Studying Local, Exploring Urban: Educational Geography and kraevedenie in Soviet Russia in the 1920s

Paedagogica Historica. 2024.

Stepanov B.

Researchers attest to the scarcity of research on the images of regions in educational literature. The history of Russian and Soviet pedagogy is no exception in this respect. In this paper, I examine the first post-revolutionary decades. The emergence of the so-called “ Labour school” (Trudovaya shkola) fundamentally transformed Soviet education by this period. The local studies movement (Kraevedenie) had a significant impact on the formation of primary and secondary education. This text presents the results of the analysis of textbooks and methodical texts of the 1920s and early 1930s. The aims of the paper are 1) to describe the development of the local studies movement in Soviet Russia and its influence on the formation of the school curriculum in the 1920s-1930s; 2) to explore the relationship between the ideas of localization and the transformation of the body of school literature, to identify the types of teaching aids which implemented these ideas; 3) to analys e the role of urban issues in the manuals and methodical texts of the 1920s, created under the influence of local studies.
 

Keywords: локализация, учебники, textbooks, советская школа, образ города, краеведение, Soviet school, local studies, image of the city, географическое воображение, localisation, geographical imagination

Publication based on the results of: Evaluation practices and self-regulation mechanisms in intellectual communities and cultural institutions (2023)