The admission of women to the teaching field was conditioned by many different circumstances that varied depending on time and place. This article will examine the evolution of this process in Spain in an attempt to identify some of the contributing factors: a patriarchal mentality which held that women had a special aptitude for teaching; a…

This essay discusses the life and work of Elise van Calcar (1822-1904), a writer and maternal feminist who introduced Froebel's kindergarten in the Netherlands. Van Calcar also was the leader of a Christian branch of spiritualism. The focus is pointed at parallels between her reading of Froebel and of "messages" from spirits in the "other world"…

This article looks through the lens of the gendered politics of historical writing at the main forms and direction of scholarship on gender in "History of Education" since its publication. It discusses how social, women's, feminist and gender history has been treated in the journal and how developing approaches around the body, space, materiality,…

Although the number of women who served on Scotland's school boards (1873-1918) was not large, they made the case for female representation on public bodies both through their electoral campaigns and their record of office. Many were simultaneously active on parish and town councils and in feminist causes, with a few in the labour movement from…

Following the enfranchisement of women in 1918 women's organisations throughout Britain reconsidered and revised their aims for the future. In many cases this involved educating their members, and women in general, on how to use their new influence in society. Such "education for citizenship", which also drove attempts to raise the political…

This article seeks to raise a number of issues concerning children's well-being in late modernity. In order to provide historical contrasts, the first part of the article considers three "optimistic" periods: the Liberal Reform Programme, 1906-1911; interwar developments in New Psychology, progressive education and child guidance; the post-1945…

Utilizing a biographical approach and network analysis, this article examines one South Australian woman's life of public and Methodist social welfare service in the post-suffrage era. It is argued that although Kate Cocks (1875-1954) viewed her welfare work as "a God-given mission", as "practical Christian service", personal contact with the…

This paper forms part of a recent trend that aims to contribute to the writing of a more inclusive education history sensitive to the operation of gender. The author presents an analysis of educator activists in twentieth-century England that connects, rather than separates, the domains of education, labour history and politics. The paper also…

This paper surveys recent studies in the history of reading that historians of education will find useful, given that all education involves some form of reading. It describes the sources that historians of reading use, the models they employ (such as the "Reading Revolution" of the eighteenth century), and the questions they address (such as the…

Recent decades have witnessed the waning fortunes of social class as a historical category of analysis. In particular working-class education is rarely discussed in historiography although there has been significant work done in this area, particularly in adult education and literacy. A reassessment of these studies allows us to examine the ways…

In the setting up of kindergarten systems in colonial New Zealand over the late nineteenth century, kindergarten founders such as Miss Mary Richmond in Wellington developed global links with kindergarten movements in a number of countries including England. This article examines the nature and significance of two key global interconnected networks…

Kindergarten pedagogy, which was based on educational play and cognitive development, was designed by the German Friedrich Frobel in the 1840s to train the future citizens of the new state that liberals aspired to create. It created a professional role for women, whom Frobel believed were innately gifted teachers of young children. German…

Does a movement for the creation of institutions for the care of small children aged between two and six years constitute a political movement? This movement was closely connected to the democratic movement of the 1848-49 revolution in the German States. It was also, as the author will argue, a movement that was an essential part of the emerging…

Searching for evidence written about or by women regarding past lives and experiences has raised challenges about what counts as an archive. Archives provide a form of connection between past and present and are a form of memory storing, memory-recording and memory-making. Records such as letters, diaries, and journals that may have been…

The article discusses contributions towards female higher education made by a group of women whose views on gender roles were conservative, rather than feminist or suffragist. Four women's conservative ideals and interconnected work for women's education are reviewed in the context of late Victorian Oxford. This study is prefaced by a discussion…