Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-x4r87 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T14:13:06.030Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Educational History and Educational Change: The Past Decade of English Historiography

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Peter Cunningham*
Affiliation:
Curriculum Change in the Primary School Since 1945: Dissemination of the Progressive Ideal (London, 1988)

Extract

Commenting primarily on American and German educational historiography, Konrad H. Jarausch lamented that the “initial excitement” of the “new history of education” had abated and that education was no longer in the forefront of discussion in social or cultural history. Was this perception based upon an assumed coherence of the various trends which he described? Characteristic of the “new history,” according to Jarausch, had been, first, a radical criticism of the prevailing Whig tradition; secondly, a shift of focus from pedagogical ideas to social context; and thirdly, the adoption of social scientific techniques and quantification. All three features have contributed significantly to the development of research in British educational history, yet it would be artificial to postulate a unitary movement. Rather, various trends are visible, which reflect the institutional infrastructure within which history of education is produced in Britain. Changing priorities in and approaches to research in the history of education cannot be understood apart from the ties between the study of educational history and the institutional and research environments in which British historians and educationists work, as well as the wider context of contemporary educational politics.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © 1989 by the History of Education Society 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Jarausch, Konrad H., “The Old ‘New History of Education': A German Reconsideration,History of Education Quarterly 26 (Summer 1986): 225–41.Google Scholar

2 The need to take account of the institutional context of research has been mentioned in passing in Herbst, Jurgen, “The New History of Education in Europe,History of Education Quarterly 27 (Spring 1987): 5561.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Recent examples include the official History of the University of Oxford, a planned series of eight volumes, which began publication in 1984; Bush, Sargent Jr., and Rasmussen, Carl J., The Library of Emmanuel College, Cambridge, 1584–1637 (Cambridge, 1986); and for education beyond the formal institutions of learning, Nicholas Orme, From Childhood to Chivalry: The Education of the English Kings and Aristocracy, 1066–1530 (London, 1967); Morgan, John, Godly Learning: Puritan Attitudes towards Reason, Learning, and Education, 1560–1640 (Cambridge, 1986); and Chaney, Edward, “Quo Vadis? Travel as Education and the Impact of Italy in the Sixteenth Century,“ in International Currents in Educational Ideas and Practices: History of Education Society Conference Papers, 1987 (Leicester, 1988).Google Scholar

4 Of course, John Best's excellent collection indicates the diversity of the American enterprise in educational history, by no means all of which is geared to the progressivist/revisionist debate. Best, John H., ed., Historical Enquiry in Education: A Research Agenda (Washington, D.C., 1983).Google Scholar

5 Jarausch, , “The Old ‘New History of Education,'226.Google Scholar

6 DePaepe, Marc, On the Relationship of Theory and History in Pedagogy: An Introduction to the West German Dicussion on the Significance of the History of Education, 1950–1980 Studia Paedagogica New Series, no. 6 (Leuven, 1983).Google Scholar

7 A survey of developments to 1982 is provided by Brian Simon, “The History of Education in the 19808,” British Journal of Educational Studies 30 (Feb. 1982): 8596.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

8 History of Education (1972–), published by Taylor and Francis from volume 3 onwards. The Society also produces a series of Occasional Publications, collections of essays devoted to a particular theme, a series of Guides to Sources in the History of Education, and a regular List of Theses. Information on these publications is available from Starkey, Mrs. B. J., 4 Marydene Drive, Leicester LE5 6HD, United Kingdom.Google Scholar

9 This conference attended to the relationship of a structural functionalist sociology to history in the study of education, and the use of quantification and social science concepts of class in educational history; later developments in sociological method have not received a great deal of attention within the orbit of the History of Education Society.Google Scholar

10 The conference proceedings are published annually by the Society. For details of availability and cost, write to: Starkey, Mrs. B. J., 4 Marydene Drive, Leicester LE5 6HD, United Kingdom.Google Scholar

11 The term most commonly used in Britain to mean education of physically and mentally handicapped, or “exceptional children.” A substantial study recently produced by a historian of considerable repute is: John Hurt, Outside the Mainstream: A History of Special Education (Batsford, 1988).Google Scholar

12 A fact that may in part reflect the differences between America and Britain of scale and structure in the organization of research.Google Scholar

13 Simon, Brian, Does Education Matter? (London, 1985). Simon's three-volume history of British education from 1780 to 1940, Studies in the History of Education (London, 1960–74) has served as a standard text and point of reference, though its interpretations have not gone unchallenged, and a fourth volume covering the years after 1940 is awaited soon. His most recent engagement in contemporary political debate is Bending the Rules: The Baker ‘Reform’ of Education (London, 1988).Google Scholar

14 Silver, Harold, Education as History: Interpreting Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Education (London, 1983). Quotations on page 12.Google Scholar

15 Marsden, W. E., Unequal Educational Provision in England and Wales: The Nineteenth Century Roots (London, 1987).Google Scholar

16 Stephens, W. B., Education, Literacy, and Society, 1830–1870: The Geography of Diversity in Provincial England (Manchester, 1987). Anticipating this work was Stephens, W. B., ed., Studies in the History of Literacy, England and North America Educational Administration and History Monograph, no. 13 (Leeds, 1983); this was a collection of local studies of literacy in relation to factors such as schooling, industrialization, and sex, prefaced by Stephen's account of the achievement of literacy studies to date. Such studies have contributed significantly to modifying received opinions such as the inadequacy of private schools in the nineteenth century.Google Scholar

