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The article offers information on the twentieth anniversary of the publication of the Swann Report in Great Britain in 2005. The issues investigated by Swann remains resonating both in Great Britain and beyond and the significance and the legacy of the report remain subjects of significant debate. There were 51 papers presented over the two days conference at the University of Birmingham. The subject of Gary McCulloch's article is about class and more particularly the education of the middle age class. Christine Mayer's article is providing details on the changing educational practices for girls and women between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries in Germany.

Shena Simon (1883–1972), a leading English socialist and educationist, actively called for the reform of secondary education in the 1930s and 1940s in order to bring the ideal of ‘equality of opportunity’ into the English educational system. This paper explores the continuity and changes in Simon’s proposed reforms in relation to her ideals of social democracy from the appearance of the Spens Report (1938) to the publication of her book,Three Schools or One?(1948). In addition, Simon’s transnational visits to the Soviet Union, the USA and Scotland, as well as the impact of her international and comparative perspectives on different educational systems on her policy agenda, are also examined. It concludes that as many policy issues shown in the current paper continue to be debated, Simon’s democratic ideals and discourses are still relevant in the present and suggest implications for the future of secondary education in England. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Current accounts of the British New Right in education during the 1980s generally begin with an observation of the tensions between its neoliberal and neoconservative wings. The subsequent task becomes to explain how they could be reconciled in bringing about the fiercest reform of education in history. This article reverses the interpretive strategy. It first notes that neoliberalism and neoconservatism had hardly been distinguishable in the Black Papers published a decade earlier. Focusing on the doctrines concerning the precondition of marketising education and the meaning of parental choice, it then shows their persistent compatibility to be more an intellectual legacy inherited from the late 1960s and 1970s than a product of practical compromise under Margaret Thatcher's premiership. Therefore, what needs further exploration is instead where, how and why neoliberalism and neoconservatism did eventually diverge. This is clarified by reference to the issue of educational authority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fred Clarke (1880–1952), an English educationist, emerged as a leading figure with his liberal approach alongside such key figures as R. H. Tawney and Cyril Norwood in the reform leading to the 1944 Education Act. Many of his reform proposals, which were provided by the new Act, reflected his ideals of liberal democracy. Nevertheless, his contribution to the process of the legislation has not been examined thoroughly. Therefore, this paper explores his positions on educational issues in various debates and his approaches towards the reform. It also evaluates the extent to which the 1944 Education Act was in line with Clarke’s ideals and proposals so that a comprehensive assessment of Clarke’s contribution to the legislation can be made. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper seeks to explore the development, impact and contribution made by the New Ideals in Education conferences, which were held between 1914 and 1937. In particular, it will examine how the group emerged from the English Montessori Society and forged an identity of its own based on the thoughts and ideas of its two major protagonists: Edmond Holmes and the Earl of Lytton. This was especially manifest in its commitment to a form of non-partisanship that sought to be inclusive as possible towards those agitating for liberty within the classroom. The paper will also examine the profound impact played by the First World War, whose events were a catalyst not merely for impelling the group to discuss and showcase practice but also how this could be applied in the reconstruction process. In so doing it will chart the evolution of the New Ideals movement, which fizzled out just prior to the Second World War. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the emotional experiences of elementary school inspections, from the appointment of the first State school inspectors in 1839 to 1911 when Edward Holmes, the retiring chief inspector, signposted the prospects of a new era in elementary education. The paper is arranged in two parts: the first provides an outline of the origins and development of elementary school inspection, while the second discusses the potential contribution of emotions scholarship to inform our understanding of elementary schooling seen through the lens of inspection. Whereas previous studies have concentrated on the inspectorate's administrative history in relation to school development, this paper's contribution is to highlight what inspection sources reveal about elementary schools as sites of emotional expression and experience. While acknowledging the challenges a history of emotions framework presents, the paper concludes that such an approach offers a fresh perspective on inspection and school regimes in the past. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article addresses the life and educational thinking of Victor Lytton, second Earl of Lytton, who not only involved himself in a wide number of social causes but was instrumental in contributing to the development of progressive education in the early decades of the twentieth century. This he did through his work with the New Ideals in Education conferences but also as he became embroiled with Homer Lane and the Little Commonwealth. Lytton also write a number of books that developed a new theory of education. Drawing upon the archives held at Knebworth House, the paper seeks to explore Lytton's life and thought both by exploring his involvement with various causes but also by a close textual reading of his unique educational philosophy, which appeared as a combination of Christ and Freud. By so doing it seeks to reintegrate Lytton as a significant figure in the progressive educational tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the cold war, the United Kingdom government devised a number of public education campaigns to inform citizens about the precautions that they should undertake in the event of a nuclear attack. One such campaign, Protect and Survive, was released to the general public and media in May 1980. The negative publicity this publication received is considered to be a reason why a successor publication was never