Entries Tagged: Secondary education

An archive of entries with keywords: "Secondary education"

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Education observed by an American: Isaac Kandel

Australia and New Zealand, 1930-1940

By Craig Campbell, PhD DipEd. Posted .

In the wake of the World War I, but more so, the second world war, United States governments began to assume a leadership role in world politics. Closely associated philanthropic agencies such as the Carnegie Corporation supported such a development. The colonies and dominions of the declining British Empire were of interest for a number of reasons, one of which was to bolster them as potential allies as Bolshevism and fascism threatened the “free” world.… Continue Reading »

Accomplishments, private schools for ladies and the education of girls

Australia, 1830-1920

By Craig Campbell, PhD DipEd. Posted .

The film Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975) based on Joan Lindsay’s novel of the same name (1967) portrayed life in a rural Australian ladies’ academy of the late nineteenth century. It was largely responsible for popularly imagined representations of such schools. The private ladies’ academies and colleges provided for the education of girls and young women through the accomplishments curriculum.… Continue Reading »

Adelaide Educational Institution: A dissenting academy for boys

South Australia, 1850-1880

By Craig Campbell, PhD DipEd. Posted .

The Glorious Revolution of 1688 in England was not so glorious for those Christian groupings, puritan and dissenting (also “nonconformist”), that had developed or were developing organizational, cultural and theological traditions separate from the established Church of England. The restoration of the monarchy saw a consolidation of the privileges of the Church of England.… Continue Reading »

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

Australia, 1888-2010

By Craig Campbell, PhD DipEd.. Posted .

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 »

School assessment and testing; public examinations and credentials

Australia, 1780-2020

By Craig Campbell, PhD., Dip.Ed.. Posted .

Teachers no matter what forms of pedagogy they engage have usually been concerned to evaluate the learning of their students. The historical tendency, especially in the last two hundred years has been to formalise the process. Written tests and examinations have mainly displaced oral displays of achievement. Concentration on the testing of individual mastery has tended to displace interest in collective achievement, though the latter was resurgent from the late twentieth century as nation states collected data especially on the literacy and numeracy of cohorts of young people at different stages of their school education.… Continue Reading »

The Wyndham Scheme

New South Wales, 1957-1965

By John Hughes, Ph.D., University of Western Sydney. Posted .

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 »

Selective public high schools

New South Wales, 1960-2020

By Craig Campbell, Ph.D., Dip.Ed., University of Sydney. Posted .

Selective high schools in New South Wales are those public secondary schools that enrol students who have achieved highly in annually-held, competitive and state-wide entrance tests. There are academically selective schools in the nongovernment sector also, but it is those in the public sector that are commonly known as ‘selective schools’.… Continue Reading »

Victorian Public Grammar Schools

Victoria, 1854 -1950

By Carole Hooper, TITC, BA, BEd, PhD, Independent scholar. Posted .

Within a few years of Victoria being declared a separate colony in 1851, its legislature voted to grant £35,000 for the establishment of grammar schools – schools intended to prepare scholars for the newly-established University of Melbourne. After some deliberation, it was decided to distribute the funds amongst the four leading religious denominations; and five schools, known as ‘public grammar schools’ were founded – four in Melbourne and one in Geelong; namely, Melbourne Grammar School, Geelong Grammar School, Scotch College, Wesley College, and St Patrick’s College.… Continue Reading »

Adelaide High School: Inventing a state high school

South Australia, 1875-1920

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

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 »

Blackburn, Jean, and social justice through education

Australia, 1919-2001

By Craig Campbell, Ph.D., Dip.Ed., University of Sydney. Posted .

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 »