Pedagogia, Psicologia, Scienze dell’Educazione. Intrecci culturali, storici e scientifici.

The discovery of a number of documents - in the archives of the Faculty of Education and at the MIUR Library - has made it possible to reconstruct the various steps that led to the establishment of the first-degree course in Psychology in Italy, in 1971. This is an important event in the development of the human sciences, not only from a factual point of view, with the exact location of facts and personalities that contributed to It, but above all from the cultural point of view and of the scientific currents of reference, framing this event in a vein that was nourished by impulses from previous studies and directions of thought, and that gave impetus to subsequent movements. The progressive and strong affirmation of psychology in Italy, starting in 1971, was intertwined with the rapid decline of pedagogy which, after a quarter of a century, in 1996, saw the closure of its degree course, replaced by that of Educational Science. This last step calls into question the responsibilities of the pedagogues of the time and, in particular, of Aldo Visalberghi, the main architect of this upheaval with the publication of his Pedagogy and Educational Science. In 1996, a historical, cultural and scientific cycle that had lasted over seventy years was thus completed. These entanglements deeply affect the epistemological status of Pedagogy, challenging every researcher to make it the subject of new critical studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]