An Ingenious System of Practical Contacts: Historical Origins and Development of the Institute of Child Welfare Research at Columbia University's Teachers College (1922-1936)

FIERRO, CATRIEL

History of the Human Sciences

Sage

Año: 2022 vol. 35 p. 56 - 86

During the first two decades of the twentieth century, the expansion of private foundations and philanthropic initiatives in the United States converged with a comprehensive, nationwide agenda on progressive education and post-war social reconstruction that situated childhood at its core. From 1924 to 1928, the Laura Spelman Rockefeller Memorial was the main foundation behind the aggressive, systematic funding of the child development movement in North America. A pioneering institution, the Institute of Child Welfare Research, established in 1924 at Columbia?s Teachers College, was the first Rockefeller-funded program of its kind at an American University. The Institute was influential in helping set up a nationwide network of child welfare institutes at other universities. Twelve years later, it would also be the first of those institutes to close. Nonetheless, the Institute?s context, emergence and developments have been overlooked or misrepresented by previous scholarship, which calls for a new, critical historical analysis. By drawing on several archival sources and unpublished materials, this paper offers a critical reconstruction of the Institute?s internal, often unstable history emphasizing its origins, members and administrative changes. I will argue that the demise of the Institute should be understood in the context of both the revision of philanthropic policies in the late 1920s and the Institute?s singular emphasis on teaching and training over research. The resulting narrative allows for a deeper, more informed understanding of both the Institute?s origins and its eventual folding.