Delivered as one of the keynote addresses at the International Standing Committee on the History of Education (ISCHE) Conference held in Porto in July 2019, this paper offers an example of a hitherto overlooked embodied space and place in the history of education. Taking the simple pocket found in children's clothing as a significant, if hidden,…

This article considers the theoretical argument of anthropologist Tim Ingold, that the denial and subsequent encasement of bare feet in footwear was a critical characteristic of the development of modern societies, in exploring three aspects of feet, footwork, and footwear in the history of the modern school. First, the material conditions of feet…

Colin Ward (1924-2010) was an anarchist and educator who, together with Anthony Fyson, was employed as education officer for the Town and Country Planning Association in the UK during the 1970s. He is best known for his two books about childhood, "The Child in the City" (1978) and "The Child in the Country" (1988). The book he…

This article reports on the opening up of a new, rich seam of interdisciplinary research that brings together historians of education with historians of art and architecture to examine the meaning and incidence of "The Decorated School". It examines the origins of the idea of art as educator in the nineteenth century and discusses how…

"Ten Years On" is a 30-minute video documentary discovered in the course of researching progressive primary education, school architecture and pedagogy. It was locally produced for professional rather than commercial use at a significant historical moment for educational politics and primary practice. Here, we explore the possibilities…

In recent years sensory history has emerged as a research topic of growing interest to historians and has been accompanied by a call to incorporate the senses into our understanding of the past. Under modernity, social direction and control were built into the infrastructure of modern life as specialist institutions emerged and multiplied in the…

During the years following the Second World War, there were efforts in several European countries to grasp the opportunity to re-imagine "school" created through the need to rebuild on a mass scale. This article examines in detail an episode in the exchange of knowledge between English and Danish architects and educators during a period…

This article explores the European dimension of a collaborative approach to school design through the lives and relationships of a group of key individuals who in England set about transforming school in the post-war era. The philosophy and practice of this group of architects, educators, designers and policy makers, who regarded the school…

Food and drink are associated with survival and for children and young people the edible landscape represents an essential part of survival in the modern school. Within any institution that "contains" persons over time, such as schools, hospitals and prisons, the organization and control of eating and drinking takes on a particularly…