Joyce Goodman

Editorial: History of Education - defining a field

As we take over the editorship of History of Education from Gary McCulloch, we are taking this opportunity to review briefly the form and direction of debates in History of Education since its first issue in 1972. In so doing, we would like to indicate the range of interests reflected in the journal and to chart the concerns and concepts which have dominated both general issues and special issues in the 32 years since the journal was founded. We have been interested to explore what historians have written about, the various methods and methodologies they have employed and the attempts to transcend established academic boundaries. We have also looked for historical silences. As the journal has flourished under its successive editors, it has made important contributions to history of education as a field of study. In seeking to understand History of Education we have looked through the conceptual lens of Bourdieu’s metaphor of ‘field’ and his interrelated notion of ‘habitus’. For Bourdieu, the field is a space of struggle in which activity is structured and boundaries controlled, and a social system that functions according to its own specific logic or rules. Habitus has to do with ‘the internalized set of tacit rules governing strategies and tactics in the field’. Unspoken rules, values and norms are established and legitimacy invested in those agents implicitly recognized as powerful possessors of symbolic capital relevant for the specific field under examination. Bourdieu is insistent that researchers recognize their own location in the field. So, he alerts us that our interpretation of the journal’s past inevitably reflects aspects of our own biography, experience and interest. Consequently, our review constitutes one endeavour, among those possible, to canvas the historical agendas, research perspectives, methods, methodologies and underlying theoretical frameworks used by the journal’s contributors. Malcolm Seaborne’s first editorial clearly stated that the definition of education should be taken in as broad a context as possible. This would include both formal education systems and informal educational processes. In 1976 Kenneth Charlton, as new editor, made a public statement about editorial policy in which he reminded readers of the journal’s roots in the British History of Education Society. Reiterating the mission and purpose of the journal at its inception, he stressed the importance of dissemination and the need for historians of education to be heard. In a reference back to the journal’s inaugural

Empires overseas and empires at home : postcolonial and transnational perspectives on social change in the history of education

Taylor and Francis CPDH_A_438639.sgm 10.1080/003092 0903384619 P edagogica Historica 0 30-9230 (pri t)/1477-674X (online) Original Article 2 09 & Francis 45 6 00De ember 2009 rofess r Joyc G od an Jo c .Goodm @winchester.ac.uk This collection of work grew out of an international symposium sponsored by the History of Education Society UK and held in Hamburg in 2007. The symposium aimed to contribute to understandings of different approaches to researching the extent to which education has contributed historically to social change in respect of “empires overseas” and “empires at home”. This twin focus on “empires overseas” and “empires at home” also reflects more recent developments in historiography away from the uni-directional flows from “centre” to “periphery” that has framed much colonial and imperial history and studies of education and empire.1 In particular, research published under the auspices of the International Standing Conference for the History of Education (ISCHE) has taken forward international study of the history of education and empire. The current collection brings together many of these emerging developments in the international field. It represents historiographical debates within the history of education that engage with broader historical research and recent insights in the social sciences. It is also very timely, as it seeks to contribute to a new phase of global scholarship that, while remaining conscious of the difficult challenges of transnationalism and the postcolonial era2 and the legacy of 9/11, attempts to draw

Working for Change across International Borders: The Association of Headmistresses and Education for International Citizenship.

