no. 4 (1987): 329–39.

¹⁸ Henry A. Giroux and Anthony N. Penna, “Social Education in the Classroom: The Dynamics of the Hidden Curriculum”, Theory & Research in Social Education 7, no. 1 (1979): 21–42; see also John P. Portelli, “Exposing the Hidden Curriculum”, Journal of Curriculum Studies 25, no. 4 (1993): 343–58.

¹⁹ Catherine Cornbleth, “Beyond Hidden Curriculum?”, Journal of Curriculum Studies 16, no. 1 (1984): 29–36.

²⁰ For a good contemporary example about time in a secondary school vocational programme see: Gerd Johansen, Kristin Solli, “The Hidden Curriculum of Temporal Organization: An Empirical Comparison of Classroom and Workshop Practices”, Journal of Curriculum Studies 54, no. 6 (2022): 792–808.

²¹ Claudia Soares, “Emotions, Senses, Experience and the History of Education”, History of Education 52, no. 2–3 (2023): 516–38.

²² George Ferzoco and Carolyne Muessig, eds., Medieval Monastic Education (London: Leicester University Press, 2000); Luca Odini, “The Rule for Freedom: The Pedagogical Function of Monastic Rules Between Care and Coercion”, Jahrbuch für Historische Bildungsgeschichte 28 (2022–23): 17–36; and Jane Hamlett, “Space and Emotional Experience in Victorian and Edwardian English Public School Dormitories”, in Childhood, Youth and Emotions in Modern History, ed. Stephanie Olsen (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), 119–38.

²³ Juri Meda and Marta Brunelli, “The Dumb Child. Contribution to the Study of the Iconogenesis of the Dunce Cap”, History of Education & Children’s Literature XIII, no. 1 (2018): 41–70; Heather Ellis, “Corporal Punishment in the English Public School in the Nineteenth Century”, in Childhood and Violence in the Western Tradition, ed. Heather Montgomery and Laurence Brockliss (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2010), 141–50; see also Peter N. Stearns and Clio Stearns, “American Schools and the Uses of Shame: An Ambiguous History”, History of Education 46, no. 1 (2017): 58–75.

²⁴ Inés Dussel, “When Appearances Are Not Deceptive: A Comparative History of School Uniforms in Argentina and the United States (Nineteenth – Twentieth Centuries)”, Paedagogica Historica 41, no. 1–2 (2005): 179–95; Inés Dussel, “Historicising Girls’ Material Cultures in Schools: Revisiting Photographs of Girls in Uniforms”, Women’s History Review 29, no. 3 (2020): 429–43.

²⁵ Karin Priem, Gudrun M. König and Rita Casale, eds., “Die Materialität der Erziehung: Kulturelle und soziale Aspekte pädagogischer Objekte”, Zeitschrift für Pädagogik, 58 (2012); Marguerite Figeac-Monthus (dir.), Éducation et culture matérielle en France et en Europe du XVI^e siècle à nos jours (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2018).

²⁶ Catherine Burke and Ian Grosvenor, School (London: Reaktion Books, 2008).

²⁷ “Architecture and School Space”, Francisco Javier Rodríguez Méndez and Carlos Manique da Silva, eds., special issue of Historia y Memoria de la Educación 13 (2021).

²⁸ Lawn and Grosvenor, Materialities of Schooling; Catherine Burke, “The Decorated School: Cross-Disciplinary Research in the History of Art as Integral to the Design of Educational Environments”, Paedagogica Historica 49, no. 6 (2013): 813–27.

²⁹ Michael Scriven, The Methodology of Evaluation, in Perspectives on Curriculum Evaluation, ed. Ralph W. Tyler, Robert M. Gagné and Michael Scriven (Chicago: Rand McNally, 1967) (AERA Monograph. Series on Curriculum Evaluation, I), 39–83.

