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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.

The New Education movement was a remarkable coalition of national reform movements that emerged at the turn of the twentieth century. As a heterogeneous movement that was united only in its opposition to the schooling system at the time, its structure and boundaries in the UK have remained a matter of academic debate. This article implements the previously proposed idea of treating New Education as a social movement and analysing the networks between reformers. A social network analysis of the central 58 reformers suggests that the movement was initially divided into two ideologically separate subgroups, but that from ca. 1905 onwards the reformers were strongly interconnected despite their different interests. Thus, by focusing on the social structure of the movement's core rather than its educational thought, the article challenges the assumption that the New Education movement was fragmented and characterised by tensions. It also furthers the discussion on the feasibility of social network analysis for studying educational reforms.

This article reviews the adult literacy campaign in the 1970s in the United Kingdom (UK) and the influence of Paulo Freire's thinking on how we worked. We argue that much adult literacy provision had been designed to 'domesticate' rather than 'liberate'. The mid-1970s 'Right to Read' campaign in the UK rejected this approach (BAS, 1974). The use by tutors of the language and the experience of learners led in part to the publication of student writing, creating reading materials and approaches that were different, and challenging to existing power structures. Emancipatory adult literacy work could not withstand the arrival of substantial government funding in 2001, which brought a new Skills for Life government strategy, together with new teacher-training, new standards and literacy qualifications. Also, in the 1970s and 1980s progressive educators and the institutions for whom they worked developed initiatives which focused on underrepresented and marginalised groups, asking 'who isn't there, and what can be done about it?' The result was a renewed development of outreach work, better understanding of what helps and hinders participation, and improved progression routes for individuals. One aspect of this development flowed directly from the literacy work in the 1970s--the participation of volunteers as 'fellow learners'. Looking at educational work with older people in care homes, volunteers from among local university students acted as co-learners in a charity which illustrates Putnam's (2000, p.134) 'generalised reciprocity'. We consider how Freire's legacy emerges among voluntary action as much as it does in literacy programmes

The narrowing of the school curriculum in the USA, the UK and Australia to support subjects of perceived economic importance has seen a renewed interest in the educational philosophy of John Dewey (1859-1952), (Elliott, 2012; Englund; 2016, Woodford, 2012). An ever-increasing number of secondary school students, especially in the USA, are now unable to pursue their aspirations in disciplines that are not considered essential learning, for example music and art education (Burke, 2015; Hansen & James, 2016). Progressive educators contend that if a more civilized and democratic society is to develop, the principles of democratic education delineated by Dewey in the first half of the twentieth century need to be reestablished in schools (Hansen & James, 2016). Current educational rationales give students very little opportunity to contribute to civic and community activities (Englund, Queennerstedt & Wahlström, 2009). Dissatisfaction with school music education in the USA, the UK and Australia to develop inclusive music policies in the recent past has seen a renewed interest by music educators and teachers in the work of Dewey (Elliott 2012; Dillon, 2005; Green, 2002; Woodford, 2014).

Using data from a case-study school as a springboard, this article explores how enactments of democratic education might both problematise and illuminate new possibilities for the way we conceptualise social justice in education. Nancy Fraser's tripartite framework of social justice is used to analyse in-depth interviews with students aged 14-16 from a democratic school in the United Kingdom. The article makes two key arguments: first, it highlights the interdependence of 'recognition' and 'representation' and, consequently, calls on mainstream policy and practice to make a substantive commitment to participatory democracy as part of the 'inclusive education' agenda. Second, it points to the tensions between 'redistributive' justice and other social justice aims which may be particularly stark in democratic education (and other progressive education) spaces. The article suggests that a strengthened relationship between democratic schools and research communities would offer a crucial contribution to collective critical reflection on social justice in education.

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.

One strand of historical research in education that sails on the waves of the visual turn in history concerns the progressive image of education. A major reference point is an article written in 2007 by Burke and Grosvenor, who, on the basis of the photographic archives of two progressive schools in England, constructed a visual typology of progressive education. After a content analysis of 944 images published in the educational journal "The New Era" and 1827 images in "Progressive Education" in the period 1920-1939, it is concluded that this typology is partly adequate for describing a common image of new education in the UK and progressive education in the USA. But it should be extended with two more elements: (a) urban discovery and nature exploration, and (b) cultural-historical representations and recapitulation. In the latter children are first portrayed as 'primitive savages' who later become little bankers and shopkeepers in a capitalist economy.

