History of Education Review: a new ERA?

and

History of Education Review

ISSN: 0819-8691

Article publication date: 24 June 2011

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Citation

Fitzgerald, T. and May, J. (2011), "History of Education Review: a new ERA?", History of Education Review, Vol. 40 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/her.2011.57840aaa.002

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2011, Emerald Group Publishing Limited


History of Education Review: a new ERA?

Article Type: Editorial From: History of Education Review, Volume 40, Issue 1.

This editorial marks the 40th year of History of Education Review (HER) (see McMahon, 1994; the work of Campbell and Sherington, 2002a,b). Established in 1972[1] HER is an international journal that publishes scholarly research in the history of education. The mission of the journal can be broadly described as:

History of Education Review is an international journal committed to the publication of high quality peer reviewed research and theoretical papers located in the history of education, childhood and youth and related studies. Published twice a year, the journal publishes papers, in English, by established, mid-career, and emerging scholars. It accepts special responsibility for publishing the work of Australian and New Zealand scholars, and focusing on Australian and New Zealand education. In addition, it welcomes, and seeks to publish regularly, scholarly studies from, and about, all parts of the world.

This is the remit and traditions of the journal that the editorial team, Editorial Advisory Board (EAB), and Australian and New Zealand History of Education Society (ANZHES) community acknowledge and support. This remit is necessarily broad as the journal does not adhere to or support any particular theoretical, epistemological, or methodological viewpoint. The journal welcomes papers that examine and critique all aspects of educational history; these papers can be studies of individuals, groups, policies, institutions, and/or institutional histories, comparative analyses, historical methodologies, and history of ideas, ideologies, and historical movements. Scholarship that is innovative, high quality and which advances debates in the field is the hallmark of the journal.

This issue (40:1), in many respects, heralds the beginning of a new era for the journal. On behalf of the ANZHES community, the editorial team, and Editorial Advisory Board, we would like to announce that Emerald Group Publishing Limited is the new publisher of the journal. ANZHES is confident that this relationship will be highly productive and have every confidence that the standing of the journal in the field will be further strengthened through this new relationship. Accordingly, we would like to acknowledge the professionalism of Emerald staff, their commitment to HER, and their confidence in the journal, past and present. There is a firm belief by the ANZHES community that this collaborative relationship with Emerald will be mutually beneficial. Further, in these “fast capitalist” times (Gee and Lankshear, 1995), the longevity of journals cannot always be guaranteed and so this transfer of ownership will secure the journal's future. In the coming months readers will notice a number of changes, namely a change to the cover, and the move to electronic submissions of all papers and book reviews. These latter changes are very much in line with international publishing trends. The current editorial team and Editorial Advisory Board will remain.

We are confident that ANZHES members as well as the wider scholarly community will remain supportive of the journal, its work and contribution. In many ways the change to an academic publisher is a positive move forward for HER; less positive is the current academic climates in which the recent Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) exercise, in similar ways to previous Research Assessment Exercises (RAE) in England, and the Performance-Based Research Fund (PBRF) in New Zealand, has altered ways in which academics think about their work and where that work might be published. As this issue goes to press, the public consultation about journal rankings is underway in Australia; an exercise in which this journal was rated an “A” in the first iteration. Our work as historians of education is located in these new ERAs.

The new ERA of the journal cannot avoid being shaped by the profound changes to higher education that have irrevocably altered the academy and academic work. These include:

  • the growth of managerialism and accountability regimes such as quality management processes, performance management, research audit exercises, and so forth;

  • the emphasis on outputs, fiscal efficiency, competition, impact, knowledge transfer, and student satisfaction;

  • league tables of research funding, research productivity, higher degree completions, and standings according to national and international benchmarks;

  • the commercialisation of academic activity through consultancy and commissioned research;

  • the proliferation of terms such as client, competitive advantage, choice, performance, benchmarks, best practice, strategic and operational plans, graduate attributes, balanced scorecard, quality, effectiveness;

  • an almost obsessive mandate and policy environment that locates pressure to develop curriculum and deliver skilled workers for the global marketplace on academics as the new knowledge workers; and

  • the emphasis on producing “international work”, that has “impact” and meets the “ever ready” demands of the (northern) public consumer[2].

While academics might lament these “new” times and “new” ways of working, as historians the current climate offers opportunities to focus on the way people interact with, challenge, resist, and make history, especially the absent presence inside histories already told.