³⁰ For the French case, see Pierre Merle, “L’école française et l’invention de la note. Un éclairage historique sur les polémiques contemporaines”, in Revue française de pédagogie 193 (2015): 77–88, who goes back to the Jesuitic school classification. For the Italian case, see Matteo Morandi, “Il Sessantotto della docimologia. Una nota sull’osservatorio di «Scuola e città»”, Educazione. Giornale di pedagogia critica 8, no. 2 (2019): 33–50; Matteo Morandi, “Dar voti a scuola. Appunti per una storia”, in Maestri e pratiche educative dall’Ottocento a oggi. Contributi per una storia della didattica, ed. Monica Ferrari and Matteo Morandi (Brescia: Scholé, 2020), 99–127; for Germany (1770–1850): Nils Lindenhayn, Die Prüfung: Zur Geschichte einer pädagogischen Technologie (Wien: Böhlau Verlag, 2018); for Spain: Marcelo Caruso, “Technologiewandel auf dem Weg zur ‘grammar of schooling’. Reform des Volksschulunterrichts in Spanien (1767–1804)”, Zeitschrift für Pädagogik 56, no. 5 (2010): 648–65.

³¹ Valentina Chierichetti, I ginnasi e i licei di Milano nell’età della Restaurazione. Professori, studenti, discipline (1814–1851) (Lecce, Rovato: PensaMultimedia, 2013); and Valentina Chierichetti and Simonetta Polenghi, “Learning in Ginnasio and Liceo in Habsburg Milan (1814–1859)”, History of Education & Children’s Literature XV, no. 1 (2020): 41–67.

³² Carlos Menguiano-Rodríguez, María del Mar del Pozo Andrés and Gabriel Barceló-Bauzà, “A New Source for the Study of Educational Practices: Competitive Exams for School Headteacher Positions (Spain, 20th century)”, History of Education & Children’s Literature XV, no. 2 (2020): 199–218.

³³ John Carson, The Measure of Merit: Talents, Intelligence, and Inequality in the French and American Republics, 1750–1940 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007); Christian Ydesen, The Rise of High-Stakes Educational Testing in Denmark, 1920–1970 (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 2011); Christian, Ydesen, Kari Ludvigsen and Christian Lundahl, “Creating an Educational Testing Profession in Norway, Sweden and Denmark, 1910–1960”, European Educational Research Journal 12, no. 1 (2013): 120–38; Annette Mülberger, “The Need for Contextual Approaches to the History of Mental Testing”, History of Psychology 17, no. 3 (2014): 177–86; Nelleke Bakker, “A Culture of Knowledge Production: Testing and Observation of Dutch children with Learning and Behavioural Problems (1949–1985)”, Paedagogica Historica 53, no. 1–2 (2017): 7–23; Antonio Canales and Simonetta Polenghi, eds., “Classifying Children: a Historical Perspective on Testing and Measurement”, special issue of Paedagogica Historica 55, no. 3 (2019); Nelleke Bakker, “Professional Competence and the Classification and Selection of Pupils for Schools for ‘Feebleminded’ Children in the Netherlands (1900–1940)”, Paedagogica Historica 57, no. 6 (2021): 728–44, Jona T. Garz, Zwischen Anstalt und Schule. Eine Wissensgeschichte der Erziehung »schwachsinniger« Kinder in Berlin, 1845–1914 (Bielefeld: transcript, 2022).

³⁴ Ydesen, The Rise of High-Stakes Educational Testing in Denmark, 92–3.

³⁵ Gian Paolo Cappellari and Diana de Rosa, Il padiglione Ralli: l’educazione dei bambini anormali tra positivismo e idealismo (Milano: Unicopli, 2003).

³⁶ Anna Debè, Maestri “speciali” alla Scuola di padre Gemelli. La formazione degli insegnanti per fanciulli anormali all’Università Cattolica (1926–1978) (Lecce, Rovato: PensamUltimedia, 2017).

³⁷ Yves Pelicier, Un pionnier de la psychiatrie de l’enfant: Edouard Seguin (1812–1880) (Paris: AEHSS, 1996); Bruno Di Pofi, L’educazione dei minori “anormali” nell’opera di Giuseppe Ferruccio Montesano (Roma: Nuova cultura, 2008).

³⁸ Maria Cristina Morandini, La conquista della parola: l’educazione dei sordomuti a Torino tra otto e Novecento (Torino: SEI, 2010).

³⁹ To quote just a few examples: Gianluca Gabrielli, Il curricolo «razziale». La costruzione dell’alterità di «razza» e coloniale nella scuola italiana (1860–1950) (Macerata: EUM, 2015); Anna Ascenzi and Roberto Sani, “The Totalitarian Child. The Image of Childhood in the Fascist School Notebooks (1922–1943)”, History of Education & Children’s Literature XIII, no. 1 (2018): 251–78; and Simonetta Polenghi, “Educating the ‘New Man’ in Italian Schools during the Fascist Era. Children’s Education through Traditional and Totalitarian Models in Images and Texts of Schoolbooks”, Historia Scholastica 6, no. 1 (2020): 7–28.