released despite the increased risk of nuclear attack. Using recently released records from the UK National Archives the paper considers that, aside from this explanation, interlocking institutional objectives, rather than simply inertia, provide an explanation for this hiatus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the factors central to the practices and realities of historical educational support for destitute and neglected children in the Manchester Certified Industrial Schools (MCIS) to determine how the schools acted to support the lives of children who were removed from parental guardianship. In nineteenth-century England, the most vulnerable children, destitute and often neglected (specifically, those considered to have improper guardianship), posed a serious challenge to public order in urban society. This study employs primary records to trace the experiences of four children during and after MCIS enrolment. Prior to the current study, none of these records had been used in research. The analysis of records demonstrates that MCIS officers supported and followed up students even after they were discharged to help them survive without their parents and become conventional members of society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers gender and social class in relation to teacher education through an episodic study of the development of adult educational institutions in Huddersfield. It briefly discusses nineteenth-century mechanics' institutes in the town before moving to a consideration of school teacher training college students in the twentieth century, highlighting aspects of the gendered and cultural ethos of teacher training. Local efforts to establish teacher training, and the wartime presence in the town of an evacuated women's teacher training college, provide a prism for the examination of transitions in social attitudes towards teaching as a profession, as do the educational aspirations of local working-class grammar school girls and boys during the 1940s/1950s. The paper then focuses on the establishment in 1963 of a 'new kind' of non-residential teacher training college and, in particular, on its introduction in the late 1960s of part-time provision designed specifically for 'married women'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fifty years after the production of Circular 10/65, which confirmed comprehensive education as the national policy for secondary education in England and Wales, it is possible to trace the idea of comprehensive education from the 1940s to the 1960s, to understand the position of the Labour Party in its development, and to assess the nature of the contribution of Circular 10/65 itself to comprehensive education in Britain. There were strong connections between the 1944 Education Act and Circular 10/65. In particular, Michael Stewart, the Labour Party education policy review of 1957–1958, and the 1958 report Learning to Live that arose from this, played a key mediating role. Awareness of public opinion through the then novel device of market research and a determination to consolidate ambitious reforming ideals into a practical strategy for educational reform over the longer term formed part of the party’s revisionist approach under Hugh Gaitskell, and helped to provide the basis for Labour’s policy on comprehensive education when it returned to power in 1964. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the historical formation of the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) in the United States and argues that programme emergence depended on the ability of policy entrepreneurs to link the economic concerns of agricultural production with the ideational concern of national security. Using a historical institutionalist framework this paper stresses the critical juncture of the Second World War and the positive feedback loop created between agricultural industries and schools to understand the emergence of the NSLP. In addition, it stresses the role of frames in policy-making and focuses on the use by policy entrepreneurs of a security frame whereby child malnutrition was cast as a national security issue. The policy window of war gave policy entrepreneurs the chance to use the politically and culturally resonant frame of security, in the contexts of agricultural subsidies, to push for the creation of this programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article concerns the educational philosophy of S. Margery Fry (1874–1958) and its impact upon the design, organisation and functions of university residences for women in the twentieth century. According to Carol Dyhouse, Fry, the only woman on the University Grants Committee from 1919 to 1947, 'exerted considerable influence over the shape of provision for women across the country'. Taking a biographical approach based on Fry's personal papers and institutional archives, this article explores her ideas and locates the origins of them in her early experiences, both as a student and subsequently as the first warden of University House, Birmingham. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Issues associated with school absenteeism have attracted considerable attention and have long been one of the focal points of government strategies for school improvement. Pupil non-attendance is not a new phenomenon and featured prominently in Her Majesty’s Inspectors’ reports from 1839. This paper outlines the patterns of and influences on elementary education in early Victorian industrial Monmouthshire during the period 1839–1865. The twin problems of irregular attendance and early withdrawal of pupils are discussed together with the limitations and unreliability of contemporary statistics. An examination of the reasons for absence is then discussed together with the remedies proposed to alleviate the problem with particular reference to the contribution of the Prize Schemes. The paper illustrates the disadvantages of basing an educational system on voluntary endeavour and enlightened self-interest and highlights the paradox that, despite the introduction of mandatory attendance, the problem is still persistent and protracted and finding definitive solutions still remains elusive. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the emergence of schools ‘micro-computing’ in the UK between 1977 and 1984 – a period of significant educational, technological and political change. During this time, computing developed rapidly from a niche activity in a few select schools to the state subsidized purchasing of a ‘computer in every school’ and the nationwide promotion of computers as a feature of curriculum and pedagogy. Through a series of in-depth retrospective interviews with key policy actors (n=20) this paper develops a detailed ‘policy historiography’ of this period - shedding light on the complex power relations and interests that underpinned these developments. In particular, the paper highlights the origins of these policy interventions in earlier activities, and examines the negotiations and conflicts between and within the two government departments involved in the mass introduction of computing into the UK school system. