This article analyses the creation of the schools called "ikastolas" throughout the Basque Country from the 1960s onwards. The name "ikastola" refers to a unique school model whose major characteristic is to teach the majority of subjects in the Basque language, or "euskera." It outlines the reasons why some of these…

This article provides a historical overview of how the process of curriculum change has evolved over the past 40 years. The intention is to explore how patterns of power and control have changed their configuration during different historical periods. The historical investigation of curriculum change shows a progressive movement away from the…

This paper examines the emergence of schools "micro-computing" in the UK between 1977 and 1984--a period of significant educational, technological and political change. During this time, computing developed rapidly from a niche activity in a few select schools to the state subsidized purchasing of a "computer in every school"…

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…

Historians have often recognised important links between the processes of university and civil service reform in mid-nineteenth-century England. Yet such connections are usually seen as forming part of a wider project of modernising reform with any conservative or counter-revolutionary aims largely discounted. However, as this article suggests,…

This article discusses rural schoolteachers' relationships with local village communities in mid-twentieth-century Finland. At the time, Finnish rural teachers were typically very public figures in their local community. To deal with the pressures of their position, teachers resorted to coping strategies which the authors name "local" and…

This article presents the scope and range of Christian involvement in establishing the field of education in England as a distinct area for scholarship between 1930 and 1960. It advocates greater study of the range of various denominational positions held in the period. This paper also illustrates the public debates of the time by focusing on the…

After the Second World War, the British, American and French believed education could be used to promote democracy in Germany. The Western powers faced particular difficulties with the field of physical education because of the strong Nazi influence in this area during the Third Reich. The premier pre-war physical education teacher training…

Teachers in China are regarded as vulnerable to sociopolitical changes. This paper, however, focuses on the resilience and innovativeness of state-selected expert teachers--the recipients of the Special Rank Teacher (SRT) award. This award was the product of a transitional period in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution, and was an act of…

This article examines the emergence of private universities in Meiji Japan (1868-1912). It begins by discussing the interrelationships of modernity projects with the emergence of state universities, and with the new state civil servants. Second, it reviews the processes through which forerunners of private universities emerged, considering…

This paper discusses the role of learned societies in knowledge exchange and dissemination. It attempts to "map" the organisations that are considered to reside under the term and discusses how they have developed through history. In doing so, it seeks to highlight that whilst several types of organisations inhabit the landscape of learned…

Henri Lefebvre suggested that social researchers engage in "the concrete analysis of rhythms" in order to reveal the "pedagogy of appropriation (the appropriation of the body, as of spatial practice)". Lefebvre's spatial analysis has influenced educational researchers, while the idea of "pedagogy" has travelled beyond education. This…

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…

Grant regulations under the Education Minutes of 1846 prohibited ministers of religion teaching in aided schools. This article examines the background to this professional disability, the extent of its application and its survival for 112 years. The impact of changing social conditions and the creation of new justifications as the policy became…

In September 1939, Amy (Brown) Dauphinee took up her first teaching appointment at Tate Creek, British Columbia where 518 refugees had recently settled after fleeing Czechoslovakia's Sudetenland. Amy--an avowed Social Democrat and member of the Young Socialist League--quickly embraced the refugees who were largely trade union activists and Social…