Training teachers how to teach: transnational exchange and the introduction of social-scientific pedagogy in 1890s Egypt

The 1890s were crucial to the development of an explicitly Egyptian national education system. Despite the efforts of colonial officials such as Lord Cromer and Douglas Dunlop, British cultural and linguistic influence was incomplete in fin-de-siècle Egypt. Reforms to Egyptian teacher training in the 1890s highlight how Egyptian administrators, especially graduates of educational missions, actively engaged in cross-cultural borrowing from Europe. Non-British – especially French – pedagogies were especially important. Egyptian educationalists translated foreign knowledge into the Egyptian cultural context, creating European-Islamic hybrids which were then transmitted further via the Egyptian government school system. However, 1890s developments also laid the groundwork for increased British cultural and linguistic influence after the turn of the century. Egyptians began studying at England’s Borough Road teacher training school shortly after the 1889 opening of the English-language Khedivial Teachers’ School, which joined the Arabic-focused Dar al-‘Ulum School and the French-language Tawfiqiyya Teachers’ School.