The subject matter of the analysis is the state of Polish pedagogical thought during the period between socialist orthodoxy and the heterogeneity of pedagogy open to pluralism. The synthetic study commences with a criticism of orthodox socialist pedagogy in the years 1948–1989, indicating its leaders and the trend of  educational ideas and practices that were opposed to it. This last movement was evidence of the heterodoxic phase of development of Polish pedagogical thought, which preserved the achievements of outstanding humanists from the interwar period (1918–1939) while maintaining contacts with world science and supporting the independent underground education of Polish society. This allowed Polish pedagogy to regain its own scientific identity after 1989, i.e. in the heterogeneity phase that characterises the development of social and human sciences in democratic states. The author presents the scientific schools, theories and models of education that were absent (because of being censored) in times of orthodoxy and that – in spite of damages in the times of two totalitarianisms (fascism and Bolshevism) – have been developing in Poland for one hundred years, situating its pedagogy in the centre of intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary comparative research on modern pedagogical thought around the world.

The subject matter of the analysis is the state of Polish pedagogical thought during the period between socialist orthodoxy and the heterogeneity of pedagogy open to pluralism. The synthetic study commences with a criticism of orthodox socialist pedagogy in the years 1948–1989, indicating its leaders and the trend of  educational ideas and practices that were opposed to it. This last movement was evidence of the heterodoxic phase of development of Polish pedagogical thought, which preserved the achievements of outstanding humanists from the interwar period (1918–1939) while maintaining contacts with world science and supporting the independent underground education of Polish society. This allowed Polish pedagogy to regain its own scientific identity after 1989, i.e. in the heterogeneity phase that characterises the development of social and human sciences in democratic states. The author presents the scientific schools, theories and models of education that were absent (because of being censored) in times of orthodoxy and that – in spite of damages in the times of two totalitarianisms (fascism and Bolshevism) – have been developing in Poland for one hundred years, situating its pedagogy in the centre of intradisciplinary and interdisciplinary comparative research on modern pedagogical thought around the world.