ABSTRACT The 1870 Education Act was the most important reform of elementary education in the nineteenth century because it aimed to provide a school place for every child in England and Wales, but its impact in the Great Northern Coalfield was lessened by the migratory nature of coal mining and neglect by many coal owners. The Act caused the Church of England to lose its position as the main school provider in the coalfield, even though Anglicans continued to make a significant contribution to educational improvement in the North East. Although low official expectations of the colliery population and inadequate efforts by small school boards led to inferior school standards, the Act deserves to be judged a landmark as it was responsible for opening sufficient schools to help close the gap in literacy between the mining population and the general population and that between males and females in the coalfield.

ABSTRACT This article probes the potential of emotional and experiential histories of education. London children’s school essays on their experiences in the First World War, their stories, their dreams and especially their favourite films, commissioned by C.W. Kimmins, Chief Inspector of Schools for the London County Council, are the main source base. Kimmins was primarily interested in children’s “attitude to life” and in adapting pedagogical methods accordingly. Through his own studies and through his participation in The Cinema Commission Inquiry (1917, 1925), changing pedagogical and psychological understandings of children are detailed. What about children themselves? What can such mediated sources tell us about children’s understandings of the new medium of the cinema, their outer and inner worlds, and their emotions, senses and experiences in wartime? They provide a base to ask novel questions of children’s experiences with education, and more profoundly, of their mediated experiences of the worlds around them.

ABSTRACT In 1682, Charles XI of Sweden issued a royal decree concerning the Finnish-speaking population’s poor catechetical knowledge of the provinces of Gästrikland and Hälsingland. According to the decree, the inadequate knowledge resulted from a lack of understanding of the Swedish language. Thus, only Swedish was to be used in popular education. How did popular education address linguistic diversity? Were Finnish-speaking parish members forced to use Swedish? Traces in historical records show that Finnish was used in popular education. By studying examination records, decrees, letters and other materials concerning popular education in the parishes of Färila, Alfta and Järvsö parish in Hälsingland c. 1680–1730, this article examines which strategies were used, developed and implemented. The results show that popular education could accept linguistic diversity and could thus adapt to local needs.

ABSTRACT In the 1960s and 1970s Cold War context, education in Western countries was reformed aiming to educate democratic citizens. This paper shows that 1970s mathematics education reform in the Netherlands was driven by three ideals: democratisation, holism and science with society. The lack of national policy governing curriculum development in the early 1970s allowed the Institute for the Development of Mathematics Education (IOWO) to work according to these ideals, establishing it firmly in a national and international network. When Dutch government did implement centralised policies and reformed the education support system, it left no room for IOWO. However, IOWO’s position and influence was leveraged so that part of its staff was allowed to continue as a research group. The new policy context did affect their ability continue their idealistic practices. Nevertheless, the research group, eventually renamed Freudenthal Institute, continued to have a lasting influence in Dutch and international mathematics education.

ABSTRACT This paper examines the reform of music education in China during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, specifically through the School Song Movement. First originating in Japan’s Meiji era, the movement was characterised by the introduction and widespread dissemination of Western musical elements such as notation systems and chorus forms in educational settings. Shen Xingong, a key figure in the movement, implemented singing classes that emphasised choral performance and promoted moral education, aiming to modernise Chinese music education. These school songs played a significant role in fostering national pride and cultural integration among students. Despite the movement’s success in transforming Chinese music education, it also led to an over-reliance on Western models, potentially overshadowing traditional Chinese musical practices. Discussions on this topic can also promote reflection on crucial issues such as cross-cultural integration in education and the modernisation of education from the perspective of educational history.

ABSTRACT This study applies an educational sociology framework to critically examine value orientations in three primary Chinese language textbooks utilised in Axi Yi communities during the 1930–1945 period, with particular focus on minority national identity formation. The analysis reveals these textbooks systematically privileged three key elements: Kuomintang political doctrine as sanctioned by dominant cultural elites, nationalism-oriented patriotism and selectively curated Han cultural traditions. Simultaneously, they systematically excluded alternative political ideologies and non-Han cultural narratives. Such curricular content operated as an ideological apparatus for shaping minority students’ national consciousness. Republican-era textbook compilation practices have valuable implications for contemporary multicultural education policy.

ABSTRACT This article investigates how and why children with mobility disabilities were gradually integrated into the public school system in Sweden in the post-war era, c. 1950–1970. Through a qualitative analysis of the policy process, focusing on the conceptual and ideological contents of policies and motives, I argue that the shift from segregation to integration should be understood as part of social democratic state formation. Firstly, I show how the policy process emerged when state actors and experts started to problematise institutional care and education and formulate politics to rationalise and nationalise the current organisation. Secondly, I show that the subsequent consolidation phase was powered by the language of integration in the mid 1960s. Integration of mobility impaired children, as a policy idea, was lined up with the social democratic programme of recasting society: to build a new society in which individuals circulated between different functional spheres on equal terms.