Enhancing learner agency in urban schools is seen as increasingly important in educational policy for narrowing existing attainment gaps. However, notions of learner agency are contested and require conceptual clarity. To help generate such clarity a conceptual synthesis of the field was undertaken that resulted in a mapping framework around three distinct and yet interrelated perspectives: (a) micro-individualistic self-authoring, (b) macro- and meso-level structural and cultural determination, and (c) macro-meso and micro level conflation and interconnection. Based on conceptual shortcomings in the field, we develop our own fourth approach that focuses on a relational, pragmatic transactional perspective. This suggests the young person as a separated learning agent is an incorrect unit of analysis to explain intent behind action. Instead we are argue for the holistic and integrated (Deweyan) notion of "transaction" that focuses on young people being subject and subjected to conditions as much as being subjects of their conditions.

As neo-Aristotelian character education approaches have become more popular, the list of objections has increased too. This paper focuses on the objection that while character education proponents claim to be 'progressive' and 'reformative' they seem to maintain the educational status quo. This paper examines what happens to neo-Aristotelian character education approaches when they are implemented in schools. First, a range of authors is consulted that has critically followed character education approaches, in particular the one advocated by the Jubilee Centre for Character and Virtues. Second, the "Bildung" tradition is discussed, which was also intended as a progressive and cosmopolitan project, but was used by German governments in the 19th century to fashion the nation state. Finally, a comparison between the two approaches is made, raising the question whether it is possible for states to run an education system that does not distort ideals of what it means to be human.

This article explores the wider critical and creative powers of education to bring about a society where no one person is valued more than another and where each person is celebrated for their differences -- this the author calls the 'society of equals'. It is argued that discourses of equality are not only co-extensive with democracy; they are co-extensive with co-operation and education. The extent to which equalities between people are limited to certain spheres of activity is also the limit to which democracy and co-operation are exercised in the affairs of everyday life. To what extent are democracy and co-operation evidenced in schools, colleges and universities -- the supposedly privileged places for the development of people's powers? In whose interests and for what purposes are those powers to be developed? And how may socially just democratic futures be realised through co-operative forms of education? The critical points at issue in answering these questions will be approached by exploring Dewey's discussions of education and the democratic public in comparison to Lippmann's views of the public and the role of elites, alongside the values and practices of the co-operative movement and the idea of the society of equals capable of undermining and replacing neo-liberal forms of schooling.

The global rise of 'neo-populism', culminating in the election of the populist Republican candidate Donald Trump to the US presidency, has been accompanied by a notable backlash and resistance to what has been categorised as governing/dominating 'elites', including HE academic institutions. Populist critiques centre on a perceived climate of censorship on campus in the name of 'political correctness'. In this paper I examine some of the arguments put forward by proponents and detractors in these debates, utlising some examples from empirical data from a study of online student newspaper posts in 2016 and 2017 from campuses in the US and the UK. In doing so I will be exploring the ways in which the debates are underpinned by distinct gendered, classed and 'raced' discourses that are linked not only to differing conceptions of 'truth' but also the nature and purpose of learning in the university itself.

Focusing on British graduates from Gipsy Hill Training College (GHTC) in London, this article illustrates transnational history's concerns with the reciprocal flows of people and ideas within and beyond the British Empire. GHTC's progressive curriculum and culture positioned women teachers as agents of change, and the article highlights the lives and work of married and single graduates overseas after the Second World War. Some migrated to the dominions of Australia, Canada and New Zealand, while South Africa and Southern Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) were popular destinations for short-term teaching contracts. A few graduates went to the colonies as missionaries and colonial servants, and a handful taught in extra-imperial sites. Wherever they were located, these British women promulgated the college's progressive ideals and shared their experiences with people at home in Britain, thereby shaping understandings of the Empire and constructing a world that was differentiated by class, gender, race and nation.

