La storiografia pedagogica all’Università di Padova: cinquant’anni fra ricerca e didattica

Abstract

The contribution aims to reconstruct the historical-pedagogical research in the University of Padua during the post-World War II period. After recalling that it had a long tradition behind it that began with the institution of the autonomous Chair of Pedagogy (1876), the formation of the Paduan Pedagogical School is presented, founded on Luigi Stefanini’s Personalism and for a long time directed and animated in the pedagogical field by Giuseppe Flores d’Arcais. His first pupil and collaborator was Marcello Peretti, later followed by many others. The expansion of historical research in the then Faculty of Education was favoured by the establishment of several new chairs: from that of History of Pedagogy to that of History of Schools and Educational Institutions to that of History of Children’s Literature. The pedagogical historiography of the Padua School was characterized by the close link between theoretical elaboration and historical research, by the constant dialogue with the Classics and by the personalistic orientation, aimed at enhancing both the concrete reality of man and his values, rooted in the very “mystery” of existence. The closure of the Magisterium and the gradual exit from the scene of Maestri Flores d’Arcais and Peretti and the generation of scholars who had trained at their school marked the fading of this pedagogical and historiographical model and its demise.