This article contributes to the retrieval of the ‘lost history’ of interwar internationalism that is increasingly receiving attention from historians of education. 2 It traces the involvement of the English Association of Headmistresses (AHM) in a range of organizations that networked women educationists with women’s organizations, with educational organizations and with international organizations working towards international peace in the interwar period. The focus of the paper is the development of an international orientation in the AHM and in girls’ secondary schools through association with, and interest in, the League of Nations. Its subject matter is citizenship: the citizenship practised via the professional engagement of headmistresses through the AHM and as individuals with ideals of international understanding; and the development of an internationally oriented secondary school curriculum for girls and, in particular, the development of a history curriculum for ‘world citizenship’. Both are discussed in relation to the version of the ‘international’ that arose in the League of Nations in the aftermath of the First World War to adjudicate and resolve conflicts between nations. This was linked to a view of discrete nation‐states in a period when the borders and boundaries between nation‐states in Europe were shifting. The article adopts a transnational methodology to investigate the ‘international’ and ways in which national and transnational flows were transversed by longer‐standing colonial relations. The article begins by discussing the increasing involvement of women educationists in transnational flows of teachers, promoted initially by the AHM’s engagement with aspects of British imperial mission. It traces ways in which the Association’s increasingly internationalist orientation ran alongside and was linked to older concerns about empire but also fostered much interest in League of Nations activities and curriculum development around citizenship education for girls. This section of the article looks ‘outward’ from the AHM towards the League of Nations and the women’s organizations associated with the League. It analyses three issues that weave through the AHM’s dealings with the League of Nations: representation; disarmament and world peace; and citizenship. It moves to look ‘inward’ from the AHM to schools by examining these issues at the level of the local and the national, within the global development of international ideas and movements, through League of Nations activities at Manchester High School for Girls. 1 Thanks to Dr Joy of Manchester High School for her help with archival research. 2 Lawn, M. “Reflecting the Passion: Mid‐century Projects for Education.” History of Education 33, no. 3 (2004): 512; Nóvoa, A., and M. Lawn. Fabricating Europe: The Making of an Educational Space. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2002; Watkins, C. “Inventing International Citizenship: Badminton School and the Progressive Tradition between the Wars.” History of Education . Available from http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/0046760X.asp ; Lawn, M. “Circulations and Exchanges: Emergence of Scientific Cosmopolitanism in Educational Research.” Paper presented at the Congress of Historical Sciences (CISH), Sydney, 2005; Fuchs, E. “Towards Global Educational Politics: The role of Transnational Educational Organizations in the Twentieth Century.” Paper presented at the International Standing Conference for the History of Education (ISCHE), Sydney, 2005; Rogers, R. “Questioning National Models: The History of Women Teachers in a Comparative Perspective.” Paper presented at the International Federation for Research in Women’s History (IFRWH), Sydney, 2005.

Educational research—history of education a curious case?

The article begins with an exploration of the current state of history of education by drawing on published reviews of history of education, thematic analysis of journal content, and mapping of postgraduate study. It then highlights ‘moments of insecurity’. These are characterised by a particular discourse that frames the future of the discipline in particular ways to suggest that history of education is dependent on concerted strategic decisions in response to ‘moments of challenge’ resulting from institutional change, and particularly in response to the disappearance of history of education from teacher education. Rather than seeing ‘moments of insecurity’ as stages of disintegration for disciplines the article argues that they can constitute ‘moments of opportunity’ when disciplines reach out to spaces shared with other disciplines to develop interdisciplinary ways of working. The article then discusses ‘moments of curiosity’ that enrich the methodological and substantive development of the history of education. In history of education, ‘moments of curiosity’ have occurred on the basis of intellectual exchange in a dialogic associational way within networks rather than being a direct outcome of strategic responses to ‘moments of insecurity’. They are resulting in organic growth that is developing the landscape of history of education in several ways. The article ends by pointing to the importance of an historical dimension for bringing contextual understanding to enrich contemporary research and by stressing the need within the discipline for researchers (individually or collectively) to develop an eye for ‘intelligence’ and strategic vision to link their interests with current challenges in order to highlight lacunae in current practice in and for education.

Women and international intellectual co-operation

The article explores ways in which intellectual co-operation at the League of Nations [SDN] provided a space for the engagement of culturally elite women in intellectual co-operation circles in Geneva, Paris and a range of national contexts stretching across Europe, Latin America and Asia. It discusses the language of the “international mind” and of “moral disarmament” that built on understandings of international co-operation, underpinned by an approach to sovereignty that transcended the nation state. In addition to charting the engagement of women with the International Committee of Intellectual Co-operation [ICIC] at Geneva, the article looks at the links between international women’s organisations and women ICIC members and experts on ICIC sub-committees. The article uses the International Federation of University Women’s [IFUW] work on the equivalence of university degrees to illustrate how transnational women’s networks progressed the work of the SDN.

The gendered politics of historical writing in History of Education

This article looks through the lens of the gendered politics of historical writing at the main forms and direction of scholarship on gender in History of Education since its publication. It discusses how social, women’s, feminist and gender history has been treated in the journal and how developing approaches around the body, space, materiality, and the construction of the archive, are informing the production of new knowledge around gender. The article argues that History of Education has contributed to ways in which gender has been imagined in historical reconstruction and analysis. As the gendered politics of history has been treated in the journal, gender analysis has contributed to the development of history of education as discipline. The article concludes that in re-writing and re-theorising traditional educational history, the radical openness of the future of gender analysis lies in the continuing transformation of gender analysis itself.

