The reception of German progressive education in Russia: on regularities of international educational transfer

Abstract

This article reports a historical case study of extensive educational transfer: the reception, adaptation, and use of German progressive education and German school reform ideas and practices in Russia at the beginning of the twentieth century. The reception of German educational ideas greatly enriched the theory and practice of the Russian school reform, contributed to the dissemination of progressive education ideas among the educationally interested public (teachers and parents), and contributed significantly to the development of an official plan for a comprehensive progressive educational school reform in pre-socialist Russia. Based on the findings of this and similar case studies, some general conclusions concerning the regularities of educational transfer processes – their presuppositions and motives, their contents and forms, and their functions for the recipients – are drawn, ending with a proposal for the development of an action-theoretical model of educational transfer processes.