Teacher education as a field of historical research: retrospect and prospect

Abstract

UK-based teacher educators formed the core membership of the History of Education Society when it was founded in 1967, and they were frequent early contributors to the Society’s journals. Given these origins, one might imagine that the history of teacher education would have featured more prominently in the pages of the first 40 volumes of the journal than it has. This article identifies and discusses examples of research into teacher education that have featured in History of Education since 1972, making connections with the contexts of political, social and educational change. The influence of feminist scholarship is particularly noted and it is argued that work relating to teacher education, which peaked in the 1990s, has both reflected and shaped new methodological approaches to studying the history of education. Notwithstanding the journal’s publication of some important work, it is argued that the theme remains under-researched and, in the period ahead, it is to be hoped that interest can be re-invigorated.

Keywords:

• historiography
• methodology
• teachers
• teacher education
• teacher training

Notes

¹William Richardson, ‘Historians and Educationists: The History of Education as a Field of Study in Post-war England Part II: 1972–96’, History of Education 28, no. 2 (1999): 140, Appendix 7. Interest in the history of teachers and teaching has increased steadily over the past 20 years according to Gary McCulloch, The Struggle for the History of Education (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011), 90.

²The December 1996 History of Education Society Annual Conference, on the theme of ‘Teachers’ Lives: Training and Careers in Historical Perspective’, did not lead to a special issue of History of Education, but a number of papers from the conference were published in a special issue of the Cambridge Journal of Education 27, no. 3 (1997), edited by Peter Cunningham and Philip Gardner.

³‘Editorial’, History of Education Society Bulletin 1 (1968): 2.

⁴Committee on Higher Education, Report of the Committee on Higher Education (Robbins Report) (Cmnd 2154) (London: HMSO, 1963).

⁵Nanette Whitbread, ‘History of Education in the Three-year Certificate Course’, History of Education Society Bulletin 1 (1968): 4–13; David Bradshaw, ‘The History of Education: Its Place in Courses for the BEd Degree’, History of Education Society Bulletin 1 (1968): 13–18; Malcolm Seaborne, ‘History of Education in Current Syllabuses at Universities’, History of Education Society Bulletin 1 (1968): 18–27.

⁶For example Michael Argles, a Lancaster University librarian, who was a particularly active early contributor to History of Education Society activities and himself a leading scholar in the field of technical and scientific education.

⁷William Richardson, ‘Historians and Educationists: The History of Education as a Field of Study in Post-war England. Part I: 1945–72’, History of Education 28, no. 1 (1999): 6, 25.

⁸Asa Briggs, ‘The Study of the History of Education’, History of Education 1, no. 1 (1972): 9.

⁹P.H.J.H. Gosden, Education in the Second World War (London: Methuen, 1976), 388–91; Board of Education, Teachers and Youth Leaders. Report of the Committee Appointed by the President of the Board of Education to Consider the Supply, Recruitment and Training of Teachers and Youth Leaders (McNair Report) (London: HMSO, 1944).

¹⁰W.R. Niblett, D.W. Humphreys and J.R. Fairhurst, The University Connection (Slough: National Foundation for Educational Research, 1975).

¹¹H.C. Dent, The Training of Teachers in England and Wales 1800–1975 (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1977).

¹²Three outdated specialist accounts were still widely cited: Peter Sandiford, The Training of Teachers in England and Wales (New York: Teachers’ College Columbia, 1910); Lance G.E. Jones, The Training of Teachers in England and Wales: A Critical Survey (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1924); R.W. Rich, The Training of Teachers in England and Wales During the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1933).

¹³Joan D. Browne, Teachers of Teachers. A History of the Association of Teachers in Colleges and Departments of Education (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1979). Browne was herself a key figure in twentieth-century teacher education as Principal of the Coventry College of Education from 1948 to 1975.

¹⁴N.R. Tempest, ‘Some Sources for the History of Teacher-training in England and Wales’, British Journal of Educational Studies 9, no. 1 (1960): 57–66.

¹⁵As an example of this, the link between establishment of the London Day Training College (later the Institute of Education, University of London), in 1902, and the ‘educational engineering’ of Sidney and Beatrice Webb was first made in Edward J.T. Brennan, ‘Educational Engineering with the Webbs’, History of Education 1, no. 2 (1972): 183–4. The association was later more fully explored in Richard Aldrich, The Institute of Education 1902–2002. A Centenary History (London: Institute of Education, 2002), 8–12.

¹⁶Review by Nanette Whitbread, History of Education 9, no. 4 (1980): 356.

²⁰Ibid., 226.

¹⁷Maurits de Vroede, ‘The History of Teacher Training: Opening Address of the International Standing Conference on the History of Education (Louvain, 24–27 September 1979)’, History of Education 10, no. 1 (1981): 1–8.

