Teachers’ institutes in late nineteenth‐century Ontario

Abstract

Teachers’ institutes for public elementary school teachers in Ontario began to be implemented in the middle of the nineteenth century as a result of the efforts of Egerton Ryerson Superintendent of Schools for Canada West as Ontario was then known. They were based on similar practices that Ryerson had observed on an educational tour in 1845 during which he visited the United States, the British Isles and a number of western European countries including Germany. After initial failures, the passage of the landmark School Act of 1871 provided the context for educational state officials to redouble their efforts to have teachers regularly attend teachers’ institute meetings to further their professional development. After a series of revisions to the regulations and the appointment of a director in 1885, incidents of teacher absence began to be documented and reported to central state authorities. This resulted in a variety of disciplinary actions that culminated with the temporary suspension of Luella Dunn’s – a teacher in rural Ontario – teaching certificate. Using the evidence available in the reports of inspectors, teachers’ institute agendas, newspaper accounts and the annual reports of the Minister of Education, the author attempts to show that Luella Dunn and other teachers who ran foul of the regulations were produced as individuals through the effects of power. Through the regulations and procedures that defined their operation, teachers’ institutes became important sites for the elaboration of pedagogy. In this role, the author will explore how teachers’ institutes were a means for instilling what Minister of Education George Ross (1883–1899) termed a “self‐culture” of the teacher.