⁴⁰ Kira Mahamud, “Emotional Indoctrination through Sentimental Narrative in Spanish Primary Education Textbooks during the Franco Dictatorship (1939–1959)”, History of Education 45, no. 5 (2016): 653–78.

⁴¹ Peter Hollindale, “Ideology and the Children’s Book”, in Literature for Children: Contemporary Criticism, ed. Peter Hunt (London: Routledge, 1992), 18–40.

⁴² Sabrina Fava, Piccoli lettori del Novecento. I bambini di Paola Carrara Lombroso sui giornali per ragazzi (Torino: SEI, 2015).

⁴³ Dominique Julia, “L’infanzia agli inizi dell’epoca moderna”, in Storia dell’infanzia vol. 1, ed. Dominique Julia and Egle Becchi (Roma: Laterza, 1996), 231–311.

⁴⁴ John Stephens, Language and Ideology in Children’s Fiction (London: Longman, 1992).

⁴⁵ Beverly Lyon Clark, Girls, Boys, Books, Toys: Gender in Children’s Literature and Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000).

⁴⁶ Hans-Heino Ewers and Theodor Brüggemann, eds., Handbuch zur Kinder- und Jugendliteratur. Von 1750 bis 1800 (Stuttgart: J.B. Metzler, 1982).

⁴⁷ Hans-Heino Ewers, ed., Erster Weltkrieg: Kindheit, Jugend und Literatur: Deutschland, Österreich, Osteuropa, England, Belgien und Frankreich (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 2016); Marnie Campagnaro, ed., La Grande Guerra raccontata ai ragazzi (Roma: Donzelli, 2015).

⁴⁸ Ute Frevert, Pascal Eitler and Stephanie Olsen, Learning How to Feel: Children’s Literature and Emotional Socialisation, 1870–1970 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014).

⁴⁹ Grevatt Wallace, BBC Children’s Hour. A Celebration of those Magical Years (Lewes: The Book Guild, 1988); Robert A. Rosenstone, Visions of the Past. The Challenge of Film to Our Idea of History (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995); Josephine Dolan, “Aunties and Uncles: The BBC’s Children’s Hour and Liminal Concerns in the 1920s”, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 23, no. 4 (2003): 329–39; Robert A. Rosenstone, History on Film/Film on History (Harlow: Pearson Longman, 2006); Stephen G. Parker, “Teach Them to Pray Auntie: Children’s Hour Prayers at the BBC, 1940–1961”, History of Education 39, no. 5 (2010): 659–76; Josephine May, “A Field of Desire: Visions of Education in Selected Australian Silent Films”, Paedagogica Historica 46, no. 5 (2010): 623–37; Graham Roberts and Philip M. Taylor, eds., The Historians, Television and Television History (Luton: University of Luton Press, 2011); Motti Neiger, Oren Meyers and Eyal Zandberg, eds., On Media Memory. Collective Memory in a New Media Age (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); “Education in Motion: Producing Methodologies for Researching Documentary Film”, ed. Angelo Van Gorp and Paul Warmington, Paedagogica Historica 47, no. 4 (2011); Thierry Lefebvre, “À la recherche de la radio scolaire. Une patrimonialisation en cours”, Sociétés & Représentations 1, no. 35 (2013): 109–16; Alessandra Carenzio, “Mass media e infanzia”, in Mario Gecchele, Simonetta Polenghi and Paola Dal Toso, eds., Il Novecento: il secolo del bambino? (Bergamo: Edizioni Junior, 2017), 295–305; Carla Ghizzoni, “La radio per ragazzi nei primi anni del fascismo (1925–1933)”, History of Education & Children’s Literature XIII, no. 2 (2018): 219–50; Maria Hrickova and Adriana Kičkova, “History of Radio Broadcasting for Schools in the Czechoslovak Republic”, History of Education & Children’s Literature XIII1 (2018): 393–409; Joseph Casanovas Prat and Núria Padrós Tuneu, eds., “La historia de la educació a través dels films”, special issue, Educació i Història 31, no. 1 (2018); and Conrad Vilanou Torrano, Núria Padrós Tuneu and Raquel Cercós i Raichs, eds., “The Representation of Education in Documentaries Produced by European Totalitarism”, special issue, Historia y Memoria de la Educación 16 (2022).