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper offers an account of the historic and ongoing international interchange between Britain and Japan in the field of progressive education. Concentrating on the last half-century, it takes two reference points from Roy Lowe’s writings in 1977 and 2006. Eveline Lowe Primary was a newly built model progressive school when documented by him in a seminal work on school architecture, later becoming a key point of interest for Japanese educationists. The British educational policy context against which this exchange of ideas and practices occurred was later documented by Lowe in a major book. Contemporaneous debates and events within Japanese society and government meanwhile provided the impetus for networks of research and transmission of progressive practices. The most recent turn in the narrative presented here demonstrates Japanese support for independent progressive practice continuing in the UK. Responding to an extensive historical research literature on transnational migration of educational ideals and practices this paper constitutes a micro-study that draws on personal memory, oral testimony, records of classroom observation on site and by means of video-conferencing, in addition to more formal documentation of conference proceedings and policy-making. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article presents the scope and range of Christian involvement in establishing the field of education in England as a distinct area for scholarship between 1930 and 1960. It advocates greater study of the range of various denominational positions held in the period. This paper also illustrates the public debates of the time by focusing on the examples of a number of prominent educationists in leadership positions who were directly associated with the founding and running of major British education journals and societies. This article uses newly released personal archival records not previously available to accounts of the period. It begins by situating their perspectives in the wider historical context, particularly the intellectual background of ideas that influenced and set the tone for their work. It then introduces some of their beliefs and assumptions, as well as their achievements and failures, in the realm of religion and education. It reviews and critiques their different Christian conceptualisations of education, and offers reasons why they failed to make a lasting Christian impact on the subject under a newly emergent secular culture in the 1960s. This article argues that researchers have generally neglected the influence of Christianity in the early establishment of education as a discrete area of academic study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the connections between the school building programme in England and the raising of the school leaving age (ROSLA) from 14 to 15 in 1947 and then to 16 in 1972. These two major developments were intended to help to ensure the realisation of ‘secondary education for all’ in the postwar period. The combination led in practice to severe strains in the education system as a whole, with lasting consequences for educational planning and central control. ROSLA was a key issue for the school building programme in terms of both finance and design. School building was also a significant constraint for ROSLA, which was marred by temporary expedients in building accommodation both in the 1940s with ‘HORSA huts’ and in the 1970s with ‘ROSLA blocks’, as well as by the cheap construction of new schools that soon became unfit for purpose. Together, school building needs and ROSLA helped to stimulate pressures towards centralisation of planning that were ultimately to undermine postwar partnerships in education, from the establishment of the Ministry of Education’s Architects and Building (A&B) Branch in 1948, through the Crowther Report of 1959 and the Newsom Report of 1963, to the assertion of central state control by the 1970s. The pressures arising from such investment and growth in education again became a key issue in the early twenty-first century with the Labour Government’s support for raising the participation age to 18 combined with an ambitious ‘Building Schools for the Future’ programme. The historical and contemporary significance of these developments has tended to be neglected but is pivotal to an understanding of medium-term educational change in its broader policy and political contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper explores the contribution of James Bryce as an Assistant Commissioner to the Taunton Commission from 1965 to 1868. It highlights his criticisms of the English middle class and of middle-class education represented in the endowed grammar schools of Lancashire, England. These criticisms were based partly on finely detailed observation of the buildings of these schools in their local and geographical settings. They also drew on acutely developed responses of a sensory and emotive nature relating to a broad sensory register of sight, sound, taste, touch and smell. The paper therefore helps to develop the potential value of sensory history in the history of education well as to provide a detailed examination of middle-class education in England in the 1860s. It also suggests that the realism characteristic of mid-Victorian writing and art may help to shed further light on the nature and experience of schooling in this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper considers the voluntary work of girls in late Victorian and Edwardian Britain. Historians have so far neglected to study social work as an integral part of middle-class girls' formal and informal education. The paper uses records of several little-known girls' service leagues including Time and Talents, Girl's Realm Guild of Service, Girls' Diocesan Association and United Girls' School Mission. It argues that the priority accorded to training, social study and self-development made membership of a service league a valuable source of further education before 1914. The paper begins with an overview of such leagues and a discussion of the training, study and social work undertaken. It considers how the work of service leagues was framed by broader debates around active citizenship. Finally the paper looks at some of the impacts of service leagues both on members and on the working-class women and children they aimed to serve. