Search results

By 1901 in New South Wales the blueprint for the relationship between Aborigines and Europeans had been established: Aborigines were ‘in a far better condition when living in small communities comparatively isolated and removed from intimate contact with Europeans’. This article provides a study of the Purfleet School on the Aboriginal Reserve near Taree township in the Manning Valley until the implementation of the assimilation policy by the Aboriginal Welfare Board. The key questions asked are: what schooling for children was provided? How were they equipped for adulthood? How did they suffer from being isolated from the mainstream of public education? The Biripi Aboriginal people remain a strong community in the region today.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the educative experiences of Arthur Wesley Wheen – his socialisation and indoctrination within a devout family, on the one hand, and his elite classical schooling on the other hand. Such influences laid the seeds of internal conflict and were compounded at Teachers College, the Arts Faculty of the University of Sydney and at New College Oxford. It is argued that profound educative influences and the trauma of First World War shaped and redefined his life, work and personality as a scholar, cultural critic and translator. The impact of the curriculum and ethos of elite schooling on life interests is a major theme. Attempts will be made to discover from the vast mosaic of classical learning what eventually became inscribed on Wheen’s psyche.

In this paper the author uses a critical biographical and life-study approach in the broad parameters of historical research by a close examination of primary and secondary sources including a rich vein of correspondence and related unpublished writings; school, teachers college and university records, battalion and personal war records and published literature, frequently contemporary in nature. In design subtle iconographic and psychoanalytic nuances will be drawn from the raw material of history.

This research is intended to demonstrate how the traumatic requirements of a frontline soldier affected a profound disillusionment with imperial institutions. The study attempts to show how Wheen lost his religious convictions in the heat of total war and later became a passionate expatriate pacifist, social theorist and scholar. It is intended to reveal the complex layers of personal conviction. The author glances at the literary impact of AW Wheen’s translation of Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front and the Hollywood film version in terms of his contribution that has not been well recognised.

The paper demonstrates how educative experiences led to significant literary outcomes and how elite classical educative forces shaped style and scholarly endeavour. It draws from history, theology, education and cultural studies and synthesises them.

The recent Australian reforms in higher education envisaged the creation of a unified national system at the expense of the binary system with a smaller number of larger institutions through institutional mergers. The Green Paper quoted the La Trobe‐Lincoln merger as an example. Based on an evaluation of relevant archival material and interviews with most of the key personnel of both institutions and the merged university, examines the key issues which delayed the merger for seven years, the goals and the academic rationale set with outcomes of this process within the first two years after the formal merger along with future trends.

Beginning with the understanding that healthcare serial killers differ from traditional serial killers in terms of victim selection, risk and offender behavior, this paper attempts to reconceptualize how the motivations of healthcare serial killers are understood within the scope of care‐giving environments.

Drawing on the current literature surrounding serial homicide and serial killers, the paper argues that healthcare serial killers, by virtue of their profession, have an advantage in committing homicides that are less likely to be detected.

It is found that healthcare professionals work in an environment that is conducive to anti‐social behaviour like homicide. More specifically, recurring conditions within the work place (e.g. lack of a reporting system for problem employees, code of silence amongst employees) adds to the ease with which healthcare serial killers can evade capture.

Research examining healthcare professionals who kill their patients is limited. The current paper provisionally adds to the current understanding of serial homicide. While offering various explanations as to why healthcare serial killers are difficult to detect, this paper also explores some potential solutions for the monitoring of healthcare professionals and protecting the vulnerable patients in their care.

Adopting a sense of critical enquiry when examining historical sources, it is possible to gain a richer and broader sense of present practice. The aim of this study is to emphasise the importance of historical research to present practice in teasing out the different elements at work and how they developed. A core assumption is that our consciousness depends on our interactions with others.

This study is part of ongoing research into the historical background of the practice of discerning compassion. The methods used include archival research and the reading of primary and secondary literature.

In particular, it becomes clear that this way of working is always going to be problematic for political authorities as it promotes the questioning of accepted beliefs. This study emphasises that the core concepts underlying enabling community practice reach deep into the past and involve events not usually associated with the traditional histories of the approach. In particular, exploring outside of the traditional mental hospital background reveals a greater involvement of women than previously demonstrated. There are processes that have deep historical roots, the culture of enquiry, the benefits of mutual support and the understanding that people flourish better interacting with each other in a supportive and trusting environment rather than through coercion and instruction.

As with all historical research, this paper is limited by the resources available to examine particular events.

Recognition of the importance of historical enquiry as relevant to present-day practice.

Historical enquiry helps to acknowledge the importance of social events in shaping our present understanding. As W.H. Rivers argues, we have to understand what happened in the past before comprehending why present sociological events occur.

