Words in Motion – Adapting, Translating and Transposing of Pedagogies.
A Special Issue
The increase in international pedagogical discussions in the last years has shown that dialogue is challenging because pedagogical notions do not easily translate from one language into another. Adopting English as lingua franca of the scientific community has merely covered up such differences, with the incongruences surfacing very quickly in in-depth discussions. This is as expected as it is surprising: Expected, as everyone who speaks more than one language knows that languages do not translate into each other so easily. Surprising though, as there always has been an exchange of theories and ideas across national and cultural borders not only within Europe, but also across the whole globe. Sometimes voluntarily – on the backs of reasoning or fashions –, sometimes as a result of enforced enculturation, discursive seeds were sown and grew. However, something happened in this process, and what grew turned out to be a very different breed of pedagogical musings: Despite, for example, the widely available translations of Comenius, Herbart, Fröbel, Pestalozzi, Spencer, Dewey and others, Anglophone Education Studies represent a very different approach to pedagogical theorising than, to name but one, the German Erziehungswissenschaft. Paths of reception are, of course, eternally muddled, and all sorts of influences weigh heavily on such processes, but it might also be the result of the ways in which central notions and concepts have been translated, adapted, transposed, or even completely ignored.
The Special Issue of the Global Education Review presents papers that shed a light on the ways in which pedagogic-theoretical structures or concepts have changed considerably during the process of their adaption and translation from one language, one discourse, into another. In uncovering such pivotal moments of shifting of meaning, we may become able to better understand why we often misunderstand each other. The texts can be found Here.