Susannah Wright

Reviewing the Literature on the Student Learning Experience in Higher Education.

This paper reports on the work of a six-month review project commissioned by the Higher Education Academy which aimed at mapping the research base around the student learning experience in higher education (HE). The project aimed to: (1) provide an overview of the ways in which the student learning experience in HE has been and is conceptualised; (2) provide an overview of interventions aimed at producing a more effective learning experience; and (3) review the methodological approaches adopted to investigate the student learning experience. The paper outlines the review approach adopted by this project and presents an analytical map in which reviewed studies are categorised in terms of the methods they adopt and the area of investigation. Selected findings in the areas of inventory-based studies, assessment and feedback and teaching, curriculum and learning environments are discussed. The project identified a large, but broad, heterogeneous and somewhat scattered research base, dominated by a tradition of studies using inventory methods, and otherwise by small and localised studies often conducted by practitioners researching their own subject areas. The paper concludes with a discussion of the strengths and weaknesses of the projects methods, and recommendations for developing the student learning experience research base in the future.

Citizenship, Religion and Education

The articles in this special issue of History of Education are based on papers given at the 2010 annual conference of the History of Education Society, held at the Garden Halls, London, on 26-28 November, on the theme of ‘Citizenship, Religion and Education’. Over the three days, attendance peaked at 105, with delegates coming from Australia, Brazil, Canada, the Canary Islands, Denmark, Guam, India, Ireland, the Isle of Man, Israel, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Spain and the USA, as well as the UK. In terms of participation, it was a record-breaking conference, with excellent keynote addresses, including the Presidential Address, plus over 70 delegate papers, including nine work-in-progress presentations by postgraduate students. Three of the plenary papers are included in this special issue, plus a further two articles from delegates. Other papers delivered over the weekend have been, or will be, published as books, book chapters and academic articles, with further papers to feature in History of Education during 2012 and beyond. The relationship between citizenship and religion in education is complex and has long been contested. For example, citizenship has been associated with a particular set of moral values and behaviours, as well as certain types of political participation and activity within local, national and global arenas. At an international level, advances in scientific knowledge during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries variously raised concerns among politicians, self-styled patriots and faith leaders that selfishness and narcissism were supplanting principles of duty and gratitude. These sentiments often found expression in discussions of school curricula. For example, in England, H.C. Beeching, a poet and clergyman, contended in a 1906 letter to The Times that:

Teachers, family and community in the urban elementary school: evidence from English school log books c.1880–1918

Researchers have identified a civilising mission in elementary schools in the decades around the turn of the twentieth century, particularly in poor urban areas. School log books from the 14 schools in Birmingham and Leicester, supplemented by other primary and secondary sources, are examined for insights into how headteachers perceived, and acted towards, their pupils and pupils’ families. This article explores ways of reading and analysing log books, and considers their value as a historical source. It considers how far headteachers – particularly those working in schools in poor urban areas – were able to intervene in practice in the lives of their pupils, and the implications of this analysis for thinking about the work of teachers in the present day.

‘There is something universal in our movement which appeals not only to one country, but to all’: international communication and moral education 1892–1914

This article examines international communication around moral education in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and the role of the ethical movement in facilitating this communication. Three moments of international communication are analysed. The first, in the 1890s, involves the dissemination of Felix Adler’s book The Moral Instruction of Children among English moral educators. The second, in 1908, involves the report of a major international inquiry, and the first International Moral Education Congress in London. The third examines Frederick James Gould’s tours of the USA and India between 1911 and 1914. The ethical movement’s ideology and organisational structures meant it was well placed to stimulate international communication about moral education, well beyond the movement’s boundaries. But it is less clear that this communication led to educational reform or sustained activity, or that there was a shared understanding – ideological or pedagogical – of moral education that crossed national borders.

