About the Journal

Pedagogika journal has been published since 1951 as a professional academic journal with specific focus on education. At the beginning it was published by the Ministry of Education but it soon came under the Comenius Institute of Education of the Czechoslovak Academy of Sciences. Since 1994 Pedagogika journal has been published by Charles University, Faculty of Education.

Pedagogika journal contributes to the development of professional knowledge in education and to the cultivation of professional opinions  (see profile of the journal).  This is done through both, the overall selection and scope of articles, high rigorous demands placed on them and observation of  ethical principles of publishing.

The journal publishes reviewed academic studies, discussions on current issues, reviews of relevant publications as well as analytical reports on important events in the professional community. Pedagogika publishes the following types of academic studies: theoretical, historical, review, methodological and research papers. The journal does not charge article submission/processing charges (APC).

Pedagogika journal is usually published four times a year. Two issues are monothematic, one being interational with texts published in foreign languages. Pedagogika journal also publishes foreign language texts in standard issues. Published issues are available in the Archives section.

Pedagogika is an open access journal. By a submission of a text authors agree with its publication and accept the open access policy. Content of the journal is freely available to all readers and institutions. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, print, distribute, search and refer to full texts of the articles without a permission of the author and publisher. Pedagogika journal applies Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 (CC BY 4.0). The journal allows the authors to hold the copyright without restrictions.

Digital Archiving & Preservation Policies: All of our electronic content is stored on different sources (Charles University servers). In case of failure of one server, other sources can be made online and website expected to be accessible within less than 24-36 hours. Pedagogika journal is also indexed in international databases (see below). Authors may archive the final published version of their articles in personal or institutional repositories immediately after publication. If journal stops publishing, i.e. due to some rare, unfortunate circumstances, we are forced to stop publishing the journal, the manuscripts published in the journal will be kept online and accessible to the readers for at least 10 more years.

Pedagogika journal is indexed in international databases DOAJ, ERIH PLUS, EBSCO and Ulrich’s.

ISSN 0031-3815  (Print)
ISSN 2336-2189  (Online)

 

Journal History

1950s

For forty years following its founding in the 1950s Pedagogika had to face the ideological pressure of its political “founders”, whose aim was to make Marxist ideology the theoretical and methodological basis for communist upbringing and education.  Despite this, from the very beginning (especially from 1953, when O. Chlup became editor), it carried a range of serious theoretical studies and the results of research studies, especially in the field of didactics (research on subject matter, the teaching process), the theory of education, the history of pedagogics, Comenius studies, defectology, and after 1956 also information on the results of research studies in the capitalist west.

1960s

The texts published in Pedagogika in the 1960s testify to important progress in Czechoslovak educational theory and methodology (the path had been opened up by change in the political climate in the USSR after 1962, which included emphasis on the importance of science for building communist society). Váňa’s fundamental methodological study of 1962 set the direction for numerous theoretical and theoretical-empirical studies especially in the field of teaching (research on basic subject matter, programming, the effectiveness of modern technical aids, the effectiveness of interventions in education).  Apart from general didactics as the pedagogical disciplines with the longest tradition, new fields began to develop (for example special education, economics of education, comparative education) and new themes (social aspects of education, teacher education and so on).

1970s and 1980s

Despite the fact that in the repressive “normalising” decade of the 1970s many experts were forced to stop academic work altogether, and those who were still allowed to publish were compelled to identify with Marxist educational theory and to collaborate with Soviet specialists, in the 1970s Czechoslovak educational research continued to make progress in practically all the fields cultivated in the 1960s except for comparative education, although of course to different degrees and with uneven results in terms of quality.  (There is no need to stress that given the political climate communist theory, and especially education in world view, was thedominant discipline).  One reason for continuing progress was probably that Soviet educational theory and research at the time was world class in many fields and so provided our educational research sector with valuable stimuli.  In addition to the fields already cultivated in the 1960s it was in this period that we see the emergence of the theory of individual types and level of school, psycholinguistic themes in the field of didactics, and in the field of theory of upbringing the themes of education for parenthood, parent education, substitute family care, the upbringing and education of the Roma child and pupil, etc.

The intense pressure of normalisation continued to be apparent in Pedagogika until roughly the mid-1980s. Then, as a consequence of the influence of Soviet Perestroika and Glasnost,  space gradually emerged in Pedagogika for the publication of undistorted results or research studies on Czech schooling, open views on the situation in Czech and Slovak pedagogics, and for disucssion.  In this period there was renewed development particularly of didactics, and in a new form: in close association with educational psychology (this meant research into textbooks and other materials, educational content, the effectiveness of learning and teachine,g and psychological aspects of computer teaching), but also pedeutology and the history of educational theory and method.  The tradition of comparative study of education founded in the 1960s was revived and developed.  The first studies were published on legal and ecological education and the influence of the mass media on upbringing and education.

Since 1989

From the beginning of the 1990s Pedagogika underwent a transformation in content, form, staff and writers.  In terms of content, in this period the journal focused mainly on the study of foreign school systems and on the theory of the school and practical research into the school.  General didactics as a matter of full-scale theories of learning and teaching has receded into the background, and the spotlight has been on the investigation of specific problems in the educational process: curriculum, assessment, the process of learning and teaching and its actors – teachers and pupils.  Interest in subject didactics has revived.  Research on the teacher has come to the centre of interest  (the teaching profession, especially teacher training, has been the subject of three monothematic issues), as have theoretical questions arising from topical problems of school practice (framework and school educational programmes, home education).  As a counterweight to empirical research studies there has also been attention to themes from the field of philosophy of education and educational anthropology.

For those interested in a more detailed view of the history of the journal Pedagogika we recommend articles published to mark the 50th anniversary of the founding of the journal – 4/2000 and 1/2001.