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In this article, questions of public education in both environmental issues and science, more broadly, are examined in an effort to respond to Richard Aldrich's call for historians of education to use their skills and understanding both to inform the present and to shape a more enlightened future. In particular, the lives and work of three women in science--Marianne North, Rachel Carson and Alice Stewart--are investigated through their art, writings and actions and through autobiographical and biographical material. The focus is on issues of natural history, the environment and the use and misuse of technology arising from their scientific work. In each case, how far they challenged the scientific thinking of their day or extended public understanding is explored while consideration is also made of how they were educated for their scientific careers, what impediments they faced and how far and in what ways they overcame them.

Background: the belief that women and science, including mathematics and medicine, are incompatible has had a long and complex history and still often works to exclude women from and/or marginalise them in science. Purpose: this article will seek to explore gender and educational achievement through investigating how such gendered presumptions have persisted at various levels of science, despite perceptions of science itself changing over time and scientific studies expanding, differentiating and becoming professionalized. In particular, after a brief discussion of the historical debates on the provenance and lasting recurrence of gendered assumptions in science, it will try to discover how these prejudices affected the education of girls and women in England from c.1910 to c. 1939 and then, to widen the picture, make some comparison with the USA in the same period, although, necessarily in an article of this length, this analysis will be somewhat cursory. It will then bring the history up-to-date by examining the situation in England today. Sources of evidence: the article will proceed by using extensive local sources in case study research on Birmingham, by then the second largest English city. The comparisons with the situation in the USA in the same period and the examination of the present situation will be based largely on secondary sources. Main argument: factors of location, family background, supportive networks and greater educational, political and employment rights will be shown to have allowed some women to break through the barriers that hindered many from accessing or rising in science. Thus, it will be seen through the Birmingham example that there was a growing yet limited field of scientific practice for women, ordered by a gendered philosophy which routed them into specific areas. This picture was further permeated by class, wealth, identity, contacts, networks and location albeit this was modified by the scholarship system. Comparisons with the USA show that similar factors were present there, albeit in a different context. Twenty-first century sources indicate that on the one hand there is still gendered access and progress for females in science in England yet, on the other hand, there have been, and are at present, a number of initiatives seeking to overcome this. Conclusion: Even today, therefore, whatever sciences females do is affected by underlying gendered assumptions and structural power relationships which need to be understood.

An examination of recent gender scholarship demonstrates how a gendered lens has contributed to the debates on society, the state and education. Using local and international examples mostly from about 1880 to 1930, this paper will investigate how gendered perceptions coloured the provision of education, what we mean by "the state" and how much and what type of education it and other bodies have provided for females in different contexts. Following this, it will examine the growth of women in teaching, the challenges and limitations which beset them, the opportunities that were opened up to them and how far they and other women achieved authority and/or expertise in education in schools, colleges, educational administration and management, or as leaders and thinkers. This will illustrate the gendered thinking underlying much state education, but also show women as agents, building up networks and communities of women involved in education in multifarious ways, including transnational education. At the same time it can be seen that this has often belied imperialistic imperatives and ethnic condescension. Moving between local examples from Birmingham and Britain and international examples principally from English-speaking scholarship, the importance of gender history is argued because it reveals educational experiences and tiers of educational initiatives, practice and administration often neglected yet significant in education, while at the same time raising new questions. It does not just bring females into history, but understands history in a different and deeper way. (Contains 102 footnotes.)

This paper examines the role of Harriet Martineau as a public educator in the light of her Unitarian upbringing and heritage. First, it explores the Unitarian contribution to educational philosophy, psychology and practice at the end of the 18th century and then subsequent developments in the 19th, singling out the work of those people who particularly influenced Martineau. Secondly, the paper looks at selected works of Martineau which illustrate and take further the educational principles and interests in which she herself had been educated. It shows that, throughout Martineau's life, her prolific writings on and participation in a wide variety of political, economic, social and cultural issues were underpinned by a deep desire to educate the public, unfailingly optimistic that if everyone was correctly educated necessary social change would take place. She remained true to the Unitarian emphasis on rational morality, thinking for oneself and questioning cherished assumptions even when she eschewed actual Unitarianism. The final section briefly assesses Martineau's place as a public educator and what she owed to her Unitarian heritage. (Contains 9 notes.)