This paper is a unique enquiry into the early historical antecedents of enabling community practice. It is intended to stimulate more research into the field and to stimulate debate about the relevance of particular aspects of practice. It refers to sources that are not usually part of such discussions and, by implication, suggests that there is more to be explored. It is not an exhaustive account and is to be supplemented by another paper on leadership.

Public external examinations were woven into the fabric of the education system of New South Wales (NSW) during the first three decades of the 20th century. By the late 1920s examination results had become the fetish and goal of most teachers and pupils in the state. In the early 1930s a reaction to this state of affairs developed; examination reform became a lively issue of debate. Central to the debate was the issue of the examination which marked the close of general adolescent education: the Intermediate Certificate (IC) examination. The agitation for IC modification began in the 1930s and did not cease until the 1960s. It began in the dissatisfaction of the 1930s, developed through the 1940s when opinion crystallized, survived the stagnation in educational reform of the late 1940s and early 1950s, quickly revived during the professional and public discussion surrounding the hearing and deliberations of the Committee Appointed to Survey Secondary Education in New South Wales (Wyndham Committee) and finally ceased with its abolition in the mid 1960s.

This paper explores a major pathway that lead people into the ranks of the homeless, the mental health and the justice systems ‐ abuse as a child followed by time in the care of the state. The focus is on Australia with particular emphasis on the Australian state of Victoria as a case example and on the child welfare systems which produce these outcomes. The author argues that child welfare analyses are usually too narrow in their focus. The paper examines the history of the development of child welfare systems in Australia since white settlement in the various colonies in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The author demonstrates some of the wide variety of factors that produce the many negative child welfare outcomes. The original focus of child welfare systems in Australia were largely on social control of the street behaviours of children and the perceived immoral behaviour of their parents, especially their mothers. The developing systems further featured parsimonious service provision, limited visions for the future of the children, and exploitation of their labour. Swings to and from institutional and foster care as the key program responses were usually based on inadequacies of previous systems, the perceived need to control costs, and the perceived inadequacies of the non‐government service providers, rather than careful analysis of and response to the needs of children. Service redevelopment and especially reliance on family support in the late twentieth century has occurred while the traditional issues and problems, including abuse of children in care, remain current and unresolved. The development of managerialist public service practices in recent decades has added to the traditional isolation and lack of integration of the various child welfare components and actively hindered the development of an integrated system. An emphasis on minimal intervention, together with the other factors, has produced a situation in which children are frequently left at risk by the very systems supposed to protect them. The author concludes that not only do the lessons and mistakes of history need to be heeded, but that the principles, programs and management practices of child welfare need to be seen in combination as the factors which set child welfare clients on the road to homelessness or mental health and justice facilities.

The purpose of this paper is to set out three dilemmas that challenge historians of education who write for both professional and academic audiences. It focuses on the example of using fiction as a source for understanding the informal education of girls in the twentieth century. It contributes to the debate over the purpose of history of education and the possibilities that intersecting and contested analytical frameworks might contribute to the development of the discipline.

The paper discusses the rules of engagement and the duties of a historian of education. It reforms current concerns into three dilemmas: audience, method and writing. It gives examples drawn from research into girls’ school stories between 1910 and 1960. It highlights three authors and stories set in Australia, England and an international school in order to explore what fiction offers in getting “inside” the classroom.

Developed from a conference keynote that explored intersecting and contested histories of education, the paper sets up as many questions as it provides answers but re-frames them to include the use of a genre that has been explored by historians of childhood and literature but less so by historians of education.

The vast quantity of stories set in girls’ schools between 1910 and 1960 necessarily demands a selective reading. Authors may specialise in the genre or be general young people’s fiction authors. Reading such stories must necessarily be set against changing social, cultural and political contexts. This paper uses examples from the genre in order to explore ways forward but cannot include an exhaustive methodology for reasons of space.

This paper suggests fiction as a way of broadening the remit of history of education and acting as a bridge between related sub-disciplines such as history of childhood and youth, history and education. It raises practical implications for historians of education as they seek new approaches and understanding of the process of informal education outside the classroom.

This paper suggests that the authors should take more seriously the impact of children’s reading for pleasure. Reception studies offer an insight into recognising the interaction that children have with their chosen reading. While the authors cannot research how children interacted historically with these stories in the mid-twentieth century, the authors can draw implications from the popularity of the genre and the significance of the legacy of the closed school community that has made series such as Harry Potter so successful with the current generation.

The marginal place of history of education within the disciplines of history and education is both challenging and full of possibilities. The paper draws on existing international debates and discusses future directions as well as the potential that girls’ school stories offer for research into gender and education.