History of education research in Australia: some current trends and possible directions for the future

Abstract

The history of education as a distinct field has been the focus of study, research and writing in Australia for over a century. It achieved maturity with the establishment of the Australian and New Zealand History of Education Society in 1970 and the subsequent establishment of the Society’s journal, History of Education Review. Since then, Australian scholars have been major contributors to the field, with certain individuals being key players on the world stage. Taking cognisance of this background, this paper considers current trends and directions for the future. It does so by focusing on three areas: scholarship on topics relating specifically to Australia; the use of new methods; and Australian-based scholars contributing to scholarship where the focus is beyond their immediate geographical boundaries.

Keywords:

• Australia
• historiography
• new methods

Notes

¹ See J. McMahon, “ANZHES: The First Twenty-five Years,” History of Education Review 25, no. 1 (1996): 1–22.

² On this I identify R.J.W. Selleck, Geoffrey Sherington and Marjorie Theobald.

³ W.F. Connell, “Research and Writing in the History of Education,” in Australian Education: Review of Recent Research, ed. J.P. Keeves (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1987), 29–65.

⁴ C. Campbell and G. Sherington, “The History of Education,” Change: Transformations in Education 5, no. 1 (2002): 46–64.

⁵ See T. O’Donoghue, Upholding the Faith: The Process of Education in Catholic Schools in Australia, 1922–1965 (New York: Peter Lang, 2001).

⁶ For an overview on works on Anglican schooling see R.M. Edwards, “Organisational Culture in Australian Anglican Secondary Schools,” (PhD Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2011), 49–51. For an overview on Presbyterian schooling in Australia see A.D. Hirst, “Rites of Association: The Nature and Development of Presbyterian Secondary Schools in Australia,” (PhD Thesis, The University of Sydney, 2005).

⁷ Campbell and Sherington, “The History of Education,” 47.

⁸ D. Kirk, Schooling Bodies: School Practice and Public Discourse, 1880–1950 (London: Leicester University Press, 1998).

⁹ For a recent valuable addition see P.A. Cormack, “Children’s School Reading and Curriculum Innovation at the Edge of Empire: The School Paper in Late Nineteenth-century Australia,” History of Education Review 42, no. 2 (2013): 153–169.

¹⁰ See, for example, A. Mackinnon, The New Women: Adelaide’s Early Women Graduates (Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 1986).

¹¹ See, for example, P. Miller, Transformations of Patriarchy in the West: 1500–1900 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999).

¹² See, for example, P. Miller, “My Parents Came Here with Nothing and ‘They Wanted us to Achieve’: Italian Australians and School Success,” in The Death of the Comprehensive High School? Historical, Contemporary and Comparative Perspectives, eds. B. Franklin and G. McCulloch (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), 185–200.

¹³ Campbell and Sherington, “The History of Education,” 57.

¹⁴ B. Bessant, ed., Mother State and Her Little Ones: Children and Youth in Australia 1860s–1930s (Melbourne: Centre for Youth and Community Studies, Phillip Institute of Technology, 1987).

¹⁵ See W. Mitchell and G. Sherington, Growing up in the Illawara: A Social History 1834–1884 (Wollongong: University of Wollongong Press, 1984).

¹⁶ See T. Irving, D. Maunders and G. Sherington, Youth in Australia: Policy, Administration and Politics (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1995).

¹⁷ J.R. May, A.P. Holbrook, A.M. Thompson, G.D. Preston and B. Bessant, Claiming a Voice: The First Thirty-Five Years of the Australian Teacher Education Association (Perth: Australian Teacher Education Association, 2009).

¹⁸ S. Macintyre, The Poor Relation: The History of the Social Sciences in Australia (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2010).

¹⁹ P. O’Farrell, UNSW: A Portrait (Sydney: The University of New South Wales Press, 1999).

²⁰ R.J.W. Selleck, The Shop: The University of Melbourne, 1850–1939 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2003).

²¹ J. Horne and G. Sherington, Sydney: the Making of a Public University (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 2012).

²² D. Gardiner, T. O’Donoghue and M. O’Neill, Constructing the Field of Education as a Liberal Art and as Teacher Preparation at Five Western Australian Universities: An Historical Analysis (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 2011).

²³ W.F. Connell, Reshaping Australian Education (Melbourne: ACER, 1993).

²⁴ C. Campbell and G. Sherington, eds., The Comprehensive Public High School: Historical Perspectives (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007).

²⁵ C. Campbell and H. Proctor, A History of Australian Schooling (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2014).

²⁶ See, for example T. O’Donoghue and A. Chapman, “A Social Semiotic Analysis of the Discursive Construction of Teacher Identity in the ‘Book of Rules and Customs’ of the Australian Sisters of St Joseph of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus,” History of Education 40, no. 3 (2011): 391–408; A. Chapman and T. O’Donoghue, “An Analysis of Recruitment Literature Used by Orders of Catholic Religious Teaching Brothers in Australia in the First Half of the Twentieth Century: A Social Semiotic Analysis,” Paedagogica Historica 49, no. 4 (2013): 592–606.

²⁷ M. Welsh, “Methodological Perspectives on Researching Recent Policy History in Australian Schooling,” History of Education Review 32, no. 2 (2003): 1–14.

²⁸ J. May and H. Proctor, “Being Special: Memories of the Australia Public High School, 1920s–1950s,” History of Education Review 42, no. 1 (2013): 55–68.

²⁹ A. Potts, “College Voices: What Have We Lost,” History of Education Review 40, no. 2 (2001): 142–155.

³⁰ J. Trotman, Girls Becoming Teachers (New York: Cambria Press, 2008).

