Berta Wernicke and her teacher training project for Argentine´primary education at the beginning of the 20th century

Abstract

This article aims to provide a first approach to the professional biography of Berta Wernicke (1871-1962). Since there is no study in Argentina that has addressed her multifaceted work, there is also no comprehensive work on her life in terms of precise data. Thus, our research questions are about the reasons why a biography of Berta Wernicke has not been written and why she is not recognized in Argentine educational history studies that address the period of the constitution of the national intellectual and pedagogical field. Specifically, regarding their participation in the discussions that took place with greater intensity at the beginning of the 20th century. This means that this is a later period and one of debates, especially teaching of disciplines, that were postulated as a break from the ideals of the normal school established with the creation of the Argentine public education system. The conceptual foundations and concern for developing methods were framed within the political processes, not without tensions and ideological differences, carried out by the liberal reformist movements, including feminist ones, to which Berta Wernicke belonged. In relation to the above, we focus on her 1916 publication entitled Special Methodology of Primary Education as the author's search for renewed teacher training through the articulation of different scientific perspectives for the development of didactics based on ethnographic knowledge of children's learning.