To mark this new phase, the papers in this issue very much reflect and reinforce the journal's remit. In the opening paper, two Canadian historians, E. Lisa Panayotidis and Paul Stortz, skillfully chart the history, contribution, hierarchy, and spatial development of the University of Toronto. Through their readings of the signs, artefacts, and symbols that are embedded in institutions, institutional cultures, and individuals, the authors highlight how privilege and location can be constructed and (re)produced and the extent to which academic and spatial identities can be simultaneously mapped and revealed.

In his examination of a university in New Zealand, Ian Brailsford examines the massification of higher education and surfaces the question as to whether failing students was an institutional (the university) or individual (academic) “problem”, or whether it was the case that the university failed students. Certainly as highlighted at an earlier point in this Editorial, the emphasis on markets, competition, choice, and outputs that preoccupy universities in the twenty-first century has prompted a greater scrutiny on teaching and learning. In his refreshing analysis, Brailsford turns the historical spotlight on the professionalisation of academic work and the emergence of new forms of university teaching.

The third paper in this issue by Tony Dowden from Tasmania examines curriculum integration in New Zealand state (government) schools in the interwar period. Through a nuanced approach to his material, Dowden overviews debates about curriculum integration and highlights the disconnection between rhetoric and reality, discourse and practice. Importantly, this paper traces the pervasive influence of US and English policy narratives at the local level.

The impact of educational reform on New Zealand schools is scrutinised by Roger Openshaw in the fourth paper in this issue. Via a careful and detailed analysis of policy and policy debates that raged at the time, Openshaw pinpoints ways in which highly contested and complex public policy issues were frequently reduced to almost simplistic arguments about power and the role of powerful individuals. Skillfully woven into the text is an argument for the need to utilise more fully primary sources in order to produce empirical evidence to better inform national debates. This is very much a call to historians to consider the potential impact of their work and the need for the historicisation of the issue to occur.

The final paper in this edition by Sarah Winfield from England deftly draws together themes of connections, networks, goodwill, and empire. In her examination of 22 School Empire Tours (SETs) in the period 1925-1939, Winfield outlines the patriotic fervour of these tours and the extent to which loyalty to the Commonwealth was effectively transported to Australia, New Zealand, India, southern and eastern Africa, the Caribbean, and Canada through the participation of 500 public schoolboys. These SETs were neither gender nor class neutral as Winfield points out and were ostensibly designed to connect imperialism and privilege. This is a fine-grained analysis of the complex connections between “home”, “empire”, “commonwealth”, and “privilege” and the hegemonic influence of gender and class.

In numerous ways, the five papers are a rich contribution to the journal and its traditions. These are the traditions that have very much marked the journal for the past 40 years and readers, authors, and ANZHES members can be well assured that in the next phase of its history the journal will continue to mark, test, and re-work these traditions.

Notes

  • The establishment of the journal can be traced to the efforts of Richard Selleck (Monash University, Australia) and Ian Cumming (University of Auckland, New Zealand).

  • These debates are well outlined by Aronowitz (2001); Kogan (2000); and Barnett and Di Napoli (2008).

Tanya FitzgeraldChief Editor

Josephine MayPresident, ANZHES

References

Aronowitz, S. (2001), The Knowledge Factory: Dismantling the Corporate University and Creating True Higher Learning, Beacon Press, Boston, MA

Barnett, R. and Di Napoli, R., (Eds) (2008), Changing Identities in Higher Education: Voicing Perspectives, Routledge, London

Campbell, C. and Sherington, G. (2002a), “The history of education: the possibility of survival”, Change: Transformations in Education, Vol. 5 No. 1, pp. 46-64

Campbell, C. and Sherington, G. (2002b), “Thinking transnationally: interconnections and connectivity within and across Australia and New Zealand”, History of Education Review, Vol. 39 No. 2, pp. 81-92

Gee, J. and Lankshear, C. (1995), “The new work order: critical language awareness and fast capitalism texts”, Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education, Vol. 16 No. 1, pp. 5-19

Kogan, M. (2000), “Higher education and communities and academic identity”, Higher Education Quarterly, Vol. 54 No. 3, pp. 207-16

McMahon, J. (1994), “ANZHES: the first twenty-five years”, History of Education Review, Vol. 25 No. 1

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