17 See, for example, Sanderson, M., “Literacy and Social Mobility in the Industrial Revolution in England,Past and Present 56 (1972): 75104; and Schofield, R. S., “The Measurement of Literacy in Pre-Industrial England,” in Literacy in Traditional Societies, ed. Goody, J. (Cambridge, 1968).Google Scholar

18 Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (London, 1963). Harrison, J. F. C., Learning and Living, 1790–1960: A Study in the History of the English Adult Education Movement (London, 1961) was also a seminal text.Google Scholar

19 Other examples of journals commencing publication in this decade include the Bulletin of the Society for the Study of Labour History (1960–) and Urban History Newsletter (1963–). The journal Social History began publication as late as 1976 (its American equivalent, the Journal of Social History, dating from 1967). Regional history began to receive serious academic coverage in journals such as Northern History (1966–), followed at a discreet distance by Midland History (1971–) and Southern History (1979–). It is reasonable to argue that many local history societies and publications turned their attention to social aspects and community history, including education, from this time, although the evidence is too diverse and extensive to be documented here.Google Scholar

20 Language and History: History Workshop 14, Brighton, 14–15 Nov. 1980“ (Printed but not published).Google Scholar

21 Other contributors to the conference whose work has been much concerned with the history of education included Keith Hoskin, “Reading Aloud in Nineteenth Century Elementary Education”; David Hamilton, “The Grouping of Children in Nineteenth Century Elementary Schools”; Clive Griggs, “Conservatism and Its Application to Education”; and Richard Johnson, “From Nineteenth Century Official Education Reports to the UNESCO Discourse.” Other educationists and linguistic theorists included Harold Rosen, “A Study of Language in Schools, 1944–1980”; and Jacqueline Rose, “Peter Pan as Written for the Child.”Google Scholar

22 Humphries, Stephen, Hooligans or Rebels? An Oral History of Working-Class Children and Youth, 1889–1939 (Oxford, 1981).Google Scholar

23 Gardner, Phil, The Lost Elementary Schools of Victorian England: The People's Education (London, 1984), 2.Google Scholar

24 Orme, , From Childhood to Chivalry.Google Scholar

25 Education Group, Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (University of Birmingham), Unpopular Education: Schooling and Social Democracy in England since 1944 (London, 1981). A leading figure in the group was Johnson, Richard, whose earlier work on the politics of nineteenth-century education provided an important critique of the “Whig tradition” and who has contributed significantly to the History Workshop.Google Scholar

26 Lowe, Roy, Education in the Post-War Years: A Social History (London, 1988).Google Scholar

27 Griggs, Clive, The Trades Union Congress and the Struggle for Education, 1868–1925 (Sussex, Eng., 1983).Google Scholar

28 A substantial recent contribution to this field, representative, too, of the way in which social historians concerned with childhood and family have made their contribution to history of education in the widest sense, is: Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850 (Chicago, 1987).Google Scholar

29 Nettleship, R. L., ed., Works of Thomas Hill Green 3 vols. (London, 1906): 475; for a more recent period: Heward, C., Making a Man of Him: Parents and Their Sons’ Education at an English Public School 1929–50 (London, 1988).Google Scholar

30 Fletcher, Sheila, Feminists and Bureaucrats: A Study in the Development of Girls’ Education in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1980).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

31 Allsobrook, David, Schools for the Shires: The Reform of Middle-Class Education in Mid-Victorian England (Manchester, 1986).Google Scholar

32 Mangan, J. A., Athleticism in the Victorian and Edwardian Public School (Cambridge, 1981); idem, The Games Ethic and Imperialism: Aspects of the Diffusion of an Ideal (New York, 1986). The work of Christine Heward applies social class and gender analysis to the study of public school education.Google Scholar

33 Steedman, C., Urwin, C., and Walkerdine, V., eds., Language, Gender, and Childhood (London, 1984); Summerfield, P., ed., Women, Education, and the Professions History of Education Society Occasional Publications, no. 8 (Leicester, 1987).Google Scholar

34 One of the papers delivered was published: Grosvenor, Ian, “A Different Reality: Education and the Racialization of the Black Child,History of Education 16 (Dec. 1987): 299308.Google Scholar

35 Cooper, Barry, Renegotiating Secondary School Mathematics: A Study of Curriculum Change and Stability (London, 1985), for example, makes substantial use of the model of Bucher, R. and Strauss, A. L. in interpreting the role of teachers in curriculum change.Google Scholar

36 Goodson, Ivor, “Towards a History of Curriculum,History of Education Society Bulletin 35 (Spring 1985): 48.Google Scholar

37 Goodson, Ivor and Ball, Stephen, eds., Defining the Curriculum: Histories and Ethnographies (London, 1984). Goodson had broached this treatment of curriculum history earlier in School Subjects and Curriculum Change (London, 1983), in which differentiated curricula and social structure were shown to be closely matched, and teachers’ material self-interest was a significant factor in curriculum determination.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

38 Goodson, Ivor, ed., Social Histories of the Secondary School Curriculum: Subjects for Study (London, 1985).Google Scholar

39 Cooper, , Renegotiating Secondary School Mathematics.Google Scholar

40 Geoffrey Howson, Alan, A History of Mathematics Education in England (Cambridge, 1982).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41 Layton, David, Interpreters of Science: A History of the Association for Science Education (London, 1984).Google Scholar

42 Evans, B. and Waites, B., IQ and Mental Testing: An Unnatural Science and Its Social History (London, 1980); Sutherland, G., Ability, Merit and Measurement: Mental Testing and English Education, 1880–1940 (Oxford, 1984).Google Scholar