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This article focuses on the role the Dutch school for children with "learning and behavioural problems" (LOM) has played in knowledge production about learning disabilities and in the development of academic study of special education between 1949 and 1985. LOMschooling grew rapidly during these years and attracted relatively many experts. In the selection and admission of LOM-children they had to be distinguished from normal, mentally deficient, and "very difficult" children. Around 1970 experts shifted their focus from the distinction between LOM-children and the latter to the difference between LOM-and mildly mentally retarded children, which turned out to be too small in the end to justify a separate school. The LOMschool's culture of knowledge production has stimulated both testing and the study of learning problems and their treatment. It functioned as a laboratory for the development of therapeutic treatment for learning disabilities. In particular, the systematic reflection on the practice of remedial teaching was relevant in the development of child science.

Village Institutes were founded in Turkey in 1940 in order to educate village teachers. Graduates of these Institutes were educated to guide peasants in agricultural and technological matters. Legitimising Kemalist ideology and supporting the single‐party system of the day were two of the roles undertaken by these Institutes. This article evaluates the nationalisation and modernisation process of Turkey in terms of Village Institutes by emphasising their dual educational and political roles. A second aim of the article is to analyse Village Institutes and similar educational movements in other countries in comparative perspective within the context of work‐based education. Consequently, the contribution of Village Institutes to pedagogy and its place in the history of education are examined. As a result of the research, it is contended that work school and production school movements in Village Institutes were part of one endeavour and that these Institutes were important examples of the new school movement that was based on contemporary principles of education in Turkey at the time.

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