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On 12 November 2025, a lecture was held at the Faculty of Education of the UNED, delivered by Péter Bagoly-Simó, Professor at the Institute of Geography at Humboldt University of Berlin. Professor Bagoly-Simó discussed the unique position of Geography between the Natural and Social Sciences and its role in shaping identities, representing territories, and managing our relationship with the environment. Using school textbooks as cultural artefacts, he analysed how the evolution of academic knowledge, pedagogical changes, and social demands have reshaped the discipline. The lecture also explored the typology of geographical knowledge through examples related to Environmental Education and Education for Sustainable Development.
Exhibition: “Useful Science. The Object Lessons Textbooks.” Venturada (Madrid), May 30 and 31, 2025
This exhibition offers a glimpse into the world of the “Object Lessons” textbooks, educational textbooks that circulated globally and were widely used in Spain from the late 19th century to the mid-20th century. These books featured rich illustrations designed to support Pestalozzi’s intuitive method, emphasizing learning through direct observation and sensory experience. By combining reading with the acquisition of practical and scientific knowledge, they aimed to make education both engaging and useful.
The exhibition is organized into three thematic sections: Science applied to progress: Inventions and technology; Science applied to nature: Industry, crafts, and labor; Science applied to human needs: Nature’s usefulness to humanity.
The curator of the exhibition was Professor Cecilia Valbuena Canet (UNED). This exhibit presents the results of the research on intuitive teaching and object lessons carried out within the “Global Textbook Resource Center” Project (GLOTREC), directed and funded by the Leibniz Institute for Educational Media / Georg Eckert Institute (Braunschweig, Germany).
Originally presented at VENTUCIENCIA, the 3rd Venturada Science Fair (Madrid), the exhibition took place on May 30 and 31, 2025.
Access to Exhibition Panels
VENTUCIENCIA Brochure
Ventuciencia 2025
Exhibition at the the Science and Innovation Week of the Region of Madrid 2025.
November 3 – 16, 2025
On the occasion of the 2025 Science and Innovation Week of the Region of Madrid, the exhibition “Useful Science: The Object Lessons Textbooks” was moved to the UNED Faculty of Education from November 3rd to 16th.
Science and Innovation Week 2025
The Archive of Doctoral Dissertations and Master’s Theses is a database that compiles research conducted by Doctoral and Master’s students under the supervision of professors belonging to the MANES Research Center, both at the National University of Distance Education (UNED) and at other universities associated with the project in Spain and Latin America. It also includes several Doctoral Dissertations whose examination committees have included members of MANES.
All the works collected in the database examine topics related to school textbooks. They are listed in alphabetical order by author, although searches can be carried out across various fields of the database, with particular interest in the fields corresponding to school subject, educational level, and the country where the analyzed textbooks were used.
This archive reflects the evolution of research in the field of school textbook studies since the early years of the MANES Research Center in the 1990s. Consultation of these materials – available at the MANES documentation center (Faculty of Education, UNED)- is possible with prior authorization from their authors.
The lecture addressed the Brazilian experience within the Free Textbook Distribution Program for public schools, contextualizing its relevance for basic education in the country. In addition, the speakers discussed how the issue of “fake news” is treated in the textbooks of Applied Human and Social Sciences, distributed by the Brazilian government in the years 2022, 2023 and 2024, with a focus on the most widely used collections: Multiversos and Moderna Plus. The lecture presented the results of an exploratory, descriptive and infometric research, analyzing the contents of these works, highlighting trends, pedagogical approaches and possible gaps in the treatment of the subject.
How school textbooks deal with fake news
The Digital Library of Cuban School Textbooks displays a sample of books published for teaching purposes in Cuba from 1899 onwards, coinciding with the end of the Spanish colonial period on the Island. The library includes books on Reading, History, Geography, Moral and Civic Education, Natural Sciences and Pedagogy from the José Martí National Library in Havana.
The digitisation of the collection was carried out by the Instituto de Historia de Cuba (Havana), with the support of the Leibniz Institute for Educational Media | Georg Eckert Institute (Braunschweig, Germany). This collaboration has been carried out in the framework of the international undertaking Global Textbook Resource Center (GLOTREC), in which the MANES Research Center participates. GLOTREC integrates bibliographic information on textbooks and educational media of collections worldwide into a multi-lingual catalogue with the aim of providing access to the data and existing digitised volumes (if licence-free) to researchers and the general public.
The creation of this Digital Library is the result of a collaboration agreement signed between the Instituto de Historia de Cuba and the MANES Research Centre. Its objective is to contribute to the preservation of an important part of the educational and cultural heritage of the Cuban nation and to make it accessible to researchers and scholars in the field of the History of Education.
Access to the Digital Library of Cuban School Textbooks