⁵⁰ Sylvain Wagnon, “The Filmstrip. History and Evolution of an Educational Tool”, History of Education & Children’s Literature XV, no. 2 (2020): 151–61.

⁵¹ Vivian Sobchack, ed., The Persistence of History. Cinema, Television and the Modern Event (New York: Routledge, 1996); Marc Ferro, Cinéma et Histoire (Paris: Denoël-Gonthier, 1977); Pierre Sorlin, Sociologie du cinéma (Paris: Aubier-Montaigne, 1977); and Roberts and Taylor, The Historians, Television and Television History.

⁵² Steven Anderson, “History TV and Popular Memory”, in Television Histories. Shaping Collective Memory in the Media Age, ed. Gary R. Edgerton and Peter C. Rollins (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky, 2001), 20–1.

⁵³ Astrid Erll, Memory in Culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2011), 113.

⁵⁴ Ib Bondebjerg, Screening Twentieth Century Europe. Television, History, Memory (Cham: Palgrave European Film and Media Studies, 2020), 31. See also Geert Thyssen and Karin Priem, “Mobilising Meaning: Multimodality, Translocation, Technology and Heritage”, Paedagogica Historica 49, no. 6 (2013): 735–44.

⁵⁵ Rosenstone, History on Film/Film on History, 47. See also Gary R. Edgerton, Introduction: Television as Historian: A Different Kind of History Altogether, in Television Histories. Shaping Collective Memory in the Media Age, ed. Edgerton and Rollins, 1–16.

⁵⁶ Cristina Yanes Cabrera, Juri Meda and Antonio Viñao, eds., School Memories. New Trends in the History of Education (Cham: Springer, 2017).

⁵⁷ Paolo Alfieri, “Introduzione”, in Immagini dei nostri maestri. Memorie di scuola nel cinema e nella televisione dell’Italia repubblicana, ed. Paolo Alfieri (Roma: Armando, 2019); see also Paolo Alfieri and Imre Garai, eds., Individual and Collective School Memories. Research Perspectives and Case Studies in Italy and Hungary (Roma: Armando, 2022); and Josep Casanovas, Núria Padrós and Eulàlia Collelldemont, “The Representation of School on NO-DO: Visions of School Practice on Francoist Newsreels”, History of Education & Children’s Literature XV, no. 2 (2020): 163–82.

⁵⁸ Simonetta Polenghi, “Film as a Source for Historical Enquiry in Education. Research Methods and a Case Study: Film Adaptations of Pinocchio and their Reception in Italy”, Educació i Historia 31, no. 1 (2018): 89–111.

⁵⁹ Paolo Alfieri, “‘A qual fine vero e proprio debba rispondere la ginnastica nelle scuole’. Emilio Baumann e la manualistica ad uso degli insegnanti elementari all’indomani della legge De Sanctis”, History of Education & Children’s Literature VIII, no. 2 (2013): 195–220.