A Cloistered Ethos? Landscapes of Learning and English Secondary Schools for Girls: an Historical Perspective

The nineteenth‐century founders of academic girls’ secondary schools in England often used an existing building, frequently a former dwelling‐house, adding to it as resources increased and curricula developed, before moving to a purpose‐built school as the venture prospered. As municipal secondary schools for girls developed in England in the wake of the 1902 Education Act, and girls’ grammar schools flourished in the wake of the 1944 Act, new buildings were increasingly provided. The newer state‐maintained schools drew on longer‐standing patterns in the siting of girls’ schools related to both gender and class, which saw schools sited in former stately homes, around rail and bus networks, and in ‘healthy’ locations. The paper analyses entries in the Girls’ School Yearbook from 1906 to 1995, to demonstrate the ‘healthy’ siting of many girls’ schools on the brow of a hill. Well into the second half of the twentieth century, the height of a school’s position above sea level and the type of soil on which the school was built were frequently cited as significant features, taking pride of place before the aims of the school, its curriculum, examination and admission policy. For many state‐educated girls today, longstanding Victorian and Edwardian concerns that girls’ education was detrimental to health have a legacy in a trudge up hills in all weathers as the prelude to a day’s academic work at school.

Troubling histories and theories: gender and the history of education

Introduction In this paper I reflect on ways in which history and theory interact to inform my historical practice. I point to resonances between the historical practice I adopt as catalyst to my thinking and aspects of montage developed by Walter Benjamin. To demonstrate this process, in an experimental form of writing, I juxtapose examples from historical sources, historiography and theory to raise questions about early nineteenth-century women educationists’ deployment of the languages of ‘active citizenship’ and to reflect on ‘writing women back’ into the historiography of educational thought. I argue that Benjamin provides one approach to theory consistent with the way gender as a lens of analysis ‘troubles’ histories and theories of education and the relation between them.

Travelling Careers: Overseas Migration Patterns in the Professional Lives of Women Attending Girton and Newnham before 1939.

This paper explores the migration patterns of women who studied at Girton and Newnham prior to 1939 through whom dissemination of knowledge and values flowed from Cambridge overseas. It also considers organisations that fostered women’s mobility in empire, particularly the Colonial Intelligence League for Educated Women and the International Federation of University Women. The former exemplified links with empire and Europe and dissemination of imperial values and practices, while the latter fostered women’s international mobility around interwar notions of the ‘international mind’ and links with the League of Nations. It ends by looking at the work of Cambridge‐educated women in League of Nations structures. The article addresses cultural transmission through a prosopographical approach to mobility to illustrate the larger patterns constituted by the myriad individual lives that formed themselves in networks, relationships, institutions and careers across a global canvas. For some Cambridge‐educated women the notion of career included shifting combinations of paid employment, voluntary activity and domestic and familial responsibilities. While teaching formed their main occupation and the most direct medium for dissemination of knowledge and values, it must be seen alongside a more diverse range of occupations in which academic values might also be embedded. It is argued that values and practices of empire and commonwealth became inflected in internationalism in new ways, and the authors point to the need for further research into the role that Cambridge‐educated women played in the tensions of empire, commonwealth and internationalism.

Cosmopolitan women educators, 1920-1939: inside/outside activism and abjection

This article explores Thomas Popkewitz’s and Kwame Appiah’s discussion of cosmopolitanism by looking at practices, spaces and subjectivities in the work of three little‐known women, Amelie Arato, Amni Hallsten‐Kallia and Rachel Gampert. It examines cosmopolitanism through systems of knowledge, unpacks cosmopolitanism and gender at particular historical moments, and looks at national as well as international narratives. Arato provides a starting point to look at practices, at challenges and tensions of cosmopolitanism as modes of enquiry, at conversations across borders through the scientisation of knowledge, and at categories that locate women in in‐between spaces that both include and exclude. With Hallsten‐Kallia, the challenges and tensions of cosmopolitanism as movement through social space for women form the focus. Here, conversations across borders from her insider/outsider position illuminate gender, positionality and opportunities, and limitations on agency within the making of the woman cosmopolitan. Gampert’s concern with the married woman teacher becomes a springboard to think about subjectivities, challenges and tensions for cosmopolitanism in holding together divergent national narratives and a universal frame.