Mapping scientised education in German-American transnational networks after 1945

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article charts some of the historical paths that have helped bring forth, in late-modern societies, what I call scientised educational discourses and practices. Though the project of forming the ‘scientific man’ can be traced back to the nineteenth century, it is argued that the nature of the project changed once it became aligned with the Cold War sciences, especially cybernetics, computer science and psychology. How former military scientists and researchers from various disciplines generated algorithmic and computational ideas of the human mind that entered the fields of education, teaching and learning during the Cold War era is reconstructed. These ideas not only had a decisive role in shaping scientised subjects such as the lifelong learner, they also inspired the emergence of new scientific disciplines. One example is the field of empirically based educational research in West Germany, which – in its ‘scientised form – was not very well established in West Germany prior to the 1960s.