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on life-history interview data collected as part of a research project funded by the Froebel Trust, this paper explores the family backgrounds and educational experiences reported by nine women who attended Froebel College located in London in the United Kingdom (UK), in the 1950s and 1960s. Informed by Bourdieu’s theories of habitus and field and theories of identity, this paper explores any shared habitus and dispositions within the early childhood and family milieu reported by the participants. The paper also considers the women’s educational experiences and their stories of getting into Froebel College, reflecting on the commonality of family values and the secondary education pathways they reported. The findings show some striking resonances between Froebel’s educational ideals, in particular his belief in the mystical and transformative power of learning through play and engaging with nature, and the participants’ stories of their early childhood experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The Popular Front line made the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) a more hospitable place for ‘brain workers’. The emphasis the line placed on mass ideological and cultural struggle against fascism meant that they became important allies to be won for the working class. As the principal transmitters of ideology and culture to the masses, schoolteachers could be perceived as being at the forefront of the anti-fascist effort, just as important as the academics, artists, writers and musicians more traditionally associated with the pull of British communism in this period. But communist schoolteachers on the whole avoided the exploration of socialist ideas in their professional practice. Rather, their primary focus was on achieving the greatest possible unity against fascism in their profession. This stance largely excluded critical discussion of the theory or practice of the education of children under capitalism, such as combating imperialist bias in textbooks; ending corporal punishment; advocating secular education; promoting workers’ control of schools and ameliorating the capitalistic nature of competitive examinations, all of which had been debated by communist teachers at various points during the 1920s. But as well as the tactical considerations of the Popular Front line, this avoidance of a qualitative critique of British schooling was encouraged by Soviet educational conservatism, and often overlooked continuities between the Popular Front line and its predecessor, ‘Class Against Class’. Drawing on the personal papers of British communist schoolteachers, contemporary newspapers and periodicals, and policy statements of the CPGB in the period, this article seeks to shed light upon the communist contribution to the teacher politics of the labour movement in England and Wales during the late 1930s, an input hitherto unexplored in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Focusing on the Working Men’s College (WMC), this study charts the chequered fortunes of a Victorian project: providing workers with a ‘liberal education’. The paper analyses the project’s aim (making ‘better citizens’), its disciplinary content (the humanities and/or the sciences) and its challenges (the increasing prestige of vocational studies). It argues that, in an increasingly professionalised society, a ‘liberal education’ for workers became contentious ground. As the role of the sciences within a ‘liberal education’ diminished, and the provision of practical skills took precedence in the local-authority-funded courses, Victorian workers’ opportunities for education became polarised between ‘useful’ sciences and ‘profitless’ humanities. With natural scientists losing the intellectual independence of their discipline to technicians, the WMC Edwardian educators chose to side unequivocally with the humanities. The paper contends that it was in the Edwardian context of the adult education movement that the ‘two cultures’ debate first emerged in Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper first situates King Alfred in Winchester, in Wessex, in Anglo-Saxon England, and in the Christendom of the ninth century. Attention is drawn to Alfred’s education, which included experience of court life in Wessex, Rome and Francia. The paper argues that Alfred prioritised vernacular literacy as a means of educating elites in a shared culture of service. This project required the attraction to his kingdom of scholars from abroad, the translating of foundational Christian texts into Old English, and the use of the court as a school. The king provided the context, and the resources, for supporting craftsmen engaged in the manufacture of, among other items, book-pointers, small high-value objects intimately associated with literacy and at the same time badges of service as well as of honour. The concluding section assesses Alfred’s sustained promotion of his educational project as connected to the rest of his political and ideological agenda. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In 2017 it was 20 years since the publication ofAssimilating Identities: Racism and Education in Post 1945 Britain. In this study a narrative was constructed which documents the experiences of Afro-Caribbean and Asian children and families within the English education system. It was a narrative that drew largely on the education archives of the local state. Some use was made of documentary evidence generated within the black community, including oral testimony. In the intervening years there has been a shift in history practice, including history of education, towards a broadening of the source material used in the construction of narratives, most notably the use of visual sources. These years have also seen a growing interest amongst historians of education in looking beyond schooling and investigating the educational experiences associated with other sites of learning: congresses, museums, heritage sites, libraries, community centres, etc. This paper aims to bring these two developments – research engagement with the visual and non-school sites of learning – into dialogue by revisiting the research agenda which shapedAssimilating Identitiesand addressing the question 20 years on: ‘What do they know of England who only England know?’ [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper examines the claim, put forward by Roy Lowe over three decades ago, that members of the twentieth-century eugenics movement exerted a major, perhaps even decisive, influence on the structure of secondary schooling in England and Wales – and particularly with regard to the intellectual justification for fairly rigid tracking systems, whereby children were to be directed through separate school routes towards differing career outcomes and contrasting adult lifestyles. Can it, in fact, be argued that Sir Francis Galton and his disciples, and notably Cyril Burt, were directly or indirectly responsible for the nature of the divided system of secondary education that developed in England and Wales in the years following the Second World War? