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The purpose of this paper is to present a theoretical overview of the field of knowledge transfer and educational change and a discussion of the issues raised in the six papers in this special edition.

A theoretical analysis of the field of knowledge transfer.

The six papers consider issues such as the interplay of ideas between British and Indian educationalists, post-war debates over literacy standards, the use of curriculum materials for the process of citizen formation, the influence of international exchanges in the education of adolescents for citizenship, Vigotsky and the transfer of knowledge across time, space, culture, disciplines and networks, and the way constructions of Chinese identity within history books were shaped by knowledge processes that transcended nation states.

This special issue of the History of Education Review engages with new approaches that have become available to historians in the past decade illustrating how they might be applied for the first time to key issues in the history of education across colonial and state borders. It addresses questions about the movement of knowledge across national and cultural boundaries, and examines key problems facing educators in a range of colonial and postcolonial contexts.

This article examines the national and international connections made by women graduates of the School of Home Science in their efforts to develop the scholarly expertise and professional capacity that would enable them to pursue academic careers and to improve the position of women in universities. It argues that despite the obstacles, many women were able to pursue academic pathways and to establish their own authority. By undertaking a transnational analysis, this article examines webs of influence that linked women scholars in New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the United States as well as those in the so called “centre” (Europe and the United Kingdom). It explores the networks formed by a select number of middle class women ‐ scholars such as Ann Gilchrist Strong, Elizabeth Gregory and Neige Todhunter ‐ as they attempted to expand the range of their scholarly work beyond national borders. It considers the influence of appointments of women academics from the United States and the United Kingdom on; the significance of post graduate study opportunities for home science graduates; and the role of scholarships and awards that enabled two way travel between the southern and northern hemispheres. A number of tensions are evident in the way women scholars located their work in new and emerging fields of academic knowledge within the university. This article explores interrelationships between women academics and graduates from the School of Home Science at the University of Otago and academic women in the United Kingdom and the United States. The final section of the paper examines the academic and scholarly life of Catherine Landreth who exemplifies the experience of a select group of women who gained personally, culturally and professionally from their international opportunities, experiences and networks. It considers Landreth’s transnational travels in search of scholarly expertise, the influence of her personal and professional networks, the significance of her pioneering work in the emerging field of early childhood education and the constraints experienced in a highly gendered academic enclave. To begin however it gives a brief overview of the introduction of Home Science at the University of New Zealand and the influence of initial international appointments on the expansion of women’s academic work at the University of Otago.

This article draws on my doctoral research into the expansion of the Catholic educational mission in New Zealand in the years from 1945 to 1965. The project utilised archival and documentary sources and interviews with thirty three Catholic educators: twenty one female religious from the Sisters of Mercy, Dominican Sisters and the Religious of the Sacred Heart and twelve male religious from the Marist Brothers, Christian Brothers and the Society of Mary (Marist Priests) and two former diocesan directors of Catholic education.

Contemporary scholarship has enabled a deeper analysis of the dynamics that gave rise to professional home science and a greater understanding of the obstacles women encountered and the strategies they employed to gain legitimacy as the field developed in the twentieth century. This paper examines how home science moved from its origins as ‘glorified housekeeping’ to encompass the ‘professional and ‘scientific’ dimensions of women’s lives. It goes beyond judgments about whether home science ‘helped’ or ‘hurt’ women, and asks instead, what we can learn from a study of the professional lives of women working in the highly gendered domains of academia, the professions and education? The article documents the scientific and professional lives of two women, E. Neige Todhunter and Emere Makere Waiwaha Kaa Mountain who completed qualifications at the Faculty of Home Science, Otago University in the 1920s and 1930s as a way of offering new insights into the professionalisation of women and a rethinking of the relationship between women and household science in the twentieth century.

Young women who entered the Dominican Sisters in the years before the Second Vatican Council3 lived in semi‐enclosure and took vows of poverty, chastity and obedience. As women religious they engaged in a life of teaching and prayer that was underpinned by notions of sacrifice and self‐effacement. In order to understand the teaching experiences of these women it is necessary to first understand something about the history of Catholic education in New Zealand and the context in which the New Zealand Dominican Sisters lived and worked.

