All Entries

Entries in all categories

Switch to condensed view

Adelaide school of social history: childhood, family and education

Australia, 1976-2000

By Craig Campbell, PhD DipEd, University of Sydney. Posted .

From the mid-1970s through the 1990s, a group of historians came together in Adelaide, South Australia, to research and write new social histories of education, childhood and youth. The central figure was Ian Davey, a historian at the University of Adelaide based in its Education Department from 1976 to 1994. Many of these Adelaide scholars, though not all, had their doctorates supervised by him.… Continue Reading »

Picot Report/”Tomorrow’s Schools”

New Zealand, 1945-2013

By Roger Openshaw, PhD DipTching, Massey University. Posted .

A prescription for radical change

The Picot Report, 1988

In April 1988 Administering for Excellence, the report of a taskforce headed by Brian Picot, identified ‘serious weaknesses’ in New Zealand’s three-tiered 110 year-old education system that in its view justified replacement by an entirely new two-tiered structure. The Taskforce envisaged the replacement of the Department of Education by a Ministry of Education and the abolition of regional education boards.… Continue Reading »

Home Science at the University of Otago

New Zealand, 1911-1936

By Jenny Collins PhD, Unitec Institute of Technology. Posted .

The belief that an academic education in home science would lead to the proper treatment of infants and children, better management of homes and improvements in the nation’s health motivated three philanthropists, John Studholme, Dr F.C. Batchelor and Dr Frederick Truby King in their efforts to establish a home science programme at the University of Otago.… Continue Reading »

State aid to nongovernment schools

Australia, 1788-2013

By Ian Wilkinson, PhD, Independent Scholar. Posted .

The provision of state aid (government financial assistance) to nongovernment (independent and Roman Catholic) schools has been a major source of debate in Australian education from colonial times. For nearly a century a policy of providing no direct state aid to nongovernment schools was supported by Australian governments at all levels.… Continue Reading »

Teaching and pedagogy (2)

Australia, 1850-2010

By Craig Campbell, PhD DipEd, University of Sydney. Posted .

From the 1850s there was a fundamental reform in school instruction, brought about by the introduction of classroom teaching. Even into the twenty-first century, the classroom is the most common departure point for a great range of educational activities that occur in schools.

This reform was supported by the introduction of systematic teacher training and education, especially for those employed in public schools.… Continue Reading »

Pupil Teachers to Junior Teachers

South Australia, 1873-1913

By Anthony McGuire, PhD. Posted .

Pupil teachers were introduced into South Australia to remedy a growing shortage of teachers for government subsidised schools as the colony expanded during a period of increasing prosperity in the early 1870s. It also needed to introduce its own teacher training system to ensure both future and immediate supply of teachers to meet the demand.… Continue Reading »

Public high schools: the foundations

Australia, 1870-1920

By Craig Campbell, PhD DipEd, University of Sydney. Posted .

This form of post-elementary schooling was introduced from the nineteenth century in the Australian colonies and then states. Cities and towns in the United States and Scotland began introducing public high schools from earlier in the nineteenth century, but the Australian colonies held to the English tradition that church and private grammar schools and academies (see glossary) would be the main providers of post-elementary education through most of the nineteenth century.

… Continue Reading »

Kohimarama Naval Training School

Auckland, New Zealand, 1874-1882

By Maxine Stephenson, The University of Auckland. Posted .

In 1874 the Naval Training Schools Act was passed in New Zealand. When the Commissioner of Customs, William Reynolds, introduced the Naval Training Schools Bill to parliament, he stated that the prime purpose of institutions established under the legislation was vocational—to provide boys with ‘a thorough training in seamanship’ (NZPD 1874: 428).… Continue Reading »

Eugenics and the ‘backward child’

New Zealand, 1877-1910

By Maxine Stephenson, University of Auckland. Posted .

By the early twentieth century, eugenics, or the science of heredity as it was called, was gaining momentum through much of the industrialising world. New Zealand was no exception. Encapsulating a social movement, as well as doctrines and practices, eugenics provided a convenient and ‘scientifically’ convincing argument that the source of social problems and the statistically demonstrated decline and degeneration of the national population lay in genetic weaknesses.… Continue Reading »

Adult Education

New Zealand, to 2012

By John Benseman, PhD, Unitec Institute of Technology. Posted .

In its broadest sense, adult education refers to the education of anyone beyond school-age. Historically, the sector has constantly evolved as elements of its provision have matured into autonomous sectors in their own right, leaving adult education to constantly re-invent itself on the boundaries of the educational mainstream in its mission of meeting adult learner needs.… Continue Reading »