Hungarian educational science and the Academy: a historical overview (1825–1945)

Abstract

Scientific academies, including the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, founded 200 years ago, are places of dialogue between the specialist sciences and associations of their outstanding scientists, characteristic of the modern age and created to promote science and research. When defining the academic role of educational science, however, it is important first to emphasise that its institutional roots and the idea of the university —another important European scientific institution —are closely linked to the ancient and medieval traditions of pedagogy. The first part of our work provides an overview of the most important historical phases in the development of the academic idea and the scientific institutional system based on it. Against the backdrop of this international development process, the second part outlines the heyday of Hungarian educational science, which was institutionalised as an academic discipline until 1945, and the achievements of the scholars in this field.