Dr. Sarah Odhner, Lecturer in Education, Bryn Athyn College

A key historical question concerning infant school pedagogy is whether early educators grounded their methods in a coherent theory of child development and education. While there is evidence that Johann Oberlin, Samuel Wilderspin, James Buchanan, and David Goyder read Swedenborg, investigations into their works have failed to locate his influence. This is further complicated by the fact that Swedenborg did not gather his educational theories into a single work but scattered them throughout his voluminous oeuvre. This talk presents a digest of Swedenborg’s ideas on the mind its development and uncovers the social pressures which preluded educators from articulating them publicly. It combines actor-network theory with a semiotic linguistic approach to trace the connections through which Swedenborg’s theories traveled unseen within infant school texts. It reveals that even though these works exhibit no clear evidence of an underlying educational theory, Owen’s Essays and Wilderspin’s texts diffused Swedenborg’s views on growth and education covertly.

Please register by emailing David Lewin: david.lewin@strath.ac.uk

Kindly hosted by the Institute of Education, University of Strathclyde and supported by the Philosophy of Education Society of Great Britain.