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Each summer between 1922 and 1938, up to 500 elementary school teachers from across Britain, and some from overseas, joined together in London for a two-week residential vacation course. Organised by Evans’ Brothers Publishers and patronised by leading educationists, politicians and policy-makers, the City of London Vacation Course came to be regarded as an important annual educational institution and a cutting-edge exemplar of teacher professional development. In spite of this apparent fame, it appears to have been entirely overlooked in the history of teacher education. This paper seeks to recover the lost story of the City of London Vacation Course and documents its educational and professional focus and its social and cultural function. Locating it within a wider educational, economic and political climate, the paper also examines how the City of London Vacation Course somehow captured and embodied the promise of an emergent new professionalism for elementary teachers during that period. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Invoking a statement by the cultural geographer David Livingstone - that location is essential to knowing - this paper focuses on Danish school architecture during the 1950s and 1960s and the interplay between local geography and developments and discussions on the national and international scene. Through exhibitions and study tours and international encounters, certain school buildings became icons as places to visit and as spaces to cite and copy, and specific ways of thinking about the 'child-centred school' became institutionalised. In particular, British experiences and contacts with the couple Mary Crowley and David Medd became of importance to the Danes. This was no coincidence and the paper demonstrates that transnational architectural relations were closely linked to a cultural re-mapping in the aftermath of the Second World War. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influential policy work in education of the intellectual grouping formed by J.H. Oldham during the Second World War known as 'Oldham's Moot' (1938-1947) has been discussed in recent publications. These have noted its general educational and university policy, its intellectual strengths, and the role of Sir Walter Moberly in relation to his chairmanship of the UGC and his The Crisis in the University (1949). Others have placed its thinking in a tradition of Christian medievalism and British intellectual movements. This article focuses on the social theories debated in the group, especially their European roots, their contribution to their discussions on the university and especially the role of adult citizenship in the era of 'Planning of Freedom'. In particular the authors follow the arguments concerning the integration of adult education in the university reform they envisage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the educational philosophy and practices of Achimota School, which was established in the Gold Coast Colony (the southern part of today's Ghana) in 1927 as the governmental model school for leadership education. Achimota's education aimed to develop leaders who were 'Western in intellectual attitude', 'African in sympathy'. To fulfil this objective, Achimota attempted to develop a curriculum that took into account the sociocultural background of African students while trying to provide an education on a par with that available at English public schools. The paper first examines the discourse surrounding the establishment of a model secondary school for African leadership, which involved diverse groups of people - colonial officials, missionaries, European educationists, traditional chiefs and African nationalists - and then reviews the relevant educational philosophies of the twentieth century. Finally, the paper describes the Achimota education as experienced by students, a mixed product of English public school tradition and 'African tradition'. Regardless of the efforts to balance the two 'traditions', what was actually created was a new Achimota culture that selected essences from different 'traditions' and remoulded them for a novel purpose. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a critical reflection on the use of quantitative sources for the historian of education. It identifies and discusses key promises and challenges related to the construction and interpretation of historical statistics in education, drawing on a number of British and some French historiographical examples. Ultimately, the article encourages, where possible and appropriate, a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods in order to identify trends and patterns in education and facilitate their contextualisation in terms of processes and meanings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines controversy concerning the televising of the documentary This Is the BBC (1959) and situates the dispute in a wider cultural context of media criticism of Oxford University in particular, and academic educators more generally, in the period 1956–1960. Technological change, increased television ownership and a growing interest in the irreverent portrayal of educators in popular culture all need to be considered when examining what the philosopher and historian of ideas Isaiah Berlin and the filmmaker Richard Cawston considered to be at stake when they squabbled over the right to use a few seconds of film footage of Berlin. Berlin objected to his voice and moving image being edited to present him not as a don but as a clown. The article also addresses the ongoing silences that become apparent when the montage is broken down frame by frame and the visual rhetoric is translated into written argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The separation of examining from teaching, pushed furthest in the ‘examining university’ of which London University, founded in 1836, was the model, was a much-debated principle in nineteenth-century Britain. This separation was generally rejected in Scotland, but only after complex controversies that illustrate how Scots defined their university tradition in comparative terms, and how Scottish developments interacted with those in England and Ireland. Among the issues involved were proposals for a National University or central examining board, and claims that graduates should have a right to give ‘extramural’ teaching in competition with professors. The paper traces this aspect of university reform in Scotland from the 1820s to the 1890s, and argues that the professorial model and the integration of teaching and examining were successfully consolidated and defended. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Presents information on the binary system in relation to education in Great Britain. Background information on this system; Questions concerning the binary system; Reference to the Ministry of Education.

