From John Dewey’s Shadow to the Field: Beryl Parker’s Experience in Turkiye and Pedagogical Localisation

This article focuses on American educator Dr. Beryl Parker’s field studies in Turkiye (1932–1934) and her 1934 Report on Primary Education in Turkiye. While scholarship often traces Parker’s work to John Dewey’s 1924 report, this article reconstructs her work as a hybrid negotiation of American progressive vision and Turkish realities – rural poverty, centralised bureaucracy and ideological nation-building. The study examines Parker’s critique of extravagant school buildings, the essence of the teacher, and her National Education Laboratories spirit. Considering Parker’s work at Ankara College and her contemporaneous press, I assert that the educational transfer is more than theoretical. It is a field practice of localisation. This article aims to help reposition Parker in the Turkish educational historiography as a pragmatic pedagogical mediator.