From the idea of child recognition to pedology as the theory of children’s behaviour and development

Abstract

The child and childhood as socio-pedagogical categories are studied and described in the relatively recent pedagogical literature. Indeed systematic scientific reflection on childhood began in the mid nineteenth century and was connected with the contemporary development of child psychology and later pedology as the theory of the child. The article intends to develop the thesis that pedology had its origins in the European tradition of modern era pedagogy and, what is more important, that it was referring to the mid-eighteenth century postulates which proclaimed the need to know the child. Therefore, the main aim of this theory, which has been developing in Europe and the United States of America since the late nineteenth century as an interdisciplinary, experiential study, was to investigate the nature of the child.