Religious organisations have long relied on education to transmit cherished values, working within society to preserve their worldview. Therefore, when a religious education system is restructured, it can act as a barometer of change, revealing societal values and reflecting negotiated roles. Like other faiths, the Church of Jesus Christ of…

Between 1972 and 1975 Eric Midwinter, Principal of the Liverpool Teachers' Centre, established a unified organisational structure responsible for delivering continuing professional development (CPD) to Liverpool schools. His ambition was to embed community education practices across the city's entire teaching force. However, during a…

William Torrey Harris and John Dewey were the two most important philosophers of education in America at the "fin de siècle." This paper discusses their rival idealisms through an examination of their philosophical and educational pronouncements. As I will show, both are indebted to, and align themselves with, Hegel. However, each…

This paper first situates King Alfred in Winchester, in Wessex, in Anglo-Saxon England, and in the Christendom of the ninth century. Attention is drawn to Alfred's education, which included experience of court life in Wessex, Rome and Francia. The paper argues that Alfred prioritised vernacular literacy as a means of educating elites in a…

This article examines educational rhetoric in Ontario, Canada, during the Great Depression. It notes how the government, through the Annual Reports of the Minister of Education, and the College of Education, through its journal, "The School," espoused themes of social efficiency regarding educational ideas and policies. The Depression…

This article explores how infant school reform took hold in London's schools from the 1890s to the 1930s through examination of the work of two Froebelian head teachers, Elizabeth Mary Shaw and Frances Emily Roe. In contrast to teacher-led rote-learning methods and rigid discipline they implemented play-based activities drawing on…

This article focuses on two women educator activists based in Birmingham, UK, in the first decades of the twentieth century: Geraldine Southall Cadbury (1865-1941) and Margaret Ann Backhouse (1887-1977). Motivated by a common belief in education as a force for progressive social change Cadbury and Backhouse were both Quakers who shared similar…

The three volumes of the "French Method of Physical Education" were published by the military school of Joinville-Le-Pont between 1925 and 1927 and became one of the most successful reference materials in France for sport and physical education among school, military and civilian institutions. Several authors studied these manuals, but they…

Studies in the history of physical education show that it was often promoted for socio-political reasons: to stimulate nation-building or increase economic productivity and/or military strength. By contrast, a different kind of motivation has received little attention in historical studies: the importance of physical education for the perfection…

The essay focuses on curriculum history as the study of systems of reason. The first section considers curriculum as "converting ordinances", inscribing Puritan notions of education as evangelizing and calculating designs in American Progressive education. The second section examines the Social Question, a cross-Atlantic Protestant reformist…

Little is known about the impact of Western educational ideals in Japan during the Meiji (1868-1912), Taisho (1912-1926) and Showa (post-1926) eras, although, in reality, there was considerable interest among Japanese educators in Western thought and practice and there were numerous attempts to disseminate these ideas widely. This article…

Invoking a statement by the cultural geographer David Livingstone--that location is essential to knowing--this paper focuses on Danish school architecture during the 1950s and 1960s and the interplay between local geography and developments and discussions on the national and international scene. Through exhibitions and study tours and…

This essay explores the interplay between educational and architectural methodologies for analysing the school environment. It historicises the affinity between architectural and educational practices and modes of knowledge pertaining to the child's body during the period of postwar reconstruction in England to argue that educational spaces were…

This article examines the educational reconstruction that was undertaken by the Department of Education in Ontario during the first years of the twentieth century. It draws on Foucault's method of archaeology to identify how schooling reforms comprised a discontinuity in pedagogic knowledge. This mutation created the conditions of possibility for…

The influential policy work in education of the intellectual grouping formed by J. H. Oldham during the Second World War known as "Oldham's Moot" (1938-1947) has been discussed in recent publications. These have noted its general educational and university policy, its intellectual strengths, and the role of Sir Walter Moberly in relation to his…