⁶⁰ Marta Brunelli and Juri Meda, “Gymnastics between School Desks. An Educational Practice between Hygiene Requirements, Healthcare and Logistic Inadequacies in Italian Primary Schools (1870–1970)”, History of Education Review 46, no. 2 (2017): 178–93. For an overview on UK, France, Switzerland, Italy, and Spain see the essay by Grégory Quin, Michaël Attali and Yohann Fortune, Grégory Quin and Christelle Hayoz, Paolo Alfieri and Xavier Torrebadella-Flix in Simonetta Polenghi, András Németh and Tomáš Kasper, eds., Education and the Body in Europe (1900–1950), Movements, Public Health, Pedagogical Rules and Cultural Ideas (Berlin: Peter Lang, 2021), 109–85; moreover: James Anthony Mangan, Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian Public School (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Richard Holt, Sport and the British: A Modern History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989); Pierre Arnaud, Le militaire, l’ecolier, le gymnaste. Naissance de l’education physique en France (1869–1889) (Lyon: Presses Universitaires de Lyon, 1991); Hajo Bernett, ed., Körperkultur und Sport in der DDR: Dokumentation eines geschlossenen Systems (Schorndorf: Hofmann, 1994); Bernd Wedemeyer-Kolwe, Der neue Mensch. Körperkultur im Kaiserreich und in der Weimarer Republik (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2004); Natalia Bazoge, “La gymnastique d’entretien au XXe siècle: d’une valorisation de la masculinité hégémonique à l’expression d’un féminisme en action”, Clio 23 (2006): 197–208; Jean-Claude Bussard, L’ éducation physique suisse en quête d’identité (1830–1930) (Paris: l’Harmattan, 2007); Natalia Bazoge, Jean Saint-Martin and Michaël Attali, “Promoting the Swedish Method of Physical Education throughout France for the Benefit of Public Health (1868–1954)”, Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports 23, no. 2 (2013): 232–43; Alessio Ponzio, Shaping the New Man. Youth Training Regimes in Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2015); Doriane Gomet and Michaël Attali, “Éducation des corps et disciplinarisation: le processus d’intégration des sports dans l’éducation scolaire française (1918–années 1990)”, Paedagogica Historica 54, no. 1–2 (2018): 66–82; Grégory Quin, Le mouvement peut-il guérir? Les usages médicaux de la gymnastique au 19ème siècle (Lausanne: BHMS Editions, 2019); and Paola Dogliotti and Pablo Ariel Scharagrodsky, “Eugenics and Sexuality in Physical Education Teacher Training in Uruguay (1948–1970)”, Paedagogica Historica (2021), https://doi.org/10.1080/00309230.2021.1987483.

⁶¹ Meda, Mezzi di educazione di massa, 12.

⁶² León Esteban Mateo, “Los catálogos de librería y material de enseñanza como fuente iconográfica y literario-escolar”, Historia de la educación: revista interuniversitaria 16 (1997): 17–46; Pedro Luis Moreno Martínez, “El mobiliario escolar en los catálogos de material de enseñanza: consideraciones metodológicas,” in La infancia en la historia: espacios y representaciones I, ed. Luis M. Naya Garmendia and Pauli Dávila Balsera (Donostia-San Sebastian: Erein, 2005), 342–55; and Maria Cristina Morandini and Francesca Davida Pizzigoni, Looking for the First “Educational Technologies”. Commercial Catalogues as Sources for the Study of the Birth of School Materialities (Macerata: Eum, 2023).

⁶³ TESEO: tipografi e editori scolastico-educativi dell’Ottocento, Giorgio Chiosso (dir.) (Milano: Bibliografica, 2003); TESEO ‘900. Editori scolastico-educativi del primo Novecento, Giorgio Chiosso (dir.) (Milano: Bibliografica, 2008).

⁶⁴ Monica Galfré, Il regime degli editori: libri, scuola e fascismo (Roma: Laterza, 2005); see also Fabio Targhetta, La capitale dell’impero di carta: editori per la scuola a Torino nella prima metà del Novecento (Torino: SEI, 2007); and Anna Ascenzi and Roberto Sani, eds., Il libro per la scuola tra idealismo e fascismo: l’opera della Commissione centrale per l’esame dei libri di testo da Giuseppe Lombardo Radice ad Alessandro Melchiori, 1923–1928 (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 2005).

⁶⁵ Pierre Mœglin, Les industries éducatives (Paris: PUF, 2010).

⁶⁶ Meda, “Mezzi di educazione di massa. Nuove fonti e nuove prospettive di ricerca per una ‘storia materiale della scuola’ tra XIX e XX secolo”, History of Education & Children’s Literature VI, no. 1 (2011): 253–79; Meda, Mezzi di educazione di massa.

⁶⁷ Larry Cuban, Teachers and Machines: The Classroom Use of Technology since 1920 (New York: Teachers College Press, 1986).

⁶⁸ Meda, Mezzi di educazione di massa, 39–64.

⁶⁹ Marcelo Caruso, ed., Classroom Struggle: Organizing Elementary School Teaching in the 19th Century (Frankfurt a.M.: Peter Lang, 2015).

⁷⁰ Domenico F.A. Elia, “Giuseppe Pezzarossa’s (1880–1911) gymnastic equipment workshop”, History of Education & Children’s Literature VII, no. 1 (2012): 465–84; Marta Brunelli, “Per una storia della circolazione dei sussidi botanici in Italia tra XIX e XX secolo. Appunti di lavoro sulle collezioni scolastiche e sui cataloghi commerciali per la Scuola”, in Prospettive incrociate sul patrimonio storico educativo: atti dell’Incontro internazionale di studi, Campobasso, 2–3 maggio 2018, ed. Alberto Barausse, Tatiane de Freitas Ermel and Valeria Viola (Lecce, Rovato: Pensa Multimedia, 2020): 433–58.