This article discusses the effects of imperialism on British (or chiefly English) social life and education in the nineteenth century rather than examining the effects on the colonised as is usually done. It is shown that the nineteenth century was infused with different visual and written images which helped develop attitudes and ideas which influenced social change in Britain. The "imperial gaze" demonstrated a fascination with the unknown and exotic; a scientific curiosity to discover, collect, classify and explain; an economic desire to find and exploit; and mixed motivations from religious, humanitarian and nationalistic impulses to convert, "civilise" and dominate. In different ways and at different levels this entailed a wish to "know" and an urge to pass on presumed "truths" that interlocked imperial influences into educational enterprise, although not necessarily within formal schooling. As the century progressed, events within the expanding empire, combining with scientific theories, helped to develop cultural arrogance, dominated by ideas of white, Western superiority. Yet there was no homogenous, uncontested discourse. As post-imperial debates suggest, chronological shifts, differing gender and class responses are significant. Effects could be paradoxical as those of imperial opportunities and rhetoric were on women's lives. Examples from other imperial nations, especially France and the Netherlands, indicate parallel imperial, sometimes imperialistic, concerns and interests and varying consequences, but in different contexts. The paper ends with some suggestions on how the difficulties of analysing the effects of empire on social change and education could be addressed within history of education. (Contains 1 figure and 79 footnotes.)

The educational impact of the dancing master is examined within social and cultural contexts including patronage and artistic style. The nature of the dancing master's peripatetic role and lesson content in domestic and private locations is analysed with reference to notational scores, dance treatises and archival sources. The impact on performance standards in ballrooms and assemblies is assessed and explanations are given as to how the value systems of the aristocracy and gentry were transferred into schools through the direct influence of Erasmus Darwin's "A Plan for the Conduct of Female Education" (1797) and Robert Owen (1741-1858), who employed professional dancing masters at his experimental school in New Lanark. (Contains 2 figures and 48 footnotes.)

The eighteenth century was characterised by a ferment of ideas and activities which have usually been portrayed as masculine. It is now increasingly perceived that such developments travelled further through society than hitherto generally recognised. Even women participated in "enlightened living", despite gendered limitations on education, travel and work. In various ways women took advantage of the emphasis on the social arts in which they could excel and the increasing number of ways of learning about arts, science and culture. Some even became leaders in "enlightened" ventures from which, ostensibly, women were mostly excluded. Drawing heavily on the letters and published works of a number of women, this article will explore how some women not only managed to participate in the travel of ideas in England from c.1750 to 1800, but also disseminated them or even contributed ideas of their own. (Contains 103 footnotes.)

What forms of knowledge are deemed worth possessing in any period and who is allowed access to them are crucial questions for the historian of education. Science, now a core subject of study, has long been seen as "masculine", especially at its highest levels, although the historical reasons for this have been somewhat neglected in education. This paper compares and analyses the interrelationships of education, gender and science at both the end of the long eighteenth century and in the early twentieth century in order to explore issues of knowledge and gender and demonstrate the use of a historical perspective. (Contains 1 figure and 88 footnotes.)

The recent focus on pupil involvement in all aspects of education, including the school improvement agenda, has led to an increasing number of pupils being consulted on various aspects of school life and involved in a range of peer support schemes. Accompanying the proliferation of pupil involvement has been the development of training initiatives to provide pupils with the necessary skills to carry out their new roles. In this article, we focus on how schools can further develop pupil involvement beyond the current level, which generally consists of school councils, peer mentoring projects and supporting student teachers. The article is based on the experience of one secondary school which embraced pupil voice initiatives and then recognized that there was a population of skilled and articulate "professional pupils" in the school. The potential benefits and challenges to the school in harnessing the skills of this group of pupils in future school development are discussed. (Contains 1 note and 1 table.)

