This article offers a sampling and critique of the history of education in North America, including Canada, the United States and Mexico. Being Black and Indigenous academics, respectively, the authors' scholarship centres on community relationships, considering activism around #BlackLivesMatter and Indigenous Peoples, especially with the news of…

This essay proposes a feminist research agenda on the history of women teachers' experiences in the latter stages of their career and life. Drawing on extant histories of white women elementary and secondary teachers in the largely Anglo, western world (centred on the United States, Canada, England, Australia and Ireland), the essay explores the…

Historians of education are well placed to engage in applied historical approaches providing authoritative evidence of the past to inform policy and practice. This article is based on the presidential keynote delivered at the History of Education Society (UK) annual conference in 2019. As such it reflects on possible future directions for the…

This article reveals that, contrary to common knowledge, schooling for Indigenous and non-Indigenous children in British Columbia -- Canada's westernmost province -- was not strictly segregated in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Officially, government policy stipulated that Indigenous children should attend separate day and…

What do secondary school students in Ontario, Canada, need to know about the world in which they live in? How did a secondary school 'World Politics' course that emerged in Ontario in the 1960s address this question? The 'World Politics' course that emerged in the 1960s clearly came about as a result of societal and educational developments.…

Using examples from family letters sent to the Department of Education's Elementary Correspondence School (ECS) in the western Canadian province of British Columbia in the early twentieth century, this article discusses three potential problems or traps associated with concepts of agency in the history of children and youth. Following a brief…

This article explores the experiences of teachers who participated in the League of the Empire's "Interchange of Home and Dominion Teachers" scheme through a tripartite approach to "British World" space. First, it identifies the mechanisms through which exchanges were established. It analyses the patterns of teacher mobility…

This article examines the management of the education enterprise of teaching Sisters, with reference to their transnational networking. The article suggests that orders of women religious were the first all-female transnational networks, engaged constantly in work that was characterised by "movement, ebb and circulation". The mobility of…

Historians of education wanting to develop culturally responsive historiographies of Indigenous communities should move beyond a reliance on government and church policy documents--with some variegations of testimony from residential school survivors. The unique circumstances of colonisation that were forged by national/settler policies should be…

For educational historians involved in the representation of Indigenous contexts and peoples, what is the relevance of ethnohistory as a discipline or methodology, and what is lost or gained in using it? This article reviews ethnohistorical literature, and brings it in conversation with literature by Indigenous scholars on research methodologies,…

During a time of post-war sensitivity to Canadian nationalism and patriotism, public feeling was aroused in 1920 New Brunswick regarding a world history textbook with a new chapter about the First World War. The American author made no reference to Canada's war efforts. The subsequent public discussion focused on issues of patriotism, citizenship,…

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…

Educational publishing sits at the intersection of industry, culture and education. Pedagogical aims must be balanced with the need for publishers to make a profit, while also acknowledging Canadian national identity and culture. The events of central interest are related to the tensions between two publishers' associations in the wake of the…

Treading in the footsteps of past generations, Ontario policy advisers journeyed throughout the United Kingdom in the summer of 1966 to directly understand the educational reforms that were being undertaken in that country. On their return, these consultants brought back a number of innovations for discussion with their parent committee in the…

School inspectors and school inspection were integral features of the elementary public school system in Ontario from the 1840s until the practice was abandoned in 1967. From its earliest beginnings and subsequent development, school inspection and school inspectors were established as an important institution of the educational state. By…