National Education Systems

Abstract

With British colonization from the late eighteenth century came attempts to school indigenous and nonindigenous populations in ways familiar to colonizers. This was so in Australia and New Zealand. Writing histories that respect the indigenous experience of education has been a challenge. Mainstream historiography concentrated on the growth of schools and school systems as they provided for the colonizing populations from Britain. Colonial and postcolonial struggles among private interests, churches, and the state over schooling were the common subjects of research. Beginning in the 1970s revisionist historians have often written in terms of social history. Relationships between schooling and different social classes, indigenous students, teachers, and girls and women students often inform more recent writing. Traditional biographies of educators, histories of schools and school systems, and curriculum and pedagogy have not been neglected, but the influence of recent international historiography has impacted research into the history of education in Australia and New Zealand.