Brian Simon (1915-2002), a Marxist historian and educationist in Britain, was a leading pioneer in the comprehensive education movement. Although Simon's great contribution to this movement has been recognised by historians, the development of Simon's ideas and his actions in this movement have hardly been examined in great depth by previous…

Brian Simon (1915-2002) was a leading advocate of comprehensive education in the second half of the twentieth century in Britain. In the 1980s, in the face of the ideological offensive from the New Right, he firmly stood by Marxist ideals and resolutely resisted policies of the right-wing leading to the 1988 Education Reform Act. Despite this…

Science is a much-revised and contested area of the curriculum. A new curriculum has recently been introduced in England which includes far more mathematical aspects of science than previous versions. This study asks what the influences, ideologies and values are which led to this change. A two-phase qualitative approach was followed comprising…

This article considers the theoretical argument of anthropologist Tim Ingold, that the denial and subsequent encasement of bare feet in footwear was a critical characteristic of the development of modern societies, in exploring three aspects of feet, footwork, and footwear in the history of the modern school. First, the material conditions of feet…

This paper explores a three-year Creative Professional Development programme for teachers which encourages them to develop their skills as writers and illustrators in order to bring creative and original ideas about writing and illustrating into their classroom practice. The implicit message within such a programme is that without it, teachers,…

This paper first situates King Alfred in Winchester, in Wessex, in Anglo-Saxon England, and in the Christendom of the ninth century. Attention is drawn to Alfred's education, which included experience of court life in Wessex, Rome and Francia. The paper argues that Alfred prioritised vernacular literacy as a means of educating elites in a shared…

This paper traces long-standing philosophical, sociological and political tensions that have been at the core of narratives about state-funded teacher education, since its inception in England. These tensions are still visible today in debates around the professional knowledge of teachers, such as those described in Furlong (2013).…

Though there is a well-established body of research in the field of teacher professional development, it is characterised by a real dearth of any detailed historical analysis. This paper seeks to address this gap, by offering a new historical analysis of a case study of the evolution of organised teacher professional development in England and…

This article compares the development of citizenship education (CE) in Taiwan and England, as well as teachers' perceptions about the liberal and communitarian constructs underpinning the curriculum in both countries. Due to distinct social and political environments, the Taiwanese and English CE curricula demonstrate an interesting contrast.…

This article examines School Direct, a model of initial teacher education (ITE) in England, recently introduced by the coalition government and based on a paradigm of teaching as a craft to be learned as an apprenticeship, significantly reducing and in some cases removing the influence of higher education. The history of the move away from…

At the end of the nineteenth century Aime Bogaerts, a Socialist primary school teacher at a Ghent municipal school and from 1901 on the chief editor of the Socialist newspaper "Vooruit", began a new educational initiative: "the children of the popular classes from Ghent" ("De Gentsche Volkskinderen"). Children from…

This article reviews Bernard Barker's claims that "the pendulum is swinging", in relation to school markets and competition. Barker's arguments are complex in this regard. He rejects markets and competition as a means of improving outcomes and equity, but supports some of the system features that are often associated with marketisation,…

The New Social Studies movement was an effort by social scientists to reform US social studies/history curriculum at all levels during the 1960s and early 1970s. In the end, more than 50 different projects attempting to revitalise social studies were developed. Many of the projects focused on inquiry-based teaching practices and curriculum.…

The paper analyses and compares developments in history teaching in Germany, England, and the Netherlands in the 19th and 20th centuries. The development of history teaching in the three countries shows striking similarities. National politics have always used history education for purposes which did not necessarily tally with distanced critical…

The building of the English new universities during the 1960s symbolized the liberating possibilities of higher education. New institutions for a new age, their campuses were arguably part of a wider "utopianist" movement for community that sought to challenge academic elitism and conservatism. This paper considers the era of university…