Laura Tisdall
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781526132895
- eISBN:
- 9781526150417
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7765/9781526132901.00010
- Subject:
- Education, History of Education
This chapter considers the implementation of non-utopian progressivism in English and Welsh primary and secondary modern schools since 1918, contending that it was precisely because child-centred ...
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This chapter considers the implementation of non-utopian progressivism in English and Welsh primary and secondary modern schools since 1918, contending that it was precisely because child-centred practice was only ever half-implemented in primary and secondary modern schools in England and Wales that it transformed teachers’ concepts of childhood so profoundly. This chapter considers how teacher trainers, inspectors, headteachers and teachers shaped both theory and policy at the local level, using four case studies of LEAs: Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Sheffield and Monmouthshire. It suggests that non-utopian progressive education posed a threat to teachers’ notions of expertise, shaping a limited concept of the pupil that nevertheless served a practical purpose in the classroom, especially given large class sizes, poor buildings and scant apparatus.Less
This chapter considers the implementation of non-utopian progressivism in English and Welsh primary and secondary modern schools since 1918, contending that it was precisely because child-centred practice was only ever half-implemented in primary and secondary modern schools in England and Wales that it transformed teachers’ concepts of childhood so profoundly. This chapter considers how teacher trainers, inspectors, headteachers and teachers shaped both theory and policy at the local level, using four case studies of LEAs: Oxfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Sheffield and Monmouthshire. It suggests that non-utopian progressive education posed a threat to teachers’ notions of expertise, shaping a limited concept of the pupil that nevertheless served a practical purpose in the classroom, especially given large class sizes, poor buildings and scant apparatus.
