The disciplinarity of the specialized administration. Knowledge acquistion, knowledge production, and knowledge practices of the mid-level Prussian school administration 1817-1919

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The research proposal examines the development and consolidation of the disciplinarity of the specialized primary school administration in Prussia between the period of its establishment in 1817 and the dissolution of the previously dominant clerical school supervision in 1919. Here, disciplinarity denotes the interweavings of various paths of knowledge acquisition, knowledge production and knowledge practices which allowed the school administrations’ office holders to gain legitimacy for solving a twofold task: governing schools via bureaucratic norms and – at the same time – respecting the idiosyncrasies, inherent logic and specificity of pedagogic interactions characteristic of school contexts. Hence, disciplinarity is comprised of a legitimatory and factual level. With regard to the former, disciplinarity is utilized to approach the specific constellation in which a professional administration is established without drawing references from one particular disciplinary context. The research design reconstructs the emergence and consolidation of a contested disciplinarity that was not only shaped by pedagogy, but also by the fields of theology and law. Concerning the factual level, the project examines how mid-level primary school authorities cumulated, produced and used knowledge about imparting teaching, organizing schools and giving religious instruction. This occurred within a context which called for a school supervision that not only monitored the schools (executive power), but also advised and guided the teachers (formative power). Thus, the proposal seeks to reconstruct what was considered “disciplinary” in the activities of school administrations without presupposing a specific prototypical discipline such as "pedagogy" or "education". Basing the project on a history of knowledge approach allows for an analysis of mixed constellations of disciplinary perspectives and contradictory requirements of school administrations without presuming a certain consolidated discipline. Archival and bibliographic research for a representative and yet problem-oriented (‘Kulturkampf’) selection of Prussian provinces form the basis for investigating the knowledge acquisition (prosopographic database of the school administrators and their professional background), knowledge production (forms of knowledge and preferences traced through publications) and knowledge practices (practices of supervision and guidance, including their techniques and materialities). The research proposal aims to produce a comprehensive overview of the disciplinarity of Prussian school administration while simultaneously conducting systematic regional comparisons (provinces, administrative districts, urban districts), which ultimately challenge the seemingly homogenous image of the workings of Prussian school administrations..