Teaching manuals and the blackboard: Accessing historical classroom practices

History of Education

Volumn 41, Issue 2, 2012, Pages 257-272

  Wylie, Caitlin Donahue ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

Blackboard; Materiality of the classroom; Nature study; Teaching manual; Teaching practice

Indexed keywords

EID: 84859225560     PISSN: 0046760X     EISSN: 14645130     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/0046760X.2011.584573     Document Type: Article

References (78)

1. A.E. Benito, 'The School in the City: School Architecture as Discourse and as Text', Paedagogica Historica 39 (2003): 53-64
2. P.L.M. Martînez, 'History of School Desk Development in Terms of Hygiene and Pedagogy in Spain (1838-1936)', in Materialities of Schooling: Design-Technology-Objects-Routines, ed. M. Lawn and I.D. Grosvenor (Oxford: Symposium Books, 2005), 71-95
3. I. Dussel, 'The Shaping of a Citizenry with Style: a History of Uniforms and Vestimentary Codes in Argentinian Public Schools', in Materialities of Schooling: Design-Technology-Objects-Routines, ed. M. Lawn and I.D. Grosvenor (Oxford: Symposium Books, 2005), 97-124
4. C. Burke and I.D. Grosvenor, School (London: Reaktion Books, 2008)
5. F. Herman, A. Van Gorp, F. Simon and M. Depaepe, 'The School Desk: From Concept to Object', History of Education 40 (2011): 97-117.
6. M. Lawn and I.D. Grosvenor, 'Introduction: The Materiality of Schooling', in Materialities of Schooling: Design-Technology-Objects-Routines, ed. M. Lawn and I.D. Grosvenor (Oxford: Symposium Books, 2005), 7-17, 7.
7. W.H. Brock and M.H. Price, 'Squared Paper in the Nineteenth Century: Instrument of Science and Engineering, and Symbol of Reform in Mathematical Education', Educational Stuies in Mathematics 11 (1980): 365-81
8. Lawn and Grosvenor, 'Introduction', 2005
9. C. Burke, 'Light: Metaphor and Materiality in the History of Schooling', in Materialities of schooling, 129-33.
10. K. Dams, M. Depaepe and F. Simon, 'Sneaking into School: Classroom History at Work', in Silences and Images: The Social History of the Classroom, ed. I.D. Grosvenor, M. Lawn, and K. Rousmaniere (New York: Peter Lang, 1999), 15-46, 15.
11. A. Woodward, D.L. Elliott and K.C. Nagel, Textbooks in School and Society: An Annotated Bibliography and Guide to Research (New York: Garland Publishing, 1988)
12. W.E. Marsden, The School Textbook: Geography, History, and Social Studies (London: Woburn Press, 2001).
13. M. Morgan, Manners, Morals and Class in England, 1774-1858 (New York: St Martin's Press, 1994), 19.
14. J. Wilson, Manual of Methods of Teaching: A Practical Guide to the Schoolroom, (London: T. Nelson and Sons, 1892)
15. F.F. Belsey, The Bible and the Blackboard: Scripture Lessons for EYE and EAR (London: Sunday School Union, [1896?])
16. E.R. Wethey, A Geography Lesson: The Blackboard and Oral Teaching (London: George Philip and Son, 1896)
17. F.F. Lydon, Nature Lessons with the Blackboard (London: Burnes and Oates, [1902])
18. R. Horspool, Blackboard Drawing in Line and Mass (London: Henry Frowde, Hodder, and Stoughton, 1909)
19. E.R. Hambridge, Blackboard Diagram Drawing for Teachers of Needlecraft (Bath: Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons, [1913]).
20. A. Green, Education and State Formation: The Rise of Education Systems in England, France, and the USA (London: Macmillan, 1990), 302
21. A. Weedon, Victorian Publishing: The Economics of Book Production for a Mass Market, 1836-1916 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), 114.
22. P. Kidwell, A. Ackerberg-Hastings and D. Roberts, Tools of American Mathematics Teaching, 1800-2000 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution, 2008), 23.
23. Some sources (e.g. T. Levy, 'First in His Class: The Many Contributions of Samuel Read Hall', OAH Magazine of History Fall (1991): 38-41) claim that teacher Samuel Read Hall was the first to use a blackboard, in 1816 in Rumford, Maine, suggesting that the blackboard may have been invented independently in multiple places
