Mental Test as Boundary Object in Early 20 th Century Russian Child Science

1. Mental Test as Boundary Objectin Early 20th CenturyRussian Child Science ANDY BYFORD Durham University, UK 4S+EASST Copenhagen, Denmark 17-20 October 2012

2. CHILD SCIENCE • Bio-psycho-social study of child development • 1880s-1930s • Professional/scientific movement • Heterogeneous field of scientific work • Collaborative interaction across disciplinary, professional and administrative structures and environments PSYCHOLOGICAL TESTING • Not a discipline-specific practice or methodology psychology education medicine politics parents law

3. RUSSIAN/SOVIET CHILD SCIENCE • 1880s-90s reliant on pioneering work done in the West • 1900s-10s independent expansion of a network of labs, courses, institutes, journals, conferences • early-mid 1920s enthusiastic support from new Bolshevik state; modernizing agenda of radical social transformation; diversity of strands and approaches • late 1920s transforming a fragmented network into an official, policy-driven ‘super-science of the child’ (paedology) • early 1930s ideological scrutiny and mounting criticism following Stalinist takeover • 1936 Communist Party decree vilifying ‘child science’, singling out mental testing in particular, leading to its complete institutional ‘liquidation’ ‘Paedological distortions’ in the Commissariat of Education (Pravda, August 1936)

4. RESEARCH QUESTIONS • What made possible such a heterogeneous field of scientific, professional (and political) work? • What was involved in the interactions and negotiations across the multiplicity of professional territories, disciplinary boundaries, institutional structures, communities of practice, and stakeholder interests that made up this field • In what way did this work cohere into a‘joint enterprise’, if at all? APPROACHES TO THE PROBLEM 1. ‘COLLABORATION’ • rhetoric of collaboration(interdisciplinarity, alliances …) • boundary work (intra- & inter-disciplinary/professional politics; precariously negotiated division of territories of action). 2. ‘CONSENSUS’ • elusive integration of disciplinary definitions, shared meanings, common aims, agreed-upon methods 3. BOUNDARY OBJECTS • Star & Griesmer(1989)

5. BOUNDARY OBJECTS • ‘ill-structured’ (material/symbolic) social artefacts • produced in, through and for particular scientific work (becoming ‘instrumental’ to it) • designed to allow flexible interpretations &mobile uses across distinct areas of a heterogeneous field. • ambiguity & displacement • enables the displacement of (‘scientific’) work across boundaries and between environments • continued/maintained divergence of perspectives, priorities and conventions of practice

6. ‘THE DIAGNOSIS’ • teacher diagnostician & school doctor • psychiatry & special education • normal ~ pathological ‘THE METHOD’ • black-boxing • ‘psychological profile’ (G. Rossolimo) • confusions and ambiguities ‘THE EXPERIMENT’ • university (philosophy departments) vs. (new) teacher-training establishments • militancy of the term • experimental psychology ~ experimental pedagogy (A. Nechaev) ‘THE LABORATORY’ • metaphorical re-description of schools as laboratories • school lab-kits • school lessons as lab instruments ‘the natural experiment’ (A. Lazursky) ‘THE EXAM’ • scientific evaluation vs. bureaucratic assessment • legitimation of teachers’ power (relationship to pupils, parents, school management, the public) Nechaev– Lazursky – Rossolimo (1911)

7. Thank you! ANDY BYFORD andy.byford@durham.ac.uk Durham University, UK http://www.dur.ac.uk/russianchildscience/ SPONSORS: Arts & Humanities Research Council, UK British Academy, UK Durham University, UK