A uniform identity: Schoolgirl snapshots and the spoken visual

History of Education

Volumn 36, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 227-246

  Spencer, Stephanie ^a  

^a NONE

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33847629619     PISSN: 0046760X     EISSN: 14645130     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00467600601171468     Document Type: Review

References (96)

1. Griffiths, Morwenna. Feminisms and the Self: The Web of Identity. London: Routledge, 1995.
2. Mauthner, Andrea, and Natasha Doucet. "Reflections on a Voice-centred Relational Method." In Feminist Dilemmas in Qualitative Research, edited by J. Ribbens & R. Edwards. London: Sage Publications, 1998.
3. Direct Grant schools were part funded by central government, entry was by 11+. The schools were similar to grammar schools and followed primarily an academic curriculum.
4. Abrams, Mark. The Teenage Consumer. London: Press Exchange;
5. Springhall, John. Coming of Age: Adolescence in Britain 1860-1960. Goldenbridge, Dublin: Gill & Macmillan.
6. Cappelletto, Francesca. "Long-Term Memory of Extreme Events: From Autobiography to History." Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 9, no. 2 (June 2003): 257-58.
7. Grosvenor, I., M. Lawn, and K. Rousmaniere, eds. Silences & Images: The Social History of the Classroom. Canterbury: Peter Lang, 1999.
8. This article is based on a paper given at ECER 2005, Dublin. I am grateful to the discussion following the paper and to the anonymous reviewers for their thought-provoking comments.
9. Bhabha, Homi. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge, 1994.
10. Plummer, Ken. Documents of Life 2: An Introduction to Critical Humanism. London: Sage Publications, 2001: 64-66;
11. Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida. London: Vintage, 2000;
12. Evans, Jessica. The Camerawork Essays. London: Rivers Oram, 1997;
13. Alvarado, M., E. Buscombe, and R. Collins, eds. Representation and Photography. Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001.
14. Rousmaniere, Kate. "Questioning the Visual in the History of Education." History of Education 30, no. 2 (2001): 110.
15. History of Education 30, no. 2 (2001).
16. Prosser, John. "Photographs within the Sociological Research Process." In Image Based Research: A Sourcebook for Qualitative Researchers, edited by J. Prosser. London: Falmer Press, 1998;
17. Dein, Alan, and Mark Burman. BBC radio 3, Sunday Feature, "You must remember this." 23. October 2005.
18. Prosser, J., and T. Warburton. "Visual Sociology and School Culture." In School Culture, edited by J. Prosser. London: Sage Publications, 1999: 87.
19. Perks, R., and A.Thompson, eds. The Oral History Reader. London: Routledge, 1998;
20. Armitage, S., with P. Hart and K. Weatherman, eds. Women's Oral History: The 'Frontiers' Reader. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, 2002.
21. Summerfield, Penny. Reconstructing Women's Wartime Lives: Discourse and Subjectivity in Oral Histories of the Second World War. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1998.
22. Prosser, "Photographs within the Sociological Research Process".
23. Spencer, Stephanie. "From Schoolgirl to Career Girl: The City as Educative Space." Paedagogica Historica 39, nos 1/2 (2003): 121-33.
24. Gary McCulloch notes how despite the meritocratic intentions of the 1944 Education Act a majority of middle-class children attended the grammar schools. McCulloch, Gary. Failing the Ordinary Child? The Theory and Practice of Working-Class Secondary Education. Buckingham: Open University, 1998.
25. For a more detailed discussion of these interviews and the methodology employed see Spencer, Stephanie. Gender, Work and Education in Britain in the 1950s. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
26. Gluck, S. Berger, and D. Patai. Women's Words, The Feminist Practice of Oral History. London: Routledge, 1991.
27. Grosvenor, I., and M. Lawn. "Ways of Seeing in Education and Schooling: Emerging Historiographies." History of Education 30, no. 2 (2001): 106;
