100 jaar Pedagogische Studiën: Een eeuw onderwijswetenschap in dienst van onderwijsvernieuwing

Since its founding in 1920, Pedagogische Studiën
(PS) has been an important platform for the
educational sciences in the Netherlands. A
constant aim was to better understand and
improve the practice of education and upbringing
by means of scientific study. PS was meant to be
a ‘communal scientific forum’ for a national
debate on upbringing and education. This article
provides a history of the journal in four periods,
looking at the community that came together in
PS and the debate that took place in it, focusing
on the theme of educational reform. For each of
the four periods, the article shows that a new
group of academic educationalists dominated
the debate in PS, each time striving for
educational reform based on scientific insights.
In each period, however, the direction of the
proposed educational reforms as well as the
scientific support for them were markedly
different.