This paper examines the positioning of the Welsh education system within contemporary policy debate and analysis. It begins by outlining some of the ways in which education policy and provision in Wales differs from that of its neighbour, England, and then goes on to critique how these differences have been represented in both the media and by members of the educational research community. Indeed, the paper argues that these representations constitute a form of misrecognition. It is tempting to counter this misrecognition with assertions of the superiority of the "Welsh way"--and certainly pronouncements of a "crisis" in Welsh education appear to be as much politically-driven as evidence-based. However, such an approach would underplay the very real challenges that face Wales--challenges which are both like and unlike those facing England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. The paper concludes that we need a serious engagement with national divergences across the four nations of the UK--as well as elsewhere. The case of Wales highlights the need to undertake not only comparative analysis but also "relational" analysis if we are to enhance our understanding of the changing politics of education.

Whereas the previous government, regarding education primarily as a means to an end, showed little interest in questions of curriculum content, Gove's counter-revolution involves the enforcement of a deeply authoritarian politics of knowledge. An adequate response to such cultural and curricular conservatism needs to expose the falsity of Gove's claims to rigour, but also to promote an alternative model of curriculum and pedagogy. The salient features of such an alternative are to be found both in the history of progressive education and also in aspects of current practice--aspects that are ignored or marginalised in the dominant discourses of education.

"Structures of Participation" concerns a recent media arts project, the University of Local Knowledge (ULK). ULK is simultaneously a critique of established academic institutions and disciplines and a system for self-organized learning among the residents of Knowle West, an area of south Bristol (UK). Beginning in 2009, the Knowle West Media Centre (KWMC) in Bristol facilitated this digital and face-to-face collaboration, aiming to uncover and celebrate local skills, talents and wisdom. While phase one of ULK focuses on making tacit knowledge explicit in videos, phase two is particularly concerned with how the content areas of the videos are organized or restructured by those who shared their experiences and ideas. This article examines ways in which ULK creates structures to invite Knowle West residents to participate in knowledge-sharing and self-organized learning.

I argue that 2011 witnessed a series of challenges to neoliberalism on a global scale perhaps not seen since the political upheavals of 1968, and that media spectacle provided the form of a series of global insurgences from the North African Arab Uprisings to the Occupy movements. Crises of neoliberalism also generated movements in Italy, Spain, Greece and other European movements that utilised strategies of the Arab Uprisings and provided global media spectacles of popular struggle and insurrection. In fall 2011, Occupy Wall Street adapted these tactics to symbolically attack the citadel of neoliberalism and the Occupy movement provided a democratic response to crises of capitalism and neoliberalism that have resulted in global economic crisis since 2008. The Occupy Wall Street movement in turn generated Occupy movements throughout the world under the slogan of Occupy Everywhere!

This article explores contemporary forms of creative practices and their survival under siege from what Stuart Hall (2011) describes as the neoliberal revolution, in the context of the tightly policed education system in the United Kingdom. The fragility and importance of the democratic struggle is discussed with reference to Chantal Mouffe's work on democracy (2005), and Carr and Harnett's (2010) on similar lines but with specific reference to education. Using twentieth-century theorists John Dewey (1916/1966) and Herbert Read's (1948) ideas of progressive education, in which democracy and education should be seen as mutually reinforcing, I argue that the continuing presence and viability of these critical and idiosyncratic creative practices may be an indicator of the health of an equitable education system, and perhaps of the democratic polity as a whole. To explain the kind of creativity that I think is relevant and applicable, here I focus on the theoretical work of Nicholas Bourriaud (2002) on relational aesthetics and apply his relational concepts through examples drawn from the contemporary art events of the Liverpool Biennials, and from the primary school children's contemporary artworks of the Room 13 group. In all these cases the site of the work/event is significant for an understanding of their relational and critical features, as well as their collaborative and transient characteristics, which are antithetical to cultures and systems of neoliberalism, and are instead more commensurate with democratic resistance. event is significant for an understanding of their relational and critical features, as well as their collaborative and transient characteristics, which are antithetical to cultures and systems of neoliberalism, and are instead more commensurate with democratic resistance.

