This article examines the Japanese historical concept of nature in early childhood education and care (ECEC). Through modernisation, Japan was infused with Anglo-European philosophy. However, Japan's pre-modern concept of nature differed from that of the West or modern Japan and latently affected the Japanese modern educational system. The concept…

Beryl Gilroy (1924-2001) is often referred to as one of the first Black primary school headteachers in London, England. Her refusal to continue teaching in schools once she reached her fifties has not been explored in recent publications. Her interest in sound, pedagogy and therapeutic recovery can be revisited retrospectively. She strove to…

The nation-state remains fundamental to our understanding of nineteenth-century schooling, which is commonly referred to in terms of national school systems or national education systems. While nineteenth-century school systems were often national in scope and promoted with the purpose of creating nationally minded citizens, this article examines…

This paper brings together the ideas of three writers from the 1880s who argued for an enhanced status for history in the school curriculum. Although there is superficial agreement between the writers in calling for history to develop children's citizenship and patriotism, each conceives these values differently. Focusing on the teaching of…

The article explores the notions of children's intellectual 'ab/normality' that were conceptualised in the context of emerging special educational measures at the turn of the twentieth century and the concomitant notions of child development. From the mid-nineteenth century onwards, the medical classification of 'idiocy' provided the framework for…

This article sheds new light on the genesis and development of school supervision, and also on relations between teachers' milieu and inspectors in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, focusing on the experiences from Galicia, a crown land of the Habsburg monarchy, existing in the years 1772-1918. Drawing on Michel Foucault's…

When the Turkish Republic was founded, it inherited a Western-oriented modernisation project from its predecessor, the Ottoman Empire. The republican ruling class was determined to further this legacy, and education was used as a tool for the eventuation of this project. One of the essential elements of this tool was textbook images. This article…

The "Belle Époque" quest for a modern beauty (an 'art nouveau') extended into France's system of free primary schooling, established in the 1880s by the Third Republic to educate the popular masses. Design reformers' belief in the underlying unity of the fine and applied arts, and their growing emphasis on the importance of individual…

Reading methods are valuable cultural and educational objects. They guide students into the world of the written word and, since the end of the nineteenth century, they have associated letters, sounds and words with illustrations. In French schools, in the reading methods published between 1880 and 1960, the word 'boxing' was often associated with…

Drawing from the Sheldon and Manktelow collections at SUNY Oswego's Penfield Library, along with sociological criteria for a profession -- graduate-level training, autonomy, peer evaluation and responsibility to the public -- this article reassesses Oswego State Normal School's impact on nineteenth-century teacher education. Descriptions of Oswego…

This research critically examines the efforts of the British State and the various churches to re-vision the character and status of elementary school teachers in Ireland between the 1830s and the 1920s. In a climate of regular political revolution and denominational hostility, the Westminster government and all churches were anxious to promote…

By exploring demographic data on teachers through a Bordieusian lens, this study aims to analyse the socio-economic background of primary school teachers in northern Sweden depending on gender and type. The rural area under study follows a national development where the number of primarily female teachers and junior school teachers increased…

In the early 1880s, Belgian educators were confronted for the first time with calls for the use of the optical lantern in schools. Around the same time, new pedagogical theories gained ground, which argued in favour of visually aided, more experiential forms of teaching. By investigating the pedagogical discourse on the introduction and use of…

A long tradition of both State and religious interest and support characterised provision for education on the island of Ireland from the 1700s. Following the partition of Ireland in the 1920s, the newly created political entities of the Irish Free State and Northern Ireland forged separate and distinct education policy trajectories that largely…

By the time political independence was achieved in the 1920s in Ireland, its national education system over the previous century had been underpinned by imperial ideology and values. In the early 1920s, curriculum planning was influenced by the post-revolutionary and post-war context and, unsurprisingly, placed an emphasis on building nationhood…