English painter Barbara Bodichon received a dynamic home education, consisting of engaging lessons, reading sessions, family discussions, sketching excursions, and trips at home and abroad. As an adult, Bodichon led a nomadic life, living between Algeria and England and travelling across Europe and America. Seeking to unpack travelling and travel letters as sources of learning, this paper studies Bodichon’s correspondence as epistolary articulations of herBildung(self-cultivation). It argues that, conforming toBildung’s idea of forging one’s individuality in interaction with the world, her travelling provided her with a variety of settings through which she extended towards the unknown and incorporated it into her sense of being. In turn, letters functioned as forums where she made sense of encountering the difference through which she individualised her subjectivity. Notwithstanding, a revised reading ofBildungpermits teasing out to what extent Bodichon’s self-cultivation was developed at the expense of certain social categories. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The History Workshop movement took its stance on the democratisation of history making, becoming notorious for its exuberant gatherings and impassioned ‘histories from below’. At the centre of the early Workshop was the British historian Raphael Samuel, who has been described as the personification of its intellectual and ethical politics. This paper examines Samuel’s role in the Workshop arguing that his distinctive intellectual personality was critical in shaping its early form and ethos. Drawing on a biographical approach, it explores the development of this persona over the course of his formative years. It argues that Samuel’s life history provides an insight into the renewed appeal of libertarian ideas in post-war British radical political and educational thought and that as an individual he illuminates the application of these ideas to the social role of the historian-educator. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article analyses early years education policy in England from 1918 to 1972, applying the theoretical ideas of John Kingdon. Throughout this period, the educational needs of young children were a low political priority, but they did occasionally rise on the agenda. When the issue gained prominence, politicians considered two key policy alternatives for potential investment: the expensive, self-governing nursery school, orientated towards promoting children’s physical health, and the cheaper nursery class, attached to an infant school, perhaps better at easing transition to formal education. After an initial period of damaging indecisiveness, the choice fell first on nursery schools and then on nursery classes. The reason that such fundamental changes in approach were possible was that an underlying lack of political commitment meant policies were only ever partially implemented. This chaotic pattern of development has had a damaging effect on the coherence of early years services offered today. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The focus of this paper is the history of how special needs technology in the UK was developed for people with special educational needs between 1970 and 1999. Despite the proclaimed potential of technology, this context and period has undergone very little historical examination. This paper will draw on interviews with 52 experienced professionals in order to illuminate this history. Analysis will attempt to extend our understanding of the perceived transformative potential of technologies and the factors that influenced the actual transformative potential of technologies. In particular the analysis will focus on three particular kinds of transformations: a transformation of the micro-technology industry; a transformation of teaching practice and a transformation of experience of special educational needs/disability. These three transformations and the potential tensions between them will be illuminated through two themes: 'Entrepreneurialism versus Creativity' and '"Miracle Cure" versus "Just a Tool"'.