Using a transnational framework, this paper focuses on four graduates of Gipsy Hill Training College (GHTC) for nursery school teachers in London, United Kingdom, in the early to mid-twentieth century. Firstly, I explore GHTC's progressive ideals and highlight ways in which its principal, Lillian de Lissa, encouraged students to "think internationally". She was especially proud that a handful of students from countries such as China, Turkey and Canada studied at Gipsy Hill. These included Nevin Nouri and Bek Keng Chui, whose experiences are explored in the second section of the paper. Likewise, British graduates "who carried Gipsy Hill to the ends of the earth" featured prominently in the college magazine, the "Gipsy Trail". Finally, I examine reports from Marjorie Sanders and Barbara Boal for the ways in which they represented their lives and work overseas to readers of the "Gipsy Trail". Together, de Lissa and GHTC graduates constructed the college as a progressive educational institution whose influence transcended national boundaries. However, they exposed a range of social divisions in their portrayals of people and places "in the uttermost parts of the earth" in the process of articulating their ideals. (Contains 63 footnotes.)

In this essay, Robert Davis argues that much of the moral anxiety currently surrounding children in Europe and North America emerges at ages and stages curiously familiar from traditional Western constructions of childhood. The symbolism of infancy has proven enduringly effective over the last two centuries in associating the earliest years of children's lives with a peculiar prestige and aura. Infancy is then vouchsafed within this symbolism as a state in which all of society's hopes and ideals for the young might somehow be enthusiastically invested, regardless of the complications that can be anticipated in the later, more ambivalent years of childhood and adolescence. According to Davis, the understanding of the concept of infancy associated with the rise of popular education can trace its pedigree to a genuine shift in sensibility that occurred in the middle of the eighteenth century. After exploring the essentially Romantic positions of Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and Friedrich Frobel and their relevance to the pattern of reform of early childhood education in the United Kingdom and the United States, Davis also assesses the influence of figures such as Stanley Hall and John Dewey in determining the rationale for modern early childhood education. A central contention of Davis's essay is that the assumptions evident in the theory and practice of Pestalozzi and his followers crystallize a series of tensions in the understanding of infancy and infant education that have haunted early childhood education from the origins of popular schooling in the late eighteenth century down to the policy dilemmas of the present day.

Prestolee School, at Kearsley, near Bolton in Lancashire, UK, was the site of an experiment in education between 1919 and 1952 under the leadership of head teacher, Edward Francis O'Neill (1890-1975). The school attracted much national and international attention over three decades owing to the unorthodox methods practised by O'Neill and the extraordinarily rich learning environment set amidst the industrial poverty of this small mill town. However, we know very little about the experience of learning within such a radical experiment in education. This article examines the experiences of the pupils through two main sources: archive documents produced between 1925 and 1945 and oral testimony recorded in 2008. Consideration is given to the methodological challenges and opportunities of mixed method research--in this case, combining cross-disciplinary enquiry with oral testimony and documentary analysis. Reading the school building as a text, the changes in the design of learning spaces over time are foregrounded. Neither a history of school architecture and design nor a social history rooted in memory and the documentary record, the article represents a methodological departure from architectural history and the social history of schooling.

"Forest schools" are an increasingly well-known feature of the educational landscape, having been adopted by many local authorities across the United Kingdom in an effort to build children's confidence and self-esteem through learning outdoors in a woodland setting. Their origins are usually described as deriving from a Scandinavian (particularly Danish) tradition which was introduced to the UK in the early 1990s. This article explores, and suggests links with, the history of a similar movement called "woodcraft" which flourished almost a century ago, and which informed the pedagogy of a small progressive school (itself called Forest School) which existed in Hampshire in the 1930s. (Contains 17 notes.)

