This paper argues that Aboriginal children's engagement with education in the central Australian region of the Northern Territory in the mid-twentieth century can be understood as strategic engagements with formal western education systems and assimilation policies. It addresses a methodological problem stemming from a project that focuses on the…

This paper argues for the need to better understand the role of mothers and schooling in shaping modern conservative cultural politics. Arguing that 1970s-1980s was a critical period for anti-progressive politics surrounding schooling, the paper examines the activism of Australian Christian morals campaigner Rona Joyner. Joyner's successful…

Purpose: This paper explores the context within which experimental, pedagogically progressive schools were established in Australia during the first decades of the 20th century. Design/methodology/approach: The paper presents a case study of the establishment of Rosbercon Girls' Grammar School. It draws on educator accounts, archival documents and…

Narratives of international educational exchange programmes such as the US-sponsored Fulbright and the Commonwealth-centred Carnegie grants reveal the formative role these exchanges played in extending the geographical, scholarly, and professional boundaries of women's worlds. Notably, these award schemes influenced, shaped and expanded the career…

Between 1870 and 1940, 25 white, middle-class, Australian-born women studied at Girton and Newnham Colleges in Cambridge. This article presents their biographical data, and includes all those listed as Australian-born in Volume 1 of the Girton Register and in the "Newnham College Roll" for the period under review. The article examines…

Purpose: The article sets out primarily to fill in some of the gaps in the biography of Lucy Arabella Stocks Garvin (1851-1938), first principal of Sydney Girls High School. As a reflexive exercise stimulated by this biographical research, the second aim is to explore the transformative work of digital sources on the researcher's research…

This essay proposes a feminist research agenda on the history of women teachers' experiences in the latter stages of their career and life. Drawing on extant histories of white women elementary and secondary teachers in the largely Anglo, western world (centred on the United States, Canada, England, Australia and Ireland), the essay explores the…

In contemporary Australia, an informed citizenry and a workforce with strong STEM-related skills are increasingly taken for granted. Yet it has also been well-established that females are underrepresented in STEM-related fields. In this article, Helen Forgasz and Gilah Leder focus on the M in STEM, that is, mathematics, and with a particular…

This paper highlights the need for studies to be undertaken on Irish women who became 'female religious' in Roman Catholic religious communities and who taught in Australian schools up until 1922. The paper is structured in three parts. It opens by outlining the international context that gave rise to the existence of these personnel in Australia.…

Purpose: Soon after its establishment in 1863, the Board of Education -- the body responsible for administering public education in Victoria -- determined that a system of universal mixed (coeducational) schooling would be adopted in the colony. Existing single-sex departments were "encouraged", or compelled, to amalgamate, and no new…

A sense of belonging is an important factor for the persistence of girls in the study of physics. Content and imagery that presents the field as a masculine domain will undermine belonging and make it more difficult for girls to establish a physics identity that is congruent with their gender identity. The physics syllabus, final examinations and…

This open access book offers a unique and refreshing view on working with social theory in higher education. Using engaging first-person accounts coupled with critical intellectual analysis, the authors demonstrate how theory is grappled with as part of an ongoing practice rather than a momentary disembodied encounter. In a structure that creates…

Building on the author's previous work on Australian national cinema and schooling, this article explores the representation of the female primary school teacher in the television mini-series entitled "Marion" (Australian Broadcasting Commission, 1974). Using narrative analysis, it argues that this representation is disruptive of…

This paper traces the development of sport in the two female residential colleges (Women's and Sancta Sophia) at the University of Sydney. While the University of Sydney male residential colleges established an intercollegiate sporting competition in 1907 (Rawson Cup), it was not until 1958 that the female residential colleges established an…

This paper reports the findings of an analysis of a collection of Statutory Declaration forms completed by teachers seeking exemption from dismissal under the "NSW Married Women (Lecturers and Teachers) Act" (1932-1947). Most sought exemption on hardship grounds, recording details of their husbands' inability or unwillingness to provide…