¹⁸Bernard Bailyn, Education in the Forming of American Society (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1960).

¹⁹Jurgen Herbst, ‘Nineteenth-century Normal Schools in the United States: A Fresh Look’, History of Education 9, no. 3 (1980): 224.

²¹Jurgen Herbst, And Sadly Teach: Teacher Education and Professionalization in American Culture (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989). In 2012 there is still no history of teacher education in England and Wales to surpass Dent’s 1977 book.

²²But an article on Irish ‘model schools’ did point to the similarities between Irish ‘model schools’ and European and American normal schools. It was concluded, however, that nineteenth-century Irish model schools did not live up to the hopes of their promoters. See Sean Farren, ‘Irish Model Schools 1833–70: Models of What?’, History of Education 24, no. 1 (1995): 47.

²³W.E. Marsden, Review of Sheila Lawlor, Teachers Mistaught: Training in Theories or Education in Subjects? (London: Centre for Policy Studies, 1990) and Dennis J. O’Keefe, The Wayward Elite: A Critique of British Teacher Education (London: Adam Smith Institute, 1990), History of Education 20, no. 1 (1991): 156.

²⁴See David Crook, ‘Universities, Teacher Training and the Legacy of McNair, 1944–94’, History of Education 24, no. 3 (1995): 231–3; David Crook. ‘Challenge, Response and Dilution: A Revisionist View of the Emergency Training Scheme for Teachers, 1945–51’, Cambridge Journal of Education 27, no. 3 (1997): 379–89.

²⁵C.D. Godwin, ‘“A Most Cantankerous and Awkward Bunch”: The Study Group on Government and the Weaver Report (1966)’, History of Education 29, no. 3 (2000): 254.

²⁶Andrea Jacobs and Camilla Leach, ‘Teacher Training and the Public Good: The University of Winchester Alumni Project’, History of Education 40, no. 2 (2011): 213.

²⁷Crook, Universities, Teacher Training and the Legacy of McNair’, 233.

²⁸Godwin, ‘“A Most Cantankerous and Awkward Bunch”’, 253–72; C.D. Godwin, ‘Policy-making without Partners: The NACTST and its Demise 1965–73’, History of Education 32, no. 1 (2003): 81–100.

²⁹Stuart Marriott, ‘The University Extension Movement and the Education of Teachers 1873–1906’, History of Education 10, no. 3 (1981): 175.

³⁰Wendy Robinson, ‘“That Great Educational Experiment”: The City of London Vacation Course in Education 1922–1938: A Forgotten Story in the History of Teacher Professional Development’, History of Education 40, no. 5 (2011): 557–75.

³¹Thomas A. O’Donoghue and David Austin, ‘The Evolution of a National System of Teacher Education in the Developing World: The Case of Papua New Guinea’, History of Education 23, no. 3 (1994): 301–15.

³²William Partlett, ‘Bourgeois Ideas in Communist Construction: The Development of Stanislav Shatskii’s Teacher Training Methods’, History of Education 35, no. 4–5 (2006): 458.

³³The College had been established at the end of the Second World War as an emergency training college. It was absorbed into Manchester Polytechnic in 1977, which, in 1992, was itself transmuted into Manchester Metropolitan University.

³⁴D.A. Turner, Review of A.H. Body and B.J. Frangopulo, Silver Jubilee: The Story of Didsbury College of Education, Manchester 1946–71 (Manchester: E.J. Morton, 1971), History of Education 1, no. 1, (1972): 106.

³⁹George Bartle, Reviews of G.P. McGregor Bishop Otter and Policy for Teacher Education, 1839–1980 (London, Pembridge Press, 1978) and Martial Rose, A History of King Alfred’s College, Winchester, 1940–1980 (London, Phillimore, 1981), History of Education 11, no. 1 (1982): 61–2.

³⁵Department of Education and Science, Teacher Education and Training (James Report) (London: HMSO, 1972).

³⁶History of Education Society, Colleges of Education. A Checklist of Archives (Leicester: History of Education Society, 1981).

³⁷Michael Berry, Teacher Training Institutions in England and Wales: A Bibliographical Guide (London: Society for Research into Higher Education, 1973).

³⁸For more than 20 years Bartle was a prolific contributor to the Bulletin and to the Journal of Educational Administration and History, initially reporting on the broad range of materials contained in the BFSS deposit, which was also the theme of a joint-authored 1981 contribution to the journal: G.F. Bartle and G.P. Collins, ‘The British and Foreign School Society Archives Centre’, History of Education 10, no. 3 (1981): 179–81. Once the cataloguing was substantially completed, Bartle contributed a number of research pieces to these and other journals.