Tanya Fitzgerald is a professor of Educational Leadership and Management at La Trobe University (Australia). She is the author of numerous books and articles on the history of women's education, and contemporary perspectives on leadership and policy in higher education, including Outsiders or Equals? A History of Women Professors at the University of New Zealand 1911–1961 (2009) and Travelling Towards a Mirage: Gender, Policy and Leadership in Higher Education (2010, with Jane Wilkinson). Her forthcoming book, Historical Portraits of Women Home Scientists: The University of New Zealand 1907–1947 (with Jenny Collins) will be published by Cambria Press. Tanya's current research projects include a study of women leaders in higher education and a historical study of women's professional organisations. She is the editor of History of Education Review and co-editor of the Journal of Educational Administration and History.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of the arrival of Colombo Plan Scholars in New Zealand and consider ways in which their experience helped to bridge distances between “east and west”, as well as to create connections that traversed geographical and cultural boundaries.

It draws on contemporary newspaper articles to ascertain how public talk about the Colombo Plan programme shaped initial engagements between New Zealand and the scholarship holders. The paper then analyses archival files from the Department of External Affairs to present an overview of the university courses undertaken by Colombo plan scholars. The final section of the paper draws on oral and archival sources to examine individual encounters between former Colombo Plan scholars and New Zealanders.

The paper argues that while the public aims of the Colombo Plan focused on the containment of communism and the development of post‐colonial connections in the South East Asian region, individual encounters between Colombo Plan scholars and New Zealanders played a role in changing social attitudes in what had been a deeply mono‐cultural society.

The paper draws on previously unpublished archival and documentary evidence and oral sources to examine a unique aspect of the history of international education.

The purpose of the paper is to examine the conceptions of Chineseness and the perceptions of China in Ontario's High School History Curriculum from 1945 to the end of the 1980s.

The paper examines the syllabus and textbooks in the period that were taught in schools in Ontario. Curriculum guidelines and documents published by the Ontario Department (later Ministry) of Education were studied, as well as the Circular 14, which lists the approved textbooks from which the textbooks where chosen for this paper. The impact-response and tradition-modernity approaches to the study and writing of Chinese enabled the unpacking of the western-centric presuppositions in the textbooks.

From the onset, the Chinese history that was taught and presented was a western-centric one. The paper demonstrates that post Second World War Chinese history that was taught via the Ontario High School History Curriculum and textbooks reflected a view of Chineseness that regards the Chinese and the Chinese civilization was regarded as essentialized, backward and static vis-à-vis the modern West. Implicit in such a conception of Chineseness is that of western superiority over the Chinese civilization.

There have been few studies on how the history of Asia is represented in Canadian school history. Knowing how Chinese history is represented in Ontario High Schools is an interesting case study of how white settler societies viewed and understood China. This study also sheds light on the broader issue of the problematic at play when Asian history is taught and represented in other white settler societies like Australia, New Zealand and the USA.

Educational standards debates are a promising area of investigation for transnational study by historians of education. Drawing upon the work of Foucault, Kliebard, and Aldrich, the paper critically examines some of the outstanding features of the emerging debate over literacy and numeracy standards that sharply divided teachers, educational officials, parents, and employers in New Zealand during the mid-to-late 1950s. These included the polarisation of opinion across the nation, the involvement of the national media, and the tactics of mass persuasion adopted by the various protagonists.

The paper utilises contemporary theory to critically interrogate an historical episode in which controversy over literacy and numeracy standards in schools led first to an in-house report, and finally to a national inquiry. The paper draws upon contemporary newspaper commentary, professional journals and parliamentary debates, as well as a considerable amount of archival material held at Archives New Zealand repositories in both Wellington and Auckland.

The paper contributes to the field by illustrating the way in which historical debates over literacy and numeracy lie at the intersection of completing claims to truth. Behind such claims lie rival conceptions of education that make it unlikely that standards issues will ever be resolved satisfactorily. Hence the title of the paper, which refers to a jocular suggestion by a newspaper editor of the time that only an “August Assembly of Suave Venusians” could adjudicate in the debate.

The value of the paper is that it links current theories on transnationality with archival research in order to critically examine a national case study. Much of the primary source material has never been utilised previously for research as Archives New Zealand has only just released the relevant files for research purposes.