³¹ K. Frith and D. Whitehouse, “Designing Learning Spaces that Work: A Case for the Importance of History,” History of Education Review 38, no. 2 (2009): 94–108.

³² M. Vick, “Re-imagining Teachers’ Work: Photographs of Blackfriars School, Sydney, 1913–1923, as Representations of an Educational Alternative,” History of Education Review 38, no. 2 (2009): 82–93.

³³ J. May, “Imagining the Secondary School: The ‘Pictorial Turn’ and Representations of Secondary Schools in Two Australian Feature Films of the 1970s,” History of Education Review 35, no. 1 (2006): 13–22.

³⁴ http://web.stbedes.catholic.edu.au/Other/nuns/ (accessed August 12, 2014).

³⁵ See http://www.anzhes.com/dictionary.html (accessed March 1, 2014).

³⁶ http://www.anme.org.au.

³⁷ See, for example, R.J.W Selleck, James Kay-Shuttleworth: Journey of an Outsider (Ilford: Woburn Press, 1994).

³⁸ R.J.W. Selleck, The New Education: The English Background 1870–1914 (London: Pitman, 1968).

³⁹ K.I. Whitehead, “Transnational Connections in Early Twentieth-century Women Teachers’ Work,” Paedagogica Historica 48, no. 3 (2012): 381–390.

⁴⁰ W.F. Connell, A History of Education in the Twentieth Century (New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia, 1980).

⁴¹ C. Campbell and G. Sherington, Going to School in Oceania (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2007).

⁴² See, for example, R. Openshaw, Reforming New Zealand Secondary Education: The Picot Report and the Road to Radical Reform (New York: Macmillan, 2009).

⁴³ See, for example, H. Lee, G. Lee and R. Openshaw, Assessment Policies and Practices to Bridge the Vocational-Academic Divide: Transnational Crossings in Secondary Education (Dordrecht: Springer, forthcoming).

⁴⁴ See, for example, A.M. Tsikigawa, “Phases of Differentiated Schooling: A Theoretical and Conceptual Framework of the Relationship between Religion and Schooling in New Zealand and Norway,” (PhD Thesis, Massey University, New Zealand, 2013).

⁴⁵ See, for example, L. Prochner, History of Early Childhood Education in Canada, Australia and New Zealand (Washington: University of Washington Press, 2007).

⁴⁶ G. Sherington and C. Jeffery, Fairbridge: Empire and Child Migration (Perth: University of Western Australia Press, 1998).

⁴⁷ See, for example, C. Whitehead, Colonial Educators: The British Indian and Colonial Education Service 1858–1953 (London: I.B. Tauris, 2003).

⁴⁸ T. Allender, Ruling Through Education: The Politics of Schooling in the Colonial Punjab (Delhi: New Dawn Press, 2007).

⁴⁹ T. Allender, Brown Ladies: Learning Femininity in Colonial India, 1800–1932 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014).

⁵⁰ This matter is highlighted for educational historians internationally in G. McCulloch and T. Woodin, “Towards a Social History of Learners and Learning,” Oxford Review of Education 36, no. 2 (2010): 133–140.

⁵¹ McCulloch and Woodin, “Towards a Social History of Learners and Learning,” 136.

⁵² B. Puaca, Learning Democracy: Education in West Germany, 1945–1965 (New York: Berghahn, 2009).

⁵³ B. Blessing, “East German Children’s Films,” Oxford Review of Education 36, no. 2 (2010): 234.

⁵⁴ J. May, Reel Schools: Schooling and the Nation in Australian Cinema (New York: Peter Lang, 2013).

⁵⁵ K. Shine and T. O’Donoghue, Schoolteachers in the News (New York: Cambria Press, 2013).

⁵⁶ McCulloch and Woodin, “Towards a Social History of Learners and Learning,” 137.

⁵⁷ M.M. Smith, Sensory History (Oxford: Berg, 2007), 20.

⁵⁸ See, for example, R. Teese, Academic Success and Social Power: Examinations and Inequity (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2000).

⁵⁹ Campbell and Sherington, “The History of Education,” 60.

⁶⁰ Department of Education, Youth and Training, The Impact of Educational Research (Canberra: Higher Education Division, 2000).

⁶¹ C. Campbell, H. Proctor and G. Sherington, School Choice: How Parents Negotiate the New School Market in Australia (Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2009).

⁶² A. Mackinnon and H. Proctor, “Education,” in The Cambridge History of Australia, vol. 2, eds. A. Bashford and S. Macintyre (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press), 429–451.

⁶³ Department of Education, Science and Training, A History of State Aid to Non-government Schools in Australia (Canberra: Department of Education, Science and Training, 2007).

⁶⁴ D. Tyack and L. Cuban, Tinkering Towards Utopia: A Century of Public School Reform (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).

⁶⁵ R. Donato and M. Lazerson, “New Directions in American Educational History: Problems and Prospects,” Educational Researcher 29, no. 8 (2000): 4–15.

⁶⁶ W.J. Reece, Testing Wars in the Public Schools: A Forgotten History (Boston: Harvard University Press, 2013).

⁶⁷ R. Aldrich, Education for the Nation (London: Continuum, 1996).

⁶⁸ D. Ravitch and M.A.Vinovskis, Learning From the Past: What History Teaches Us About School (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University, 1995).

⁶⁹ M. Depaepe, “A Professionally Relevant History of Education for Teachers: Does it Exist? A Reply to Jurgen Herbst’s State of the Art Article,” Paedagogica Historica 37, no. 3 (2001): 629–640.

⁷⁰ Donato and Lazerson, 10.