Correspondence education, or learning by post, lasted over 100 years in the UK; it had its roots in the nineteenth century, peaking in the mid-1960s. It was also widespread, numbering hundreds of thousands of enrolments, significantly increasing access to higher education. Yet it has been marginalised in accounts of British higher education. This is partly because it was largely private and for-profit and so distinct from the public education system, while the state declined to play any significant role in its oversight. Consequently, little official data concerning correspondence education has ever been available. This paper constructs an account of the history of correspondence education in the UK in terms of its development as a form of academic and professional provision, and its regulatory framework. The paper also considers the reasons for the eventual demise of the correspondence education sector following changes in teaching methods, and the impact of digital technology.

Between 1972 and 1975 Eric Midwinter, Principal of the Liverpool Teachers’ Centre, established a unified organisational structure responsible for delivering continuing professional development (CPD) to Liverpool schools. His ambition was to embed community education practices across the city’s entire teaching force. However, during a seven-week period crossing Christmas and New Year 1976, the concept of a unified teachers’ centre was abandoned. Historical analysis of these events raises levels of historical awareness amongst educationists in order to open their eyes to ‘the real nature of their work’. Taking a long view of the relationship between serving teachers and the professionals who provide their CPD offers a new perspective on the potential of ‘in-service’ training to embed an educational philosophy, organisationally and ideologically, within the practice of teachers on a macro scale. Events in Liverpool suggest that the vested interests of professional groups outweigh the impetus for radical change. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper has as its focus the life and thinking of the educational theorist and schoolmaster J. H. Simpson (1883-1959), who was not only a reforming teacher at Rugby School but was also the first headmaster of the progressive Rendcomb College. His ideas around education were outlined in a number of books. At the heart of his thinking lay concerns around democracy and self-government and the article explores how these were enacted at various points of Simpson's life with a particular focus upon his work until 1932. Attention will be paid to how his thinking evolved, moving from simple democracy in the classroom to wider decision-making within an entire school. Linked to these concerns were a number of curricular initiatives that sought to offer a point of contrast to more traditional public schools. The article will conclude by attempting to offer consideration of the legacy of Simpson's ideas.

Examining the evolution of medical education for women in a major city, this paper details the combination of private and public initiative, and the role of nonconformist denominational networks in Birmingham, one of the largest industrial and commercial centres of the British Empire. From the 1880s women gradually gained access to both higher education and professional training in medicine. This was necessarily underpinned by the growth of school science for girls. In this, the role of the new endowed and proprietary schools for girls was very significant in Birmingham but that of the School Board and LEA was also important, not least in demonstrating class and gendered attitudes in education and medicine. In theory from the 1880s and 1890s it was possible even for girls from elementary schools to proceed by way of scholarship both to secondary school and to university. Such educational opportunities expanded in early twentieth-century Birmingham yet always remained slimmer for girls. From 1900 the new university ostensibly gave equal rights to women in medical education as in all other studies. The university itself had grown out of local interests and patronage and saw itself as serving the local community. Birmingham’s liberal leaders believed in scientific education and social reform, including greater equality between the sexes, although contemporary cultural and social currents could militate against such high aspirations. Nevertheless, the university did take a lead in opening up medicine to women, allowing participation in professional life, for some at the highest levels, and serving the local city and regional community. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper assesses the origins, conclusions and consequences of the Fleming Committee, which considered the relationship between Britain’s leading independent boarding schools and the state. In 1944, the committee recommended one-quarter of the places at these schools should be assigned to a national bursary scheme for children who might benefit from boarding. The author emphasises the role that Ellen Wilkinson played in implementing a Fleming-style scheme in the early years of the Attlee Government. Despite promises to the contrary, the Conservative Government that was elected in 1951 did not expand the scheme, which lingered on in a desultory form. Failure stemmed from a lack of political will, which was reinforced by a shortage of public finance, inconsistent support from independent boarding schools and local education authorities and problems over the selection of pupils. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

1This article employs a broad concept of memory in order to examine the reconstruction of the past in various migrant religious and educational settings in the period after 1970. In educational projects designed to promote good community relations, and in attempts to develop non-dogmatic forms of religious belief, British history became the subject of extensive discussion and debate. A small space opened up in which the legacies of British imperial history, so often a matter of visceral feeling, could be publicised, explored and taken seriously. Using case studies from London and Birmingham the article argues that religious groups played a small but important role in enabling new, more inclusive and more critical historical narratives to enter metropolitan British society. 