Following the Second World War, a number of ideological constraints were imposed on Polish scholarship as a consequence of the policy adopted by the communist regime. These constraints took the form of censorship (introduced in the period 1945-1989) which affected all published texts, including scholarly works, and were visible in the persecution of researchers who did not draw on the communist ideology. The Polish humanistic studies – and in particular the pedagogical thought – were especially affected by this, as a result of which it was impossible to develop most of the research strands which had existed prior to the Second World War.

In light of the above, the mission of the yearbook “Polish Pedagogical Thought” is to compensate for the loss resulting from the difficult historical circumstances through the demonstration of the wealth of theoretical and practical pedagogical concepts together with the multitude of their philosophical, ideological and ideational sources.

Since 1989, scholarship in post-communist countries has been making efforts to compensate for the above-mentioned loss; however, the Polish pedagogical thought is still affected by the fact that:

- many valuable works remain undiscovered, have not been reprinted or are even still in the form of the original manuscripts;

- there are no studies into the essence, significance and relevance of the Polish pedagogical thought;

- there are no exhaustive studies into the history of the Polish pedagogical thought and the existing ones are limited in scope;

- the originality of many studies by Polish pedagogues is not sufficiently demonstrated or made use of in domestic and international academic discourse.

Given the above, the aim of the yearbook is to address these concerns through the publication of studies which:

- foreground and demonstrate the richness of the theoretical and practical pedagogical concepts and the multitude of their philosophical backgrounds, values systems and areas of social life to which they pertain;

- are based on analytical studies into the diversity of pedagogical thinking, making it part of open international discourse;

- offer in-depth analyses of the history of the Polish pedagogical thought, demonstrating its originality and confronting it with the international scholarly work;

- aim – through the use of the English language – to include Polish scholarship in global discourse.

The yearbook “Polish Pedagogical Thought” is a journal for researchers who are interested both in the history of the Polish pedagogical thought and its present condition.