⁴⁰For example David Bradshaw, Review of David Shorey, 1906–1985: A History of Avery Hill College (London: Thames Polytechnic, 1989), History of Education 20, no. 3 (1991): 285–6; David Crook, Review of Graham Boardman, Arthur Barnes, Beverley Fletcher, Brian H. Fletcher, Geoffrey Sherington and Cliff Turney, Sydney Training College: A History, 1906–1981 (Sydney: Hale & Iremonger, 1995) and Margaret M. Harrison and Willis B. Marker, Teaching the Teachers: The History of Jordanhill College of Education, 1828–1993 (Edinburgh: John Donald, 1996), History of Education 26, no. 3 (1997): 329–31.

⁴¹Mark Lofthouse, Review of G.P. McGregor, A Church College for the 21st Century? 150 Years of Ripon and York St John 1841–1991. A Study of Policy and its Absence (York: Williams Sissons and University College of Ripon and York St John, 1991), History of Education 21, no. 4 (1992): 430. This particular book was exempted from Lofthouse’s criticism of the genre.

⁴²At the time of writing, the History of Education Researcher has plans to re-introduce a feature that recalls a strand in Bulletins of the 1990s, entitled ‘My Life in the History of Education’.

⁴³Gordon Hogg, The Professional Education of Teachers at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, 1890–1990 (Newcastle: University of Newcastle, 1990); A.B. Robertson, A Century of Change: The Study of Education in the University of Manchester (Manchester: University of Manchester, 1990); P.H.J.H. Gosden, ed., The University of Leeds School of Education, 1891–1991 (Leeds: University of Leeds Press, 1991).

⁴⁴Crook, ‘Universities, Teacher Training and the Legacy of McNair’, 236–42.

⁴⁵Thomas gathered together a number of other contributors for an edited book, British Universities and Teacher Education: A Century of Change (London: Falmer, 1990). This was to receive a withering and surely over-harsh review by Harry Judge, who revealed himself to be no enthusiast for edited volumes. See History of Education 21, no. 2 (1992): 226–7.

⁴⁶J.B. Thomas, ‘Birmingham University and Teacher Training: Day Training College to Department of Education’, History of Education 21, no. 3 (1992): 313.

⁴⁷J.B. Thomas, ‘University College, Bristol: Pioneering Teacher Training for Women’, History of Education 17, no. 1 (1988): 69.

⁵²Wendy Robinson, ‘Finding Our Professional Niche: Reinventing Ourselves as Twenty-first Century Historians of Education’, in History of Education for the Twenty-First Century, ed. David Crook and Richard Aldrich (London: Institute of Education, 2000), 55.

⁴⁸For example, Philip Gardner, ‘The Early History of School-based Training’, in Mentoring, ed. Donald Macintyre, Hazel Hagger and Margaret Wilkin (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1993), 20-36.

⁴⁹Wendy Robinson, ‘Pupil Teachers: The Achilles Heel of Higher Grade Girls’ Schools 1882–1904?’, History of Education 22, no. 3 (1993): 249.

⁵⁰Wendy Robinson, ‘In Search of a “Plain Tale”: Rediscovering the Champions of the Pupil-teacher Centres 1900–10’, History of Education 28, no. 1 (1999): 53–71. Robinson extended her research to study 175 centres in England and Wales and published a book, Pupil Teachers and the Professional Training in Pupil-Teacher Centres in England and Wales 1870–1914 (New York, Edwin Mellen Press, 2003). An enthusiastic review by John B. Thomas appeared in History of Education 39, no. 1 (2010): 139–40.

⁵¹See Terry Haydn and Clare Hake, ‘“A Bridge Too Far?”: A Consideration of the Implications of Further Moves Towards School Based Teacher Training in England and Wales’, International Journal of Educational Reform 4, no. 2 (1995): 172–7.

⁵³Geoffrey Partington, Women Teachers in the Twentieth Century (London, NFER, 1976); Frances Widdowson, Going Up into the Next Class: Women and Elementary Teacher Training, 1840–1914 (London: Women’s Research and Resources Centre Publications, 1980).

⁵⁴For example, Dina Copelman, London’s Women Teachers: Gender, Class and Feminism 1870–1930 (London, Publisher, 1996); Alison Prentice and Marjorie R. Theobald, eds., Women Who Taught: Perspectives on the History of Women and Teaching (Toronto, University of Toronto Press, 1991); Alison Oram, Women Teachers and Feminist Politics, 1900–39 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996).

⁵⁵See Philip Gardner, ‘Oral History in Education: Teacher’s Memory and Teachers’ History’, History of Education 32, no. 2 (2003): 175–88.

