Research discourse of pedagogy in Croatia Case-study for the decades 1931-1940, 1971-1980. and 2011-2020

Abstract

After the initial period of the so-called Enlightenment pedagogy (from 1850 to the First World War), pedagogy in Croatia went through three stages of development: a pluralized scientific pedagogy between the world wars, a monistically limited socialist pedagogy after the Second World War, and a return to a pluralized pedagogy after the independence of Croatia in the early 90s 20th century. The differences between these stages are so great that the relationship between pedagogy and the environment has changed in each of them: from the predominance of the German language, the classics of pedagogy and reform currents before the Second World War, through the absolute dominance of the Russian language and Soviet pedagogy immediately after the Second World War with a gradual cautious opening towards some other areas, to the key influence of the English language and works on upbringing and mainly from the Anglo-Saxon area in the last thirty years. Each of these influences has a different structure – from theoretical and methodological origins to practical work. The question is, how did such big changes affect the development of pedagogy in Croatia? This work answers that question by determining the topics that were researched in pedagogy in Croatia during the three mentioned stages. By reviewing one decade within each stage, the case study determined which topics dominate pedagogical research in Croatia based on: analysis of the topics of all doctoral dissertations (as a formal initiation into scientific research) that were defended in pedagogy, as well as the topics of all papers published in Napredak magazine (during socialism it was called Pedagoški rad) – the leading pedagogical periodical during the entire considered period.