Mission schools in Africa in the first half of the twentieth century were in many ways microcosms of the great educational debates of the times. The objectives of policies regarding access, governance and curriculum were part of a historical evolution of mission education but they were also increasingly a reflection of significant new trends that were to reshape the theory and practice of colonial education. New forms of educational research and professional expertise were to play an ever-increasing role in shaping the forms and content of the education provided. The brief of the mission churches was to meet with the increasing demand for schooling. Church and state gradually expanded their cooperation in the field as the costs of education outstripped the resources of the missions and the demand for mass education came to be linked to nationalist demands for political and economic rights. This paper is concerned to map the background to those international influences that shaped the policy and practices of mission education and the increasing engagement of colonial governments with the field of education. It addresses the question of the worldwide Protestant mission church's response to the changing political, social and economic environment of the first half of the twentieth century. In particular it seeks to explore how mission initiatives shaped thinking about education in Asia, Africa, Oceania and Latin America by the 1930s. It also attempts to situate those issues within a wider educational framework by linking them to the emergent debate concerning pragmatism and utilitarianism in regard to progressive education in the USA and the quest for social democratic education in the United Kingdom and Europe as part of a response to socialism, nationalism and totalitarianism. In short, the paper explores the influence of the Christian mission churches with regard to social policy, in general, and the provision of education, in particular, during the interwar years, with special reference to areas influenced by the work of the International Missionary Council. At a time when there was a crisis of support for "foreign missions" how did the debates between fundamentalist-evangelicals and supporters of a "social gospel" transform themselves into debates regarding the role of missions in non-Western societies? And how did these essentially ecclesiastical/theological issues come to influence public policy, specifically educational policy, in the long term? The conclusions are that mission churches had a very significant influence on the shaping of educational thinking in the colonial and imperial context at a time when state influence in the sector was still often quite weak. The origins of the conference and research culture that has informed educational policy since the establishment of the United Nations Organization had its roots in the broad context of the Charter of the League of Nations, with a meeting of religious and secular goals, prior to the outbreak of the Second World War. Between 1910 and 1939 there was a significant history of educational reform and community development that has only been partially documented in relation to its global significance. This is an attempt to build a framework for understanding the nature of those changes and what was achieved. The investigation is conducted through an exploration of the three great World Mission Conferences of the International Missionary Council (IMC) held at Edinburgh (1910), Jerusalem (1928) and Tambaram, India (1938). The attempts of Christian churches to engage with dramatic social changes associated with industrialisation, urbanisation, poverty, cultural change and the rise of anti-colonialism, with specific regard to the field of educational policy, are documented and analysed. (Contains 5 boxes and 114 footnotes.)

It is well known that psychoanalysis has over the years had a significant impact on the education of children with mental health problems. Its contribution to the theory and practice of mainstream education is less well documented. This paper gives an account of the five-year (1924-1929) history of the Malting House School in Cambridge. The school was financed by Geoffrey Pyke and headed by Susan Isaacs, a teacher, psychologist and early member of the British Psychoanalytic Society, who became a leading protagonist of the ideas of Melanie Klein. The physical structure, organisation, philosophy and curriculum of the school are described. Although the school was only in existence for five years, through the writings and teaching of Susan Isaacs it had a lasting impact on early years education.

This article examines the notion of spiritual development as it was conceptualised for state schools in Britain through the Conservative Government's education reforms of the 1980s and 1990s, reforms which also introduced the National Curriculum. The article puts forward the argument that spiritual development was conceptualised in such a way as to attempt to reinstate progressive pedagogical values rejected by the National Curriculum reforms, but that the conceptualisation led to two conservative outcomes. First, spiritual development was not sufficiently robust to counteract the reforms and may have helped ease their passage. Second, education for the development of spiritual beliefs and values continued to be primarily located in Religious Education, even though a first principle of spiritual development was that spirituality should not be synonymous with religion in order that spiritual development should be inclusive. The article recommends that changes to Religious Education should be encouraged to ensure schools can provide opportunities for an inclusive and progressive education for spiritual development. (Contains 1 table and 1 note.)

This paper considers the experiences of teachers in a "progressive" English independent school, in particular with respect to what might loosely be termed job satisfaction. The paper suggests that these teachers have ideals and aspirations in common with many of their colleagues who teach in the state sector. The writers suggest that teachers in this sector enjoy their roles but express concerns about notions of accountability, autonomy and the significance of the school community that have resonance for many in the teaching profession at large as education enters another period of change.

