An archive of entries with keywords: "Curriculum"
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.
… Continue Reading »New South Wales, 1957-1965
The problem of how best to deliver universal secondary education to youth exercised many national systems of education through the twentieth century. Among the democracies, the United States and Scandinavian countries were pioneers of a particular approach: comprehensive secondary schooling. Pressures towards the comprehensive school increased after World War II.… Continue Reading »
Australia, 1920s to 2020
Note: Photographs of Indigenous persons who may have passed away appear in this entry.
In the early twentieth century the main policies and practices organising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander schooling had been set. There was little concern by state governments (in this period South Australia had responsibility for education in the Northern Territory), if many Indigenous children were not schooled at all.… Continue Reading »
South Australia, 1875-1920
The Education Act of 1875 in South Australia provided for the foundation of a system of public, mainly elementary schools. It also allowed “infant schools, evening schools, schools for the teaching of any branch of science or art, and advanced schools for continuing the education of scholars who shall have obtained prizes at public schools, or otherwise proved themselves qualified for admission: Provided that the course of training in all such schools shall be secular” (clause 12).… Continue Reading »
Australia, 1919-2001
Jean Muir was born on 14 July 1919, to a family that was rising from the working class. After overcoming the difficulty of a father who opposed any more than elementary education for girls, Jean Muir was able to progress beyond Lloyd Street Higher Elementary School in Melbourne. She spent four years at the academically selective University High School (1933-1936).… Continue Reading »
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 »
Sydney, New South Wales, 1995-2010
From the 1970s in Australia there were rapid changes in the nature and patterns of employment. They especially affected sectors of the population that had been reliant on work in the manufacturing industry. As a result of these and other changes in each of the larger cities of Australia, suburban regions emerged that were marked by high levels of unemployment and increasing poverty.… Continue Reading »
Queensland (and Australia), 1970s-1990s
The argument for social studies in the school curriculum rested on the idea that subjects such as history and geography were too bound to academic disciplines. Children and youth, especially under the circumstances of compulsory attendance, required subjects that met their individual, social and labour-force entry needs. This was not straight-forward of course, compulsory education was an opportunity for the more pervasive moralisation of children, turning them into acceptable citizen-subjects.… Continue Reading »
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 »
Victoria, Australia, 1910-2015
The establishment of post-elementary technical schools in Australian states in the early twentieth century was one of several responses to the growing pressure to provide some form of universal secondary education for all adolescents. The Australian state, Victoria, constructed a long-lasting system of such schools that distinguished public education in that state from elsewhere.… Continue Reading »
