The Heritage of the Cold War in Contemporary Curricula and Educational Reforms

Abstract

Using a theoretical-critical and historical approach, this paper analyses the implications of the Cold War in national curricula and educational reforms of the second half of the 20th century with emphasis on the 21st century. The context of the time after the Second World War and the beginning of the Cold War is shown, as well as the social and political changes that are significant for education and were prompted by the wars. The emergence of the international Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (whose focus is not educational but economic) and the role of behavioural psychology were also analysed, which explained their significance in later educational reforms. The role of the Cold War in reducing socio-humanistic teaching contents and the implementation of natural sciences and mathematics has also been explained. The synthesis of the analysed aspects suggests that the Cold War military and technological race resulted in the implementation of the STEM area, thus the measurability of learning outcomes, which influenced the psychologisation, standardisation, economisation, and globalisation of education. Most of the current (un)successful national educational and curricular reforms were initiated in that direction without respect for the social, cultural, and historical features of individual countries. These changes have left a mark in pedagogy, in which the humanistic approach appears to counteract other approaches. Some educational systems demonstrate a shift from such trends, from the technical-scientific curriculum towards the didactic tradition of Bildung and the philosophy of education. The reasons can be found in the above-average results on international standardised evaluations of those countries that have national curricula, in contrast to what is recommended by the globalisation and standardisation of education as some of the elements of the Cold War heritage.

Methodological Particularities in Research on Contemporary Childhood in Croatia: A Pedagogical – Psychological Perspective

“…A detailed analysis was conducted with the help of a futures technique, Trend Analysis, which has rarely been used in previous research on this topic (Bigham and Riney, 2014;Dubovicki and Munjiza, 2021;Dubovicki and Topolovčan, 2020a;Topolovčan and Dubovicki, 2019).…”

“…Such research aims to achieve an objective understanding of reality based on empirical data. The situation in research on pedagogical phenomena (especially in the Croatian context) has been mentioned by Jagić (2007), Dubovicki (2017), Dubovicki, Mlinarević and Velki (2018) and Topolovčan and Dubovicki (2019). Table 3 shows the number of research procedures used in research on contemporary childhood.…”

“…Only in rare cases (7.6%), was a combination of procedures applied, indicating that the use modern procedures in contemporary childhood research is still insufficient. This is another indicator that goes in the direction of the mathematization and numbering of data on these phenomena in the field of pedagogy and psychology, methods which undoubtedly belong to the legacy of the Cold War (Topolovčan and Dubovicki, 2019).…”

“…While reviewing previous research dealing with this issue, we discovered that only a few papers include thematic/content analyses, which are vital for monitoring and predicting future trends (Dubovicki and Munjiza, 2021). That is why more recent pedagogical research has used a futures technique, Trend Analysis, which provides insight into past and present trends in a clear, systematic way, taking into account the methodological particularities of the historical approach and analysis of documentation, while also predicting potential future trends (Eğmir, Erdem and Koçyiğit, 2017;Dubovicki, Mlinarević and Velki, 2018;Dubovicki and Munjiza, 2019;Dubovicki and Topolovčan, 2020a;2020b;Topolovčan and Dubovicki, 2019). In addition to the contemporary methodological approach, one of the main goals of the paper is to open a methodological discussion on the pedagogical and psychological features, possibilities, advantages, and limitations of contemporary childhood research, but also to emphasize the importance of researching contemporary childhood with futurology research methods.…”

Media didactics: Yesterday, today, tomorrow

“…Nastavna tehnologija, a prije toga i kurikulumski pristup obrazovanju, etabliran je krajem Drugog svjetskog rata i početkom Hladnog rata (Saettler, 2004;Topolovčan i Dubovicki, 2019). Referentni moment globalnih obrazovnih previranja je lansiranje Sputnjika 1957. godine od strane SSSR-a.…”