In New South Wales as for other Australian colonies, the achievement of mainly free, compulsory and secular public education systems in the 1870s was a cause of self- satisfaction and a belief that late nineteenth-century Australian public schools were among the best in the world. In this paper, the process by which this self-satisfaction was contested, and eventually turned to the reform of public education, is traced. The tendencies that led to the adoption of the comprehensive secondary school in New South Wales in the mid-twentieth century form the focus of the paper. Issues and events of importance include the critique of public education in New South Wales in 1901 by a professor at the University of Sydney followed by a Royal Commission (Knibbs and Turner) and the progressivism of Peter Board, the Director of Public Education in early twentieth-century New South Wales. His responsiveness to the New Education and the experience of his travels in Europe and North America combined in his efforts to open new free public high schools. The second part of the paper examines the proposals for the reform of secondary education in the context of the New Education Fellowship Conference of 1937. Proposals for progressive pedagogy and new and inclusive visions of secondary education were mainly ineffective as a result of the after-effects of the Great Depression, and the declaration of war in 1939. The frustratingly slow production of ideas and plans for progressive reform in secondary education that characterized the 1920s-1940s was overtaken by the social democratic and postwar reconstruction movements of the 1950s. In New South Wales, as for the United Kingdom, the main difficulty standing in the way of reform was the apparent incompatibility of two versions of progressive reform. One insisted that youth with different abilities and intelligences required different schools for the fulfilling of their potentials. The other argued that a common school was the way forward. This paper shows that the eventual decision to establish comprehensive high schools was very dependent on the debates of the previous half-century. The paper also discusses the character of the dominant form of progressivism as it was experienced in New South Wales. In the secondary area, "administrative" progressivism was far more influential than pedagogic reform. The paper concludes with an assessment of the importance of local and international influences on secondary school reform.

This piece considers a pivotal period in British social, political, cultural and educational history, the decades from 1945 to 1965. It reviews key policy documents (issued by the Board of Education in 1943 and 1944 and the Department of Education and Science in 1968) which can be said to "frame" the period and proceeds to examine the practices advocated and employed by two progressive teachers, Michael Duane and Kenneth Barnes. It implicates both Duane and Barnes in the development of sex(uality) education in the period but locates their motives in modernist and conformist, not radical, psychological and political/moral discourses.

Challenges progressive educators' view that skills, education, and learning are a universal solution to array of economic and social problems in the UK. Argues that those calling for progressive educational reform must acknowledge the reality of the contemporary class-divided workplace and the institutional context of UK capitalism. (Contains 134 references.) (Authors/PKP)

Focuses on the history, attributes of, and contributions to education of the former Risinghill (London, England) school in the 1950s and 1960s, and its former headmaster, Michael Duane. Discusses the school's innovative and controversial educational practices of that time period. (KDR)

Traces the rise of creative music making in schools in the United Kingdom through the history of a subject association, Musical Education of the Under-Twelves. Focuses on the progressive ideas voiced at conferences that linked child-centered notions to musical creativity and provides an account of the practical models presented. (CMK)

Surveys the relationship between the further and higher education sectors in the UK context of mass higher education, highlighting consequences of governmental efforts to increase participation and intersector progression. Policy objectives based on mass participation in higher education increasingly challenge separate structural arrangements and demand new management approaches. Contains 35 references. (MLH)

Evaluates how the change in educational philosophy from progressive education to traditional methods in the United Kingdom influenced teachers' attitudes toward classroom practice by replicating a study undertaken in 1982. Reports that the findings demonstrate a significant shift towards traditional teaching styles between 1982 and 1996. (Contains references.) (CMK)

