Completed Projects
Elizabeth Nuffield Educational Fund – Five Year Review
The Elizabeth Nuffield Educational Fund (ENEF) gives grants to women studying to enable them to gain qualifications and enhance their employment prospects. As well as providing grants for mothers studying in higher education, the fund set in place partnership arrangements with a number of further education colleges predominantly sited in areas of high social deprivation. This study surveyed award holders who completed their studies in the period 1998-2002.
Project Findings
The study pointed to the high degree of commitment that these women demonstrated in their determination to turn their lives around, to acquire a qualification and to move into employment. It is not only the qualification that enabled them to improve their job prospects successfully; but the increased self esteem and sense that they are good role models as the lone parent in the family, frequently after long periods of domestic turmoil and uncertainty. The women’s choice of jobs demonstrated that they are often pragmatic in their choice of vocational courses, and value job security and job satisfaction more highly that well-paid employment. Despite improvements in Government funding for childcare, ENEF undoubtedly made a material difference to award holders lives, to the lives of their children and to the women’s ability to achieve their aspirations.
ESRC Seminar Series Social Change in the History of Education
A number of publications are currently published, forthcoming, or in preparation from the two year ESRC seminar series convened by Professor Goodman, McCulloch (London University Institute of Education) and Richardson (University of Exeter). These include a special issue of History of Education, entitled Social Change in the History of Education: The British experience in international context. This has also been published by Routledge as a book. Currently being prepared is a special issue of the journal Paedagogica Historica and an extended report being funded by the History of Education Society GB. A record of the seminar series can be found on the seminar website
Womenandthegovernanceof girls' Secondary Schoolsin Britain, 1870-1997
This project examined the gendered dynamic of governance in girls’ secondary schools since the end of the nineteenth century and its consequences for the governance of schools today. It redressed the current neglect of the historical experience of women school governors, which has resulted in the narratives and concepts of school governance failing to encode the experience of women.
Research Questions
The central question of the research focused on the pattern of women’s involvement in girls’ secondary schools, the wider significance of women’s involvement as school governors and the consequences of women’s past involvement as governors for effective school management today. The research aimed to explore the pattern of women’s involvement as school governors, to examine the social and economic standing of women who acted as school governors, to explain the changes which took place and the variation in practice between schools, to identify the roles women carried on the governing bodies and the relationships between women governors and headteachers. The research also provided insights into the development of women’s management roles in education, the development of girls’ education and the position of women in respect of both local and national educational policy-making and administration.
Research Outputs
See: Joyce Goodman and Sylvia Harrop, “Governing ladies: women governors of middle class girls’ schools, 1870-1925” in Women, Educational Policy-Making and Administration in England, edited by Joyce Goodman and Sylvia Harrop. London: Routledge, 2000: 37-56