Place-based education avant la lettre. The shifting emphasis on connecting the curriculum to the place in Austrian rural school reform, 1919-1965

In recent years, the idea of making school more relevant for children and their families by connecting it to the place where it is situated has frequently been discussed under the term place-based education. In this article, I analyse a historical case, and I explore reasons for why this idea was emphasized or neglected, and the pitfalls associated with it, based on a content analysis of articles in teachers' journals and books about rural schooling in Austria, from 1919 to 1965. From the 1920s to the end of the 1950s, strong ties between rural schools and their surrounding lifeworld were emphasized. This emphasis was often associated with conservative values, yet it disappeared around 1960, not because people began to disapprove of this idea or opted for conflicting educational goals, but because a newly adopted perspective simply blinded this issue. The case at hand demonstrates that strong ties to the place may imply adopting the values prevailing in the local community, or those ascribed to it. As a consequence, the idea of strong ties may be abandoned once policy trends shift away from these values.