The work of teachers and others in and around a Birmingham slum school 1891–1920

The ‘Floodgate Street area’ was a notorious slum district in the city of Birmingham in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This article presents a case study, drawing on the rich archival sources available for this area, to examine the language that local authority and voluntary workers used to describe the local area, and their engagement with local children in terms of welfare provision and punitive measures. The work of teachers at Floodgate Street School is located within a local discourse of urban poverty, and within local attempts to improve conditions for the inhabitants of slum areas. Local activities and discussions are contextualised within broader debates concerning slums and patterns of welfare. This article places schools at the centre of a historiography of urban poverty and welfare from which education is largely absent. It explores the possibilities, and limitations, of using the local archival record for this sort of analysis.

Educating the secular citizen in English schools, 1897–1938

Abstract This article examines secularists’ efforts over 41 years to shape civic morality and civic culture in their own image. Through pressure groups – the Moral Instruction League (1897–c.1923) and the League of Nations Union (1919–1938) – activists aimed to create secular citizens in English schools. In so doing, they aimed to act as ‘agents of secularisation’. Some (limited) political influence was achieved, and their publications reached many thousands. Yet campaigners were unable to unite a majority of Christians, or even all secularists, behind their proposals. The process of forming the non-Christian citizen proved a complex one, involving shifting alliances, dialogue and compromise.

The Positivist World Citizen: F. S. Marvin and F. J. Gould in the League of Nations Union, 1919–1939

This chapter examines the educational activities of two Positivists, F. J. Gould and the Oxford-educated Inspector of Schools, F. S. Marvin, within the League of Nations Union (LNU) between 1919 and 1939. This was a period when, wanting to avoid a repeat of the horrors of the First World War, both Christians and secularists focused on educating citizens of the world. Wright considers Marvin’s and Gould’s promotion of their Positivist-flavoured versions of world citizenship within this major pressure group, Marvin through his suggestions for internationalist history teaching, and Gould through his League lessons and his periodical for pupils, League News. Through the LNU’s influential channels their proposals reached many teachers and pupils. But Marvin and Gould were a minority within a predominantly Christian organisation.

Religion, Secularism and Education

In ‘Religion, Secularism and Education’ Wright offers a contextual discussion that situates the case studies of secularist activism that follow. She outlines historians’ current understanding of the organisational strength and cultural influence of Christianity before 1944. A cultural script of Christian citizenship remained significant until after this date, but there has been considerable debate over whether this meant high levels of individual commitment or a more passive acquiescence. Wright also introduces the key secularist groups—the National Secular Society, the Positivists and the Ethical Movement—and the many individual agnostics who adopted a humanist moral code without affiliating to an organisation. The chapter outlines Christian and secularist educational programmes as a basis for the specific focus on moral and civic instruction in the rest of the book.

International Dimensions of Moral Education, 1892–1914

In this chapter, Wright explores secularist activities within an international context. Ethical Movement proposals and organisational channels enabled ideas and people to influence a wide, international audience of educators. Three examples of international activity are considered: first, Felix Adler’s American-based proposals influencing Ethical Movement educators in England; secondly, the publication of an international inquiry and the First International Moral Education Congress in 1908; and finally F. J. Gould’s demonstration tours in America and India on behalf of the Moral Instruction League between 1911 and 1914. Wright shows that Ethical Movement channels provided secularists with a broad, international influence among educators, including Christian ones. But the transfer of its proposals between different cultural and linguistic contexts was not straightforward; the universality that activists desired proved elusive.

The Faith of the Democrat: The Association for Education in Citizenship, 1934–1944

In this chapter, Wright considers the Association for Education in Citizenship (AEC), a pressure group that aimed, through educational means, to protect parliamentary democracy against the perceived threat of totalitarianism overseas. The AEC’s founders, Ernest Simon and Eva Hubback, were agnostics but not attached to secularist organisations. They outlined a ‘humanist’ approach to education for democratic citizenship. Nevertheless, in an organisation containing many Christians, their position was stated alongside a Christian one. Christian versions of democratic citizenship won through in the form of the 1944 Education Act and its provisions for compulsory acts of worship and religious instruction, the cultural climate of the Second World War encouraging apparently widespread support for these proposals. Wright shows that secularists, by this time organisationally depleted, failed to coordinate a major opposition campaign.