1Part of the research for this paper was funded by a grant from the Nuffield Foundation whose support I gratefully acknowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the recent history of science curriculum reform in England, though it traces these developments back to the mid-nineteenth century. It first reviews approaches to science in the curriculum until the mid-1960s, identifying the curricular settlement of the postwar years and the beginning of the so-called 'swing from science'. It then examines structural shifts which undermined this settlement, including the introduction of comprehensive schooling, and the declining relative recruitment to physical science in post-compulsory education. It goes on to explore subsequent attempts at reform, setting them in the context of increasingly centralised control of the curriculum and changing patterns of professional representation. Three reform themes are identified: a reconstruction of the notion of discovery learning around student investigation; increasing attention to social and ethical issues; and a growing emphasis on vocationalism. It argues that these themes have been merged into a new flexible curricular settlement, which imitates important characteristics of the humanities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper data are used from the University of Winchester Alumni oral history project to suggest how the historic culture of the institution, as one of the original church training colleges, founded in the mid-nineteenth century, might have been transmitted to those who attended it as trainee teachers from the 1930s, the earliest data that are available, to the late 1970s when its courses diversified. Two questions will be posed. The first will ask what might have been distinctive about teacher training at a church college. The second will consider the possible effects of such training on the professional lives of the alumni as teachers, and beyond, in the community more generally. In their analysis of the data the authors utilise Pierre Bourdieu's key concepts of 'field', 'capital' and 'habitus'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the migration patterns of women who studied at Girton and Newnham prior to 1939 through whom dissemination of knowledge and values flowed from Cambridge overseas. It also considers organisations that fostered women's mobility in empire, particularly the Colonial Intelligence League for Educated Women and the International Federation of University Women. The former exemplified links with empire and Europe and dissemination of imperial values and practices, while the latter fostered women's international mobility around interwar notions of the 'international mind' and links with the League of Nations. It ends by looking at the work of Cambridge-educated women in League of Nations structures. The article addresses cultural transmission through a prosopographical approach to mobility to illustrate the larger patterns constituted by the myriad individual lives that formed themselves in networks, relationships, institutions and careers across a global canvas. For some Cambridge-educated women the notion of career included shifting combinations of paid employment, voluntary activity and domestic and familial responsibilities. While teaching formed their main occupation and the most direct medium for dissemination of knowledge and values, it must be seen alongside a more diverse range of occupations in which academic values might also be embedded. It is argued that values and practices of empire and commonwealth became inflected in internationalism in new ways, and the authors point to the need for further research into the role that Cambridge-educated women played in the tensions of empire, commonwealth and internationalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Anglican clergymen in England contributed significantly to the development of archaeology and local history as, first, subjects for polite study, but secondly as academic disciplines at the heart of the university extension and extra-mural movements. Initially working as lone antiquarian scholars, clergymen formed networks amongst themselves and the gentry, dominated the emerging national and county societies, and moved into university work in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries with the establishment of formal courses for adults. With their broad Oxbridge education and ready-made audiences, clergymen disseminated 'safe' secular knowledge via the tutorial class. But this contribution had diminished by the mid-twentieth century, by which time the education of the clergy had become more narrowly focused upon vocation, and as new academic posts facilitated the establishment of mainstream university Departments of Archaeology and Local History. This paper explores the contribution of the Anglican clergy to the education of adults in the period c.1750-1960 and suggests reasons for its initial strength and eventual decline. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given American higher education's origins in British practice, it is surprising that training in the traditional 'learned' professions follows such different patterns. Most strikingly, such training is post-graduate in the United States while it is often a first degree programme in Britain. Intriguingly, in the middle nineteenth century, the pattern was closer to the opposite. This paper examines why that reversal occurred and how the current American practice came into being. At the centre of the analysis is the revival and success of the fin de siecle America liberal arts college. Seemingly headed for oblivion in the face of the German model of specialized higher education and dissatisfaction with its Classical curriculum, the colleges re-invented themselves, becoming a rite of passage for the emerging upper middle class. Their desire to become gateways to the professions intersected symbiotically with those of the professional elites seeking to regain control of their professions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From its inception in 1922 the BBC pioneered a new medium in the education of children. This article traces the origins and development of a particular broadcast, Children's Hour Prayers, a short worship time for children (appended to Children's Hour) which began in wartime, and ended, along with the host programme itself, in the early 1960s. This article considers the ways in which adult-child relatedness is challenged and changed by the broadcasts, and how disputes over the best approach to teaching the young to pray affirmed the importance of treating children maturely, valuing their religious experience and communicating with them authentically. This paper concludes by arguing that the programme makers' straightforward approach in exploring religious ideas with children was a forerunner of pedagogical development in school RE, speculating whether the demise of Children's Hour Prayers is indicative of the incipient de-Christianisation of Britain from the 1960s onwards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]