This article examines the career of the educationalist, Conservative politician and published writer on education and politics, Rhodes Boyson (1925–2012). As an educationalist, Boyson established Highbury Grove Boys' Comprehensive School in Islington, North London: an inner-city school which was antithetical to the wave of progressivism in the 1960s and early 1970s. The article explores Boyson's educational approach and vision in greater depth than has been the case in previous publications about him and attempts to place him beyond the limitations of a caricature and offer some redemption, seeing him as a paradox: he was welded to educational traditions but at the same time had a vision which can be seen as forward-thinking. This duality, and the sense of Rhodes Boyson as a paradox, makes the Janus metaphor apposite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the use and interpretation of the terms "touch", "reach" and "movement" in Ministry of Education (later, Department of Education) official publications known as Building Bulletins between the years 1949–1972. A close critical reading of Building Bulletins concerned primarily with school design for young children (infant and primary schools) in the English context has been carried out and the results of this exercise are discussed in the wider context of close relationships established between architects designing schools and leading progressive educationalists in Britain. The wider international context, particularly progressive educational design in the USA, is used to further understand the use and interpretation of these terms. The article contributes to a current interest among historians of education in exploring material and sensory histories of schooling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 essay examines the school leadership experiences of an infant school head teacher in Birmingham, England, during the Second World War. Drawing on the letters of Dorothy Walker, the essay offers insights into school leadership wartime deprivations. The impact of an international war on the home front was not head teacher Dorothy Walker's only challenge. As the youngest and one of the few women head teachers in Birmingham, Dorothy Walker struggled with the traditional masculine hierarchy of the local educational system and with traditional social and familial gender roles. Dorothy Walker also battled with a traditional educational school culture as she promoted progressive educational practices. These three challenges – the war, gender relations, and progressivism – are referred to as ‘Dorothy's Wars’, or the battles that she faced as a woman school leader in Birmingham during the early years of the Second World War. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Studies of mid-twentieth century education in England and Wales have conventionally hinged on the 1944 Education Act, foregrounding policy over practice. This article considers the significance of the inter-war progressive educational movement for postwar educational developments. It presents a case study of one teacher who was active in the early ‘experimental’ years of secondary modern education, suggesting that this period was important in the making of ‘modern’ education. It seeks to complicate both negative and positive readings of ‘meritocracy’ in postwar educational history. This article also highlights the paucity of available source material for the study of the secondary modern school, arguing that attention should be paid to well-documented cases, placed in context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper concerns the relationship between teaching and political action both within and outside formal educational institutions. Its setting is the recent period following the 2010 Browne Review on the funding of higher education in England. Rather than speaking directly to debates around scholar-activism, about which much has already been written, I want to stretch the meanings of both teaching and activism to contextualise the contemporary politics of higher learning in relation to diverse histories and geographies of progressive education more generally. Taking this wider view suggests that some of the forms of knowledge which have characterised the university as a progressive institution are presently being produced in more politicised educational environments. Being receptive to these other modes of learning cannot only expand scholarly thinking about how to reclaim intellectual life from the economy within universities, but stimulate the kind of imagination that we need for dreaming big about higher education as and for a practice of democratic life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to encourage re-reading and re-evaluation of a series of educational polemics published in the UK in the 1960s and 1970s, the Black Papers. These works proposed, for the most part, avowedly conservative views on education: condemning so-called "progressive" teaching methods and the re-organisation of secondary schools in the UK (especially England) into non-selective comprehensives. It is argued, however, that much said and written about the Black Papers since has concentrated only on selected "high profile" contributors, to the neglect of other contributors, often anonymous, whose comments were sometimes more measured/thoughtful. Design/methodology/approach - The work proceeds first by re-visiting the facts surrounding the writing of the Black Papers and their critical reception. It then analyses the nature of the contributors and describes selected essays not usually referred to when the Black Papers are discussed by historians and others. Findings - The work finds that the Black Papers are often infuriatingly and unhelpful polemical in nature but that much written about them since has concentrated only on selected contributors, ignoring others who were more measured. Originality/value - The work is perhaps the first critical re-reading of the Black Papers in any depth in several decades. It does not simply dismiss them as hysterical rants by ill-informed authors and suggests that they re-pay careful attention, despite their often polemical nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper contextualises the UK Foundation Degree within competing economic and democratic agendas. In tracing the development within these ideological and discursive priorities it analyses how they are textually represented in policy speeches, and in particular in 'New Labour' consultation documents. The purpose of this is to critically evaluate New Labour's attempt to offer, through the Foundation Degree, a 'Third Way' synthesis of these traditionally competing agendas, facilitating a neat discursive synchronisation of utilitarian and progressive objectives--democratising access to higher education and empowering the individual, while tooling up 'UK PLC' (public limited company) to compete in a global economy. The paper, however, sees significant potential, provided by the discourses of the Foundation Degree experience, for further democratisation of higher education. It is argued that this provides opportunities to facilitate diversity and differentiation by involving the further education sector through partnerships with higher education, and providing opportunities to stem and reverse academic drift. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the history of women's progressivism in Great Britain and shows where it does and does not connect with Romanticism. Establishment of the kindergarten or Froebel movement as essentially a woman's movement; Principal claims made by the Baroness Marenholtz-Bulow in her pamphlet entitled 'Women's Educational Mission'; Educational role of women in forming a liberal society; Instinctual gifts and special nature of womanhood.