School has historically been established as a privileged institution of education offered to a part of the population defined by their generational belonging, that is, childhood. This process meant the production and circulation of knowledges directed towards the understanding of the processes of individual development, which supported school learning. It was throughout the 19th century that such knowledges turned out to be a specific scientific field from the ontogenetic studies related to Biology to the late configuration of the so-called psychogeny. By means of a survey and analysis of works by major authors of that period, this study seeks to resume the path that led to the configuration of the field. The objective is to understand the permanence and shifts occurred within such a production by examining the configuration of a scientific identity. It is observed that during the period under study, embryology, the Darwinian and Lamarckian biology, statistics, and anthropometry were privileged references for the construction of a knowledge space about the individual development, understood as racially determined.
BIOLOGY; SCHOOL; HUMAN DEVELOPMENT; PSICOGENETICAL