28. Silver, Harold. "Knowing and Not Knowing in the History of Education." History of Education 21, no. 1 (1992): 97-108.
29. Cunningham, P., and P. Gardner. Becoming Teachers: Texts and Testimonies 1907-1950. London: Woburn, 2004.
30. With the wider acceptance of oral history within academic research the methodology has become increasingly nuanced and theorized. See Oral History Society website, available from http://www.ohs.org.uk; INTERNET;
31. Yow, V. R. Recording Oral History: A Guide for the Humanities and Social Sciences. 2nd ed. California: AltaMira Press, 2005.
32. Cortazzi, Martin. Narrative Analysis. London: Falmer Press, 1993.
33. Summerfield, Reconstructing Women's Wartime Lives.
34. Mauthner and Doucet, "Reflections on a Voice-centred Relational Method."
35. Mauthner and Doucet, "Voice relational analysis", 119.
36. Brown, L. M., and C. Gilligan. "Meeting at the Crossroads: Women's Psychology and Girls' Development." Feminism and Psychology 3, no. 1 (1993): 11-35.
37. Mauthner and Doucet, "Voice relational analysis", 126.
38. Ibid.
39. Shilling, Chris. "Physical Capital and Situated Action: A New Direction for Corporeal Sociology." British Journal of Sociology of Education 25, no. 4 (2004): 473-87.
40. Shilling, Chris. The Body and Social Theory. London: Sage Publications, 1993: 5.
41. Young, Iris. "Lived Body vs. Gender: Reflections on Social Structure and Subjectivity." In On Female Body Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005.
42. See also Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. London, New York: Routledge, 1990.
43. Paechter, Carrie. "Reconceptualizing the Gendered Body: Learning and Constructing Masculinities and Femininities in School." Gender and Education 18, no. 2 (2006): 121-35.
44. Summerfield, Penny. "Cultural Reproduction in the Education of Girls: A Study of Girls' Secondary Schooling in two Lancashire Towns, 1900-1950. In Lessons for Life: The Schooling of Girls and Women, 1850-1950, edited by F. Hunt. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
45. Dussel, Ines. "School Uniforms and the Disciplining of Appearances." In Cultural History and Education, edited by. S. Popkewitz, B. Franklin and M. Pereira. London: RoutledgeFalmer, 2001: 206.
46. Dussel, Ines. "The Shaping of a Citizenship with Style: A History of Uniforms and Vestimentary Codes in Argentinean Public Schools." In Materialities of Schooling Design, Technology, Objects, Routines, edited by M. Lawn and I. Grosvenor. London, Oxford: Symposium, 2005: 98.
47. Swain, Jon. "The Right Stuff: Fashioning an Identity through Clothing in a Junior School." Gender and Education 14, no. 1 (2002): 53-69;
48. Meadmore, D., and C. Symes, "Keeping Up Appearances: Uniform Policy for School Diversity?" British Journal of Educational Studies 45, no. 92 (June 1997): 174-86.
49. Swain, "The Right Stuff: Fashioning an Identity through Clothing in a Junior School", 53.
50. Women replied to a request for interview participants in the South London Press. They were asked to discuss their career choices on school leaving. Although the area was chosen because of the variety of schools, a majority of those who replied had attended grammar secondary schools.
51. The gradual introduction of uniform into schools is difficult to trace but can be found in the governing body minutes of individual schools. Some governing bodies included uniform subcommittees to deal with this issue. (This research was made possible by a grant from the Spencer Foundation for 'Women and the Governance of Girls' Secondary Schools 1870-1997'. The data presented, the statements made, and the views expressed are solely the responsibility of the author.) Other sources of information may be school magazines, and school photographic archives.
52. The ban at Broadstone Middle School in Poole, Dorset, was scheduled to be introduced in January 2006, after governors decided skirts were not suitable for some lessons. The headteacher said the ban was 'to give girls the same opportunities as boys' and to 'maintain their modesty' (Guardian 22 June 2005).
