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 article considers the emergence and meaning of a particular kind of surveillance in classrooms: the one represented by the gaze of the teacher. Drawing on teaching manuals and other normative material published between the 1820s and the 1960s, it is argued that the optical regime of the classroom underwent a decisive change during the second…

Broadening horizons beyond nations, transnational histories trace global flows connecting people and places. Historians have studied the New Education Fellowship (NEF) as a global network. Focused within the nation, research on New Zealand's involvement with NEF has emphasised how its activities before the Second World War impacted on the Labour…

This article discusses rural schoolteachers' relationships with local village communities in mid-twentieth-century Finland. At the time, Finnish rural teachers were typically very public figures in their local community. To deal with the pressures of their position, teachers resorted to coping strategies which the authors name "local"…

This paper explores the role of physical education in Labour Universities (1955-1978) during Franco's regime as an instrument of indoctrination and declassing of the working class. The conclusions obtained after the study and the analysis of various primary sources indicate that, initially, physical education was used as an instrument of…

The Committee of Vice-chancellors and Principals (CVCP) was a leading collective body for British universities for most of the twentieth century, yet there has been very little historical study of its organisation and work. Brief references tend to be dismissive of its effectiveness, although some authors have been more favourable. This article…

Whilst much has been written on the role and function of the elite schools in Hitler's vision for his "thousand-year Reich," this article focuses on an area within the history of the Ordensburgen that has not been examined -- that is, the content of training for particular groups given at these elite educational institutions during the…

This article aims to give an overview of the use and the meaning of images in two types of school textbooks used in Spain from the early twentieth century until the end of the 1960s: the textbooks "Lecciones de cosas" ("object lessons") and those used for the teaching of religion. For this analysis the iconographic-iconological…

This paper explores the historical formation of the National School Lunch Program (NSLP) in the United States and argues that programme emergence depended on the ability of policy entrepreneurs to link the economic concerns of agricultural production with the ideational concern of national security. Using a historical institutionalist framework…

From 1563 until the death of the last teacher in 1851, there was a prebendary in the Cathedral of the Canary Islands in charge of the education of children. In fact, it could be said that this prebendary was the only continuous secondary school teacher there was in the Canary Islands until the beginning of the nineteenth century when the High…

Religious organisations have long relied on education to transmit cherished values, working within society to preserve their worldview. Therefore, when a religious education system is restructured, it can act as a barometer of change, revealing societal values and reflecting negotiated roles. Like other faiths, the Church of Jesus Christ of…

The economic difficulties currently being experienced in the United Kingdom have served to further intensify debates about the role different kinds of education could and should play in both preparing individuals for work and boosting economic growth. However, these contemporary and historical debates have tended to neglect vocational guidance.…

Studies in the history of physical education show that it was often promoted for socio-political reasons: to stimulate nation-building or increase economic productivity and/or military strength. By contrast, a different kind of motivation has received little attention in historical studies: the importance of physical education for the perfection…

Recalling its origins as a research journal addressing educationists this article seeks to understand historical research published in "History of Education" as aimed at a professional audience. Primary schooling provides a significant focus as the study of education history was fostered especially in the training of elementary…

Several European countries were unable to match student numbers with labour market demand during the nineteenth century. The causes of this mismatch may be found in the organisation of higher education and the funding of students. Drawing on a variety of sources, this paper compares financial support available to Reformed and Catholic theology…