2026/01/30 by Julia Kurig
Social Sciences · #Global Educational Policies and Reforms #Historical Education Studies Worldwide #Historical Education and Society
paper · pdf · doi:10.1080/00309230.2026.2614353
crossref issued 2026/01/30 · crossref published 2026/01/30 · crossref published-online 2026/01/30 · openalex publication_date 2026/01/30 · crossref created 2026/01/30 · openalex created_date 2026/02/01 · crossref published-print 2026/07/04 · crossref deposited 2026/07/27 · crossref indexed 2026/07/27 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In 1985, the American psychologist and educationalist Lawrence Kohlberg visited the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in the Federal Republic of Germany. At the invitation of the Social Democrat-led Ministry of Education, he took part in a media-effective symposium and visited schools in the state. The article reconstructs the educational policy, pedagogical and school contexts of Kohlberg’s trip and analyses the interests of the political and academic actors in the Federal Republic who initiated, accompanied and evaluated his visit. Having lost its opinion leadership at the federal level with the transition to Helmut Kohl’s Christian Democratic (CDU) government in 1982, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) attempted to rebrand itself. Taking Kohlberg’s concepts of moral education as a starting point for its educational policy, the SPD sought to regain hegemony in the educational policy and pedagogical discourses of the Federal Republic and further develop the central reform goals from the educational reform era of the 1960s and 1970s, such as democratic education and pupil participation, in the changed constellations of the 1980s. The attempt to politically instrumentalise Kohlberg’s concepts and implement them in schools met with numerous resistances and restrictions in the fields of West German politics, science and schools. Kohlberg’s trip sheds light on the interactions between political programmes, social debates, scientific research projects in psychology and educational science and pedagogical fields of action such as teacher training and schools, which are revealing for the West German history of education “since the boom.”