⁵⁶Peter Cunningham and Philip Gardner, Becoming Teachers: Texts and Testimonies 1907–1950 (London: Woburn, 2004); Philip Gardner, ‘Teacher Training and Changing Professional Identity in Early Twentieth Century England’, Journal of Education for Teaching 21, no. 2 (1995): 191–217; Peter Cunningham, Philip Gardner, Bobbie Wells and Richard Willis, ‘McNair’s Lost Opportunity: The Student-teacher Scheme and the Student-teacher’s Experience’, History of Education 24, no. 3 (1995): 221–9. A subsequent article by Gardner on the independent social reformer E.B. Sargant revealed the latter’s longstanding interest in reforming the pupil-teacher system and to offer elementary school teachers opportunities for intellectual engagement so that they might stand alongside their counterparts in the secondary schools. See ‘“There and not Seen”: E.B. Sargant and Educational Reform, 1884–1905’, History of Education 33, no. 6 (2004): 609–35.

⁵⁷David A. Coppock, ‘Respectability as a Prerequisite of Moral Character: The Social and Occupational Mobility of Pupil Teachers in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries’, History of Education 26, no. 2 (1997): 176. See also Copelman, London’s Women Teachers, 33;

⁵⁸Coppock, ‘Respectability as a Prerequisite of Moral Character’, 184.

⁵⁹Susan Trouvé-Finding, ‘Teaching as a Woman’s Job: The Impact of the Admission of Women to Elementary Teaching in England and France in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries’, History of Education 34, no. 5 (2005): 496.

⁶⁰Peter Meadmore, ‘Hard Times, Expedient Measures: Women Teachers in Queensland Rural Schools, 1920–50’, History of Education 28, no. 4 (1999): 438–9.

⁶¹Kay Whitehead, ‘Vocation, Career and Character in Early Twentieth-century Women Teachers’ Work in City Schools’, History of Education 34, no. 6 (2005): 585.

⁶²Ibid., 597.

⁶³Christina Florin, ‘Social Closure as a Professional Strategy: Male and Female Teachers from Co-operation to Conflict in Sweden, 1860–1906’, History of Education 20, no. 1 (1991): 17–18.

⁶⁵Christine Heward, ‘Men and Women and the Rise of Professional Society: The Intriguing History of Teacher Educators’, History of Education 22, no. 1 (1993): 11–12.

⁶⁴A particularly important influence was Harold Perkin, The Rise of Professional Society: England since 1880 (London: Routledge, 1980).

⁶⁶Elizabeth Edwards, ‘The Culture of Femininity in Women’s Teacher Training Colleges 1900–50’, History of Education 22, no. 3 (1993): 277–88; Elizabeth Edwards, ‘Women Principals, 1900–1960: Gender and Power’, History of Education 29, no. 5 (2000): 405–14; Kay Whitehead, ‘Contesting the 1944 McNair Report: Lillian de Lissa’s Working Life as a Teacher Educator’, History of Education 39, no. 4 (2010): 507–24.

⁶⁷Tim Rowland and Gill Hatch, ‘Learning to Teach? The Assistant Lecturer in Colleges of Education 1960–75’, History of Education 36, no. 1 (2007): 65–88.

⁶⁸Jacobs and Leach, ‘Teacher Training and the Public Good’, 213–28.

⁶⁹Meadmore, ‘Hard Times, Expedient Measures’; Whitehead, ‘Vocation, Career and Character’.

⁷⁰O’Donoghue and Austin, ‘The Evolution of a National System’.

⁷¹Herbst, ‘Nineteenth-century Normal Schools’.

⁷²Ronald Goodenow and Robert Cowen, ‘The American School of Education and the Third World in the Twentieth Century: Teachers College and Africa, 1920–1950’, History of Education 15, no. 4 (1986): 271–89; Ronald Goodenow, ‘The Progressive Educator and the Third World: A First Look at John Dewey’, History of Education 19, no. 1 (1990): 23–40; Luis Grosso Correia, ‘“The Right Kind of Education for the Right Individual”: Comparative Education Studies According to the Educational Yearbook of the Teachers College (1924–1944)’, History of Education 40, no. 5 (2011): 577–98.

⁷³De Vroede, ‘The History of Teacher Training’.

⁷⁴Tom A. O’Donoghue and Clive Whitehead, eds, Teacher Education in the English-Speaking World: Past, Present and Future (Charlotte, NC: Information Age Publishing, 2008)

⁷⁵Trouvé-Finding, ‘Teaching as a Woman’s Job’.

⁷⁶See Department for Education, The Importance of Teaching (White Paper) (London: The Stationery Office, 2010), 22–3.