«Internationalization» has become the «watchword» also in education discussion over the past two or three years. It assumes political, cultural, and social units that are bundled in the term «nation» and the hope that such will be overcome. In this framework, «internationalization» has become, despite the obvious tendency of intellectuals to criticize «globalization», a term with positive connotations. This has led to international research concepts and projects and editorial boards or «research communities» that are international in make-up on the one hand, and empirical case studies on transnational exchange of scientists or on «traveling libraries» on the other. Study or research stays abroad have become the «conditio sine qua non» of academic careers at most universities. As compared to other disciplines, education science has acted much more hesitantly, which also brought it the reproach that it was still developing its arguments within the mental structures of the nineteenth century.

But the demand for trips abroad is not an invention of the late twentieth century. As Adam Nelson's contribution in this issue shows, journeys abroad were expected and also carried out already in the nineteenth century. Famous examples of traveling scholars in our own discipline are G. Stanley Hall or George Herbert Mead. Looking at the research trips of American scholars, however, Nelson also demonstrates that these trips abroad did not and do not necessarily cause an «internationalization» of the discussion and could and can result instead in «nationalization». While Nelson, of course, does not make a plea against stays abroad for students or researchers, he does point to the many layers of the problem. An innovative possibility of dealing with this problem is to put forward relevant theses, concepts, or thought patterns for international discussion, an endeavor that this journal has been pushing for some time. In the present issue education scientists from Spain, Italy, England, the United States, the Netherlands, Germany, and Switzerland were asked to comment on some theses on one of the most influential topoi of German education, namely, the idea of the «autonomy of education». Especially upon the background of «internationalization» of education science discourse, the questions arises as to the extent to which this concept is «specifically German», whether reference can be made to this in other languages and cultures, and if so, in what connection.

One result of the international research in history of education is certainly recognition of the difference between «citoyen» and «bourgeois», to use the French terms of the eighteenth century. Carsten Müller's article deals with the dimension of «citoyen» that is so little known in German education. Müller's approach is to see social work as a «human rights profession», with the demand that social work should be guided by the principles of human rights and thus to follow the goal of political participation. In Switzerland, in contrast, this approach is very old, as the article by Ralf Junghans in the «Document» section demonstrates. Junghanns, taking the small, Catholic city-state Solothurn as an example, shows that a public play (theater), as an expression of an early bourgeois culture, contains secular motives of citizen education. The fact that not only people and objects can travel, but also ideas, expectations, and programs, presents historical internationalization research with considerable methodological and conceptual problems. Whereas the routes taken by individual person or groups and the circulation of books can usually be traced in detail, following ideological or epistemic diffusion is a far more difficult task. In the following article, Marcelo Caruso, taking the example of the reception of Pestalozzi in Spain at the beginning of the nineteenth century, takes on that task, basing methodologically on the concept of performativity.