⁷¹ Marta Brunelli, “Pour une histoire de la production industrielle des matériels didactiques en Italie de la fin du XIXe a la première moitié du XXe siécle: premières indications et perspectives de recherche”, in Éducation et culture matérielle en France et en Europe du XVIe siècle à nos jours, ed. Marguerite Figeac-Monthus (Paris: Honoré Champion, 2019), 109–31.

⁷² Christa Berg, “Ansätze zu einer Sozialgeschichte des Spiels: Toward a Social History of Play”, Zeitschrift für Pädagogik 29, no. 5 (1983): 735–53; Brian Sutton-Smith, Toys as Culture (New York: Gardner Press, 1986); Dan Fleming, Powerplay: Toys as Popular Culture (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996); Gary Cross, Kids’ Stuff: Toys and the Changing World of American Childhood (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998); Gary Cross, The Cute and the Cool. Wondrous Innocence and Modern American Children’s Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004); Lisa Jacobson, Rising Consumers (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004); Bryan Ganaway, Toys, Consumption, and Middle-Class Childhood in Imperial Germany, 1871–1918 (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2009); Michel Manson, Jouets de toujours de l’Antiquité à la Révolution (Paris: Fayard, 2001); Carroll W. Pursell, From Playgrounds to PlayStation: the Interaction of Technology and Play (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015); Christopher P. Barton and Kyle Somervill, eds., Historical Racialized Toys in the United States (New York: Routledge, 2016); Megan Brandow-Faller, ed., Childhood by Design: Toys and the Material Culture of Childhood, 1700-Present (New York: Bloomsbury Visual Arts, 2018); Patricia Anne Simpson, The Play World. Toys, Texts, and the Transatlantic German Childhood (University Park: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2020); Christoph Kühberger, ed., Mit Geschichte spielen: zur materiellen Kultur von Spielzeug und Spielen als Darstellung der Vergangenheit (Bielefeld: transcript, 2021); Molly Rosner, Playing with History. American Identities and Children’s Consumer Culture (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2021); and Jens Andersen, The LEGO Story: How a Little Toy Sparked the World’s Imagination (New York: Mariner Books, 2022).

⁷³ Jackson Lears, Fable of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America (New York: Basic Books, 1994); Susana Sosenski, “El niño consumidor: una construcción publicitaria de mediados de siglo XX”, in Ciudadanos inesperados. Espacios de formación de la ciudadanía ayer y hoy, ed. Ariadna Acevedo and Paula López Caballero (México: Departamento de Investigaciones Educativas, Cinvestav/El Colegio de México, 2012): 191–222; Susana Sosenski, “La comercialización de la paternidad en la prensa mexicana (1930–1960)”, Estudios de Historia Moderna y Contemporánea de México, no. 48 (2014): 69–111; Susana Sosenski, “Santa Claus contra los Reyes Magos: influencias trasnacionales en el consumo infantil en México (1950–1960)”, Cuicuilco XXI, no. 60 (2014): 261–82; Susana Sosenski and Ricardo López León, “La construcción visual de la felicidad y la convivencia familiar en México: los anuncios publicitarios en la prensa gráfica (1930–1970)”, Secuencia. Revista de Historia y Ciencias Sociales 92 (2015): 194–225; and Susana Sosenski, “El olor del aliento en la publicidad de la prensa mexicana (1920–1950)”, in De olfato. Aproximaciones a los olores en la historia de México, ed. Élodie Dupey García and Guadalupe Pinzón Ríos (México: Fondo de Cultura Económica/Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Instituto de Investigaciones Históricas/Centro de Estudios Mexicanos y Centroamericanos, 2020): 289–386.

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Simonetta Polenghi

Simonetta Polenghi is Professor of History of education at the Catholic University of Sacred Heart in Milan, Italy, where she teaches School history and History of special education. Member of ISCHE EC 2016–2022, she chaired ISCHE 43 in Milan (31 August – 6 September 2022). Former president of the Academic Italian Society of Education SIPED (2017–2020), she is the author of four volumes, has edited/coedited 25 volumes/special issues and published more than 120 essays and articles.