TY - JOUR
T1 - Mental testing and educational streaming in Ontario and Denmark in the early twentieth century
T2 - a comparative and transnational perspective
AU - Milewski, Patrice
AU - Ydesen, Christian
AU - Andreasen, Karen Egedal
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - This article compares and contrasts the use of mental testing and the formation of educational streaming in Denmark and Ontario during the interwar years. In this sense, the article adds nuances to the meaning of internationalism as well as contributing to our knowledge about how ideas of testing practices circulated among countries and continents. One way ideas and practices circulated was via informal networks promoted by the education traveller. Key proponents of mental testing in both Denmark and Ontario travelled to continental Europe, England, and the United States studying and observing the practices and institutional arrangements associated with educational streaming. Our main findings are that the processes used to implement mental testing in the two countries differed significantly. Mental testing was implemented much later in Denmark than in Ontario. This was due to different contextual, cultural, and historical factors that promoted changes to the existing system, or, alternatively, represented a barrier or even obstructed changes to it. Nevertheless, mental testing was implemented in both education systems as a relatively coherent technology rooted in transnational movements and exchange, but was attended by highly different practices and local meaning-making.
AB - This article compares and contrasts the use of mental testing and the formation of educational streaming in Denmark and Ontario during the interwar years. In this sense, the article adds nuances to the meaning of internationalism as well as contributing to our knowledge about how ideas of testing practices circulated among countries and continents. One way ideas and practices circulated was via informal networks promoted by the education traveller. Key proponents of mental testing in both Denmark and Ontario travelled to continental Europe, England, and the United States studying and observing the practices and institutional arrangements associated with educational streaming. Our main findings are that the processes used to implement mental testing in the two countries differed significantly. Mental testing was implemented much later in Denmark than in Ontario. This was due to different contextual, cultural, and historical factors that promoted changes to the existing system, or, alternatively, represented a barrier or even obstructed changes to it. Nevertheless, mental testing was implemented in both education systems as a relatively coherent technology rooted in transnational movements and exchange, but was attended by highly different practices and local meaning-making.
KW - Mental testing
KW - History of Education
KW - Canada
KW - Ontario
KW - Denmark
KW - Mental testing
KW - Denmark
KW - Canada
KW - Ontario
KW - history of education
U2 - 10.1080/00309230.2019.1589802
DO - 10.1080/00309230.2019.1589802
M3 - Journal article
SN - 0030-9230
VL - 55
SP - 371
EP - 390
JO - Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education
JF - Paedagogica Historica: International Journal of the History of Education
IS - 3
ER -