1 Mitchell, Lucy Sprague “The Language and Thought of the Child,” Progressive Education IV (April-May-June 1927): 136, 139; Lois Meek in National Society for the Study of Education, Twenty-Eighth Yearbook, Preschool and Parental Education (Bloomington, IL: Public School Publishing Company, 1929), 459; Bradbury, Dorothy Skeels, Esther, and Sweida, Wand, eds., Nursery School Education: A Classified and Annotated Bibliography (Washington, DC: National Association for Nursery Education, 1935).Google Scholar

2 For some classics on transience in education, see, among many others, Larry Cuban, How Teachers Taught: Constancy and Change in American Classrooms, 1890–1990 (New York: Longman, 1984) and “Reforming Again, Again, and Again,” Educational Researcher 19, no. 1 (1990): 3–13; Kliebard, Herbert M. The Struggle for the American Curriculum, 1893–1958 (Boston: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986); and Tyack, David and Cuban, Larry, Tinkering Toward Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1995). Political scientist John Kingdom talks about policy “windows” in Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies (Boston: Little Brown, 1984).Google Scholar

3 On the transmission of ideas in the Atlantic world during this period see Rodgers, Daniel T. Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1998). For an example of international diffusion see Wollons, Roberta ed., Kindergartens and Cultures: The Global Diffusion of an Idea (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000).Google Scholar

4 Cuban, Larry “Why Some Reforms Last: The Case of the Kindergarten,” American Journal of Education 100 (February 1992): 166–94. Piaget has been studied by a few historians of psychology. On Piaget, see especially Fernando Vidal, Piaget Before Piaget (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994) and Yeh Hseuh, “Jean Piaget, Spontaneous Development and Constructivist Teaching” (PhD dissertation, Harvard Graduate School of Education, 1997); “‘He Sees the Development of Children's Concepts Upon a Background of Sociology’: Jean Piaget's Honorary Degree at Harvard University in 1936,” History of Psychology 7, no. 1 (2004): 20–44; and “The Hawthorne Experiments and the Introduction of Jean Piaget in American Industrial Psychology, 1929–1932,” History of Psychology 5, no. 2 (2002): 163–69. Interest in preschool education may be increasing. See for example the May 2009 special issue of History of Education Quarterly on international preschool education.Google Scholar

5 On varieties of preschool education, see among others, Beatty, Barbara Preschool Education in America (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995); Celia Lascarides, V. and Hinitz, Blythe F. History of Early Childhood Education (New York: Falmer, 2000); and Keith Whitescarver and Jacqueline Cossentino, “Montessori and the Mainstream: A Century of Reform on the Margins,” Teachers College Record 110, no. 12 (2008): 2571–600.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Finkelstein, Barbara “The Revolt Against Selfishness: Women and the Dilemmas of Professionalism in Early Childhood Education,” in Professionalism and the Early Childhood Practitioner, eds. Spodek, Bernard Saracho, Olivia N. and Peters, D. L. (New York: Teachers College Press, 1988), 10–28; Bloch, Marian “Becoming Scientific and Professional: An Historical Perspective on the Aims and Effects of Early Education,” in The Formation of School Subjects, ed. Popkewitz, Thomas (New York: Falmer Press, 1987), 41-49; Beatty, Barbara “The Rise of the American Nursery School: Laboratory for a Science of Child Development,” in Developmental Psychology and Social Change, eds. Pillemer, David and White, Sheldon H. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 264–87; Cahan, Emily D. “Toward a Socially Relevant Science: Notes on the History of Child Development Research,” in When Science Encounters the Child: Education, Parenting, and Child Welfare in 20th-century America, eds. Beatty, Barbara Cahan, Emily D. and Grant, Julia (New York: Teachers College Press, 2006), 16–34.Google Scholar

7 On the crowded terrain of psychology and education, see among others, Lagemann, Ellen Condliffe An Elusive Science: The Troubling History of Education Research (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000).Google Scholar

8 Piaget, Jean The Language and Thought of the Child, trans. Gabain, Marjorie (New York: World Publishing, 16th edition, 1971, 1st French edition, Paris: Delachaux et Niestle, 1923, 1st English editions, London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner & Co, 1926, New York: Harcourt Brace, 1926); Piaget, Jean Judgment and Reasoning in the Child, trans. Marjorie Warden (Paterson, NJ: Littlefield, Adams, 1959, 1st French edition, Paris: Delachaux et Niesde, Neuchatel, 1924, 1st English editions, London, Kegan Paul, Trench, & Trubner, 1928, New York, Harcourt Brace, 1928); Piaget, Jean The Child's Conception of the World, trans. Joan and Andrew Tomlinson (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1951, 1st French edition, Paris: Alcan, 1926, 1st English editions, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1929, Harcourt & Brace, New York, 1929); Piaget, Jean The Child's Conception of Physical Causality (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 2001, 1st French edition, Paris: Alcan, 1927, 1st English edition: London, Kegan Paul, Trench, & Trubner, 1930); Jean Piaget, The Moral Judgment of the Child, trans. Marjorie Gabain (New York: Free Press, 1997, 1st French edition, Paris: Alcan, 1932, 1st English edition, London: K. Paul, Trench & Trubner, 1932).Google Scholar

9 My understanding of Piaget's early life is based largely on Vidal, Piaget before Piaget, Piaget's autobiography, “Jean Piaget,” in A History of Psychology in Autobiography, Vol 4, eds. Edwin G. Boring et al. (Worcester, MA: Clark University Press, 1952), 237–56, and Yeh, “Jean Piaget, Spontaneous Development and Constructivist Teaching.” Other biographical sources include Margaret A. Boden, Jean Piaget (New York: Viking Press, 1979); Michael Chapman, Constructive Evolution: Origins and Development of Piaget s Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988); Evans, Richard I. Jean Piaget: The Man and His Ideas (New York: E.P. Dutton, 1973); Flavell, John H. “Historiographical and Bibliographical Note,” Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development 27, no. 2; “Thought in the Young Child: Report of a Conference on Intellective Development with Particular Attention to the Work of Jean Piaget” (1962): 5–18. For discussion of the development of Piaget's thought see especially John H. Flavell The Developmental Psychology of Jean Piaget (Princeton, NJ: D. Van Nostrand 1963); Herbert Ginsburg and Sylvia Opper, Piaget s Theory of Intellectual Development (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1969); Howard E. Gruber and J. Jacques Voneche, eds., The Essential Piaget (Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, Inc., 1977); and Brian Rotman Jean Piaget: Psychologist of the Real (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1977).Google Scholar

10 Hseuh, “Jean Piaget,” 67–72, 78–82. On Claparède see “Edouard Claparède,” in A History of Psychology in Autobiography, ed. Murchison, Carl (Worcester, MA: Clark University Press, 1930). On the New Education, see among many others, Carleton Washburne, New Schools in the Old World (New York: The John Day Co., 1926) and Marc Depaepe, Frank Simon, and Angelo Van Gorp, “The Canonization of Ovide Decroly as the ‘Saint’ of the New Education,” History of Education Quarterly 43 (June 2003): 224–48.Google Scholar

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21 Ibid., 136–39.Google Scholar

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