53. Epstein, D., and R. Johnson. Schooling Sexualities. Buckingham: Open University Press, 1998: 114.
54. Steedman, Carolyn. Past Tenses: Essays on Writing, Autobiography and History. London: Rivers Oram, 1992: 22.
55. Davies B., S. Dormer, S. Gannon, C. Laws, S. Rocco, H. L. Taguchi, and H. McCann. "Becoming Schoolgirls: The Ambivalent Project of Subjectification." Gender and Education 13, no. 2 (2001): 167-82. Bronwen Davies explores the making of collective memory with her colleagues in order to interrogate the place that memories of education play in the formation of the individual adult subject.
56. The author would like to thank the women who are the subject of the photograph who have consented to its use in this article.
57. Uniform list c.1967, Sutton High School (SHS GDST archives).
58. Kuhn, Annette. Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination London: Verso, 1995: 92.
59. Also in common with their age cohort three of the five, including the photographer, married soon after finishing their education or training and two were subsequently divorced.
60. Osgerby, Bill. Youth in Britain since 1945. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998.
61. Kuhn, Family Secrets, 92.
62. Dussel, "The Shaping of a Citizenship with Style", 97.
63. Evans, Mary. Life at a Girls' Grammar School in the 1950s. London: Women's Press, 1991: 68.
64. Board of Education. Curriculum and Examinations in Secondary Schools (The Norwood Report) London: HMSO, 1943.
65. McCulloch, Gary. Educational Reconstruction. London: Woburn, 1994: 79.
66. Evans, Life at a Girls' Grammar, 55.
67. Gardiner, Juliet. From the Bomb to the Beatles: The Changing Face of Post-War Britain. London: Collins & Brown, 1999.
68. Dussell, "Shaping of Citizenship", 98.
69. Evans, Life at a Girls' Grammar, 54.
70. Kuhn, Family Secrets, 93.
71. Rowbotham, Sheila. Threads through Time. London: Penguin, 1999: 39.
72. Plummer, Documents of Life, 234.
73. Dussell, "The Shaping of a Citizenship with Style", 99.
74. Interview transcripts are in the author's possession.
75. Ministry of Education. 15-18, A Report of the Central Advisory Council for Education (England), (The Crowther Report), vol. 1. London: HMSO, 1959.
76. Spencer, Gender Work and Education.
77. Interview transcript in the author's possession.
78. McCulloch, Failing the Ordinary Child?
79. Transcript in the author's possession.
80. Riley, Denise. 'Am I that Name?' Feminism and the Category of 'Women' in History. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988;
81. Scott, Joan. "Experience." In Feminists Theorise the Political, edited by J. Scott and J. Butler. London: Routledge, 1992.
82. Transcript in the author's possession.
83. Transcript in the author's possession
84. Ministry of Education. A Report of the Central Advisory Council for Education (England) (The Crowther Report). London: HMSO, 1959, 15-18, vol. 1, Table 1:6.
85. Plummer, Gillian. Failing Working Class Girls. London: Trentham, 2000: 174.
86. Dussel notes how in Argentina, where the uniform consists of a white smock, pupils still manage to find ways to modify it according to fashion: Materialities of Schooling Design: 118.
87. Head Mistresses Association Records, Reports of Annual Conferences-MSS.188/4/1/16; MSS.188/4/1/17; TBN 50. University of Warwick Modern Records Centre
88. Martin, J., and J. Goodman. Women and Education 1800-1980. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004: 9.
89. Ibid., 11.
90. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 1.
91. Ibid.
92. Ibid., 2.
93. Fyvel, T. R. The Young Offenders: Rebellious Youth in the Welfare State. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963.
94. Carter, Michael, P. Home School and Work: A Study of the Education and Employment of Young People in Britain. Oxford: Pergamon, 1962.
95. Bhabha, Location of Culture, 2.
96. Ibid., 66.