Entries Tagged: Teachers’ work

An archive of entries with keywords: "Teachers’ work"

Australian education observed by Aleksandr Leonidovich Yashchenko

Australia, 1903

Note: Photographs of Indigenous persons who have passed away appear in this entry.

In 1903, the Russian scientist, Aleksandr Leonidovich Yashchenko visited Australia, three years after federation. Yashchenko was an accomplished scholar whose education and graduate training included zoology, anthropology and geography. He taught at prestigious colleges in St Petersburg. His visit to Australia was a research commission on behalf of the Imperial Russian Academy of Sciences. … Continue Reading »

Teacher employment: Families and/or individual careers

Australia, 1840-1900

It was mainly from the 1850s, and especially from the 1870s, that a new kind of teacher in the elementary schools emerged. They were increasingly likely to have had some training, certainly to a greater degree as apprentices, that is pupil and then junior teachers, but also with some time in normal or model schools and eventually teachers colleges.… Continue Reading »

Mackillop, Mary: Common school teacher

Victoria, 1863-1866

Mary Mackillop is the only Australian to be deemed a saint by the Roman Catholic Church. She has been widely recognised for her involvement in education; particularly her work with schools conducted  by a religious order she co-founded with the Rev. Julian Woods in 1866: the Institute of the Sisters of St Joseph of the Sacred Heart.… Continue Reading »

Home Economics incl. Domestic Science, Domestic Arts and Home Science

Australia, 1888-2010

Home economics is a curriculum domain that has been highly responsive to social pressures concerning gender, especially the expected roles that girls and women should occupy in families, the labour market and society more broadly. It is a curriculum domain that came into being towards the end of the nineteenth century as an educational response to several interdependent crises and social movements that included the following:

Fig 1: Slums of Melbourne, 1930s.

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Catholic teaching sisters and the 1918 influenza pandemic

New Zealand, 1918-1919

During the deadly pandemic that killed more than 9000 people in New Zealand and as many as 50 million people world-wide, Catholic teaching orders turned their focus to ministering to the sick. Schools across the country were closed from November 1918 to February 1919. Released from their teaching duties Catholic sisters, with the assistance of teaching brothers, priests and local volunteers, cared for victims of the pandemic from all sections of the community.… Continue Reading »

Correspondence School of Victoria – its first 60 years

Victoria, 1909-1969

Victoria established compulsory schooling for all children in 1872, but there were long-standing problems of access for children in some rural and remote areas of the state. One possible solution that enabled governments to meet their educational obligations was to introduce correspondence schooling. This was effective for families isolated from other families with children.… Continue Reading »

Payment by results: Teachers’ work, remuneration, and student assessment

Victoria, 1863-1906

The performance-based system, known colloquially as ‘payment-by-results’, whereby teachers’ remuneration was partly determined by the success of their pupils at prescribed examinations, was introduced into Victorian government-aided schools in early1864. Although criticised by many throughout its 40-year existence, the system was not finally abolished until 1906, following the recommendation of a Royal Commission on Education (Fink).… Continue Reading »

Half-time and travelling schools

Eastern Australia, 1860s-1930s

In an effort to cater for the rapidly increasing rural population in the eastern Australian colonies following the gold rushes in the 1850s, the introduction of the Robertson Land Act in New South Wales (NSW) in the 1860s and the spread of settlement, most government departments of public instruction instituted what became known as Half-time Schools  (NSW) or Part-time Schools (Victoria) during the latter decades of the nineteenth century.… Continue Reading »

Thomas Report, and William Thomas (1879-1945)

New Zealand, 1900-1960

Many national and provincial governments sought to expand access to secondary schooling during the twentieth century. New Zealand was a pioneer of the comprehensive school in its region. There would be a reformed curriculum that could include many more students than an academic elite. The influence of William Thomas was not confined to New Zealand.… Continue Reading »

Convict and emancipist teachers

New South Wales, 1789-1830

Between 1789 and 1830 approximately half of the teachers who taught in the schools of the colony of New South Wales arrived as convicts. This entry concerning the use of convicts as teachers in early colonial schools asks why there was a need for school teachers in what was founded as a penal colony.… Continue Reading »