The seventeenth century in England, bounded by the scientific stimulus of Francis Bacon at the beginning and Isaac Newton at the end, seemingly saw a huge leap from the Aristotelian dialectic of the past to a reconstruction of knowledge based on inductive methods, empirical investigation and cooperative research. In mid-century, Puritan reformers inspired both by the scientific thinking of Bacon and by the educational reforms of Comenius, hoped that educational reform at both school and university level would follow political and religious changes. In 1661, after the restoration of the monarchy, the founding of the Royal Society suggested that acceptance of experimental and practical science at the highest level had been achieved and that this would impinge on education. None of these assumptions can be accepted at face value. Indeed, the whole intellectual and educational history of the seventeenth century is far more complex than often portrayed. Various scientific and philosophical world-views and different methods of scientific investigation jostled for supremacy and major leaps forward in scientific knowledge were often a combination of some of these. The physical sciences still came under the umbrella of "natural philosophy." Nevertheless, this period is seen as the beginnings of a scientific revolution that has profoundly affected, even generated the modern world. Generally such developments have been both hailed and derided as masculinist. Earlier historians usually neither saw nor looked for women's place in scientific development: more recently, feminist historians have both tried to correct the picture and sought to explain the exclusion of women from most of it. Some have seen Western science itself in this period constructing notions of masculinity and femininity that would prevent women participating in the scientific ventures which represent modernity. This article will investigate the position of women within the scientific and educational developments of seventeenth-century England. The development of Baconian science and its effects on Puritan reformers, especially Samuel Hartlib, John Dury and other like-minded scholars, will be examined. It will be shown that their ideals, like those of Jan Comenius whom they admired and worked with, had positive implications for female education. Although, however, some females were affected by the educational reforming impulses of the Hartlib circle, in the changeable political and intellectual world of seventeenth-century England, very little lasting reform was achieved. Generally women were not well educated in this period. They were excluded from formal educational institutions such as the grammar school and the university although these were not necessarily where scientific and educational reform took place. The advent of printing in the sixteenth century and the growth of scientific lectures in the seventeenth enabled upper and some middle-ranking women to take part in some of the intellectual ferment of the day and women naturally had a place in science through their culinary and medical roles. Contemporary research has uncovered some of the scientific work done by women and stimulated significant discussion on what can be counted as "science." In England, female relatives of those who espoused scientific and educational reform were themselves involved in such initiatives. On the other hand, they were shut out from membership of the Royal Society for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, established in 1662, or any other formal institution. Some women were affected by Cartesianism and other scientific theories including those on both natural magic and more occult philosophies. This was a century, however, when unorthodox thinking could meet with frightful consequences and eminent thinkers across the continent fell foul of religious and political authorities. The period was shamed by the highest number of witchcraft trials ever in Central and Western Europe, including England, chiefly against women, albeit mainly the old and the poor. In the second half of the century, longings for stability and peace were more likely to consolidate patriarchical and conservative mores than give way to radical social ideas. Nevertheless, as this study will show, a number of women, chiefly of aristocratic lineage or at least educated above the norm, were able even to publish their scientific ideas. Two of the women mentioned here did so through translation: Lucy Hutchinson, translating Lucretius, and Aphra Benn, translating Bernard le Bouvier de Fontenelle. Hutchinson particularly revealed her own thinking through the notes she added to her edition. Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, chose to pour out the scientific and philosophical ideas she gathered through reading and conversation, in a torrent of unedited publications. Anne, Viscountess Conway, in more measured tones and timing, drew from her private form of higher education to publish The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy, which influenced leading philosophers of her day, including Liebniz. Both she and Margaret Cavendish were sufficiently confident to critique Descartes, although Anne Conway's thinking was based on a sounder education. Bathsua Makin was able from her own excellent education and her contacts with the Hartlib circle at home and Anna Maria van Schurmann and others abroad to promulgate an education for girls that would enable them to learn and use a range of sciences and mathematics in an extended female role. Even so, these women were a privileged few and promoted scientific and educational ideas from a vantage point of their own fortunate educational and/or social position. For none of them was this uncomplicated, while for other women, even ones within intellectual circles such as that of Mary Evelyn, their scientific impulses were restrained by gendered notions. Thus it is shown that in both the opportunities offered by new scientific and educational ideas and in their exclusion from the mainstream the position of women was in line with conflicting modern principles that underlay a contested terrain in science for the centuries to come. In addition, this brief exploration of these gendered contradictions of the scientific revolution in England shows the benefits of understanding the large areas of learning which are outside or juxtaposed to formal education, the networks that facilitate leaning and the contemporary context of gendered and scientific beliefs pervading different forms of knowledge.

Investigates the field of science to examine the neglect of its interrelationship with gender and how this weakness can be resolved. States it is vital to understand the methods and sources used in educational history when examining science and gender as an intellectual part of educational history. (KDR)

Discusses the premise of theory, methods, and social science in relation to the history of education. States the articles in this issue demonstrate there are still current active explorations of educational history being conducted. (KDR)

Discusses the debate on gender and imperialism in India by examining the case of Mary Carpenter, a nineteenth century English educationist and social reformer, in order to provide more information on the debate. Addresses where Carpenter stood in the discourse on imperialism. (CMK)

Investigates women headteachers' professional identity and leadership styles, returning readers to the late 19th century, when the first (British) secondary schools for girls were established. Explores various issues, such as sensible dress, girls' sports, health education, and extracurricular activities, employing case studies of three Birmingham secondary-school headmistresses' careers. (31 references) (MLH)

'A Victorian Class Conflict?' Schoolteaching and the Parson, Priest and Minister, 1837-1902, by John T. Smith; pp. viii + 233. Brighton and Portland: Sussex Academic Press, 2009, 49.50 [pounds sterling], [...]

Mary Hilton, Women and the Shaping of the Nation's Young: Education and Public Doctrine 1750-1850, Ashgate Studies in Childhood, 1700 to the Present, Ashgate Publishing, 2007, 286 pages, ISBN 0784687906, [...]