24. I have found no printed histories of blackboard use except for Kidwell et al., Tools, 2008, chapter 2. This story comes from several websites
25. W. Fernley, 'History of the Chalkboard', Articlesbase, http://www.articlesbase.com/education-articles/history-of-the-chalkboard -660163.html (accessed July 8, 2011);
26. S. Mithra, 'What is the history of the chalkboard?', WiseGeek, http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-history-of-the-chalkboard.htm (accessed July 8, 2011).
27. Committee Minutes 1844, in D. Layton, Science for the People: The Origins of the School Science Curriculum in England (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1973), 95.
28. Similarly, in his The School Manager's Handbook, 1904-1905 (London: Edward Arnold, [1903], 15),
29. Joseph King Wrote, 'Blackboards with easels, or better, where the arrangement of the room permits, fixed permanently on the wall, are necessities'.
30. H. Elsom, Notes of Lessons for Pupil Teachers, Scholarship Candidates, Acting Teachers, and Students in Training (London: Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., [1890]), preface.
31. Official Report of the Nature-Study Exhibition and Conferences held in the Royal Botanical Society's Gardens, Regent's Park, London. July 23rd to August 5th, 1902 (London: Blackie and Son, 1903);
32. D. Allen, The Naturalist in Britain: A Social History (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1976), 202;
33. E.W. Jenkins, 'Science, Sentimentalism or Social Control? The Nature Study Movement in England and Wales, 1899-1914', History of Education 10 (1981): 33-43
34. S.G. Kohlstedt, 'Nature Study in North America and Australasia, 1890-1945: International Connections and Local Implementations', Historical Records of Australian Science 11 (1997): 439-54, 446
35. S.G. Kohlstedt, Teaching Children Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010).
36. Official Report of the Nature-Study Exhibition, 1903
37. Kohlstedt, 'Nature Study', 1997;
38. M. J. Keene, 'Object Lessons: Sensory Science Education 1830-1870' (PhD thesis, University of Cambridge, 2008).
39. Elsom, Notes of Lessons, [1890], 37.
40. F.W. Hackwood, Practical Method of Class Management: A Ready Guide of Useful Hints to Young Class Teachers (London: George Philip & Son, 1896), 47.
41. J.H. Cowham, A New School Method. For Pupil Teachers and Students (London: Westminster School Book Depot, and also from Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., 1894), 89-90.
42. J.C. Sharp, Writing, And How To Teach It. A Manual of One Hundred Lessons, for the Guidance of Teachers in the Use of Methods Suggested (London: Allman & Son, [1888?])
43. Elsom, Notes of Lessons, [1890];
44. Cowham, A New School Method, Part 1, 1894;
45. Hackwood, Practical Method, 1896.
46. Elsom, Notes of Lessons, [1890], 36.
47. Wilson, Manual of Methods, 1892, 10, emphasis in the original.
48. Elsom, Notes of Lessons, [1890], 18.
49. Wilson, Manual of Methods, 1892, 9.
50. Cowham, A New School Method, 1894, Part 1: 3-4.
51. Wilson, Manual of Methods, 1892, 211.
52. Cowham, A New School Method, 1894, Part 2: 243.
53. Wilson, Manual of Methods, 1892, 52.
54. Ibid.107.
55. A primrose has five leaves, and the eel is slim to fit into the rock crevices where it lives, according to W.P. Pycraft and J. Kelman, Nature Teaching on the Blackboard (London: Caxton Publishing Co., 1910), vol. 1: 29 and vol. 3: 67.
56. I explore nature study blackboard manuals in detail in 'Teaching nature study on the blackboard in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century England', forthcoming in Archives of Natural History.
57. Pycraft and Kelman, Nature Teaching, 1910, vol. 1: vi.
58. Lydon, Nature Lessons, [1902], 48.
59. Pycraft and Kelman, Nature Teaching, 1910, vol. 3: 51.
60. F.H. Shoosmith, Nature Study and the Blackboard (London: Evans Brothers, [Vol. 1 1920, Vol. 2 1926]), vol. 1: xiv, emphasis in the original.
61. Lydon, Nature Lessons, [1902], 48.
62. Pycraft and Kelman, Nature Teaching, 1910, vol. 1: 5.
63. Ibid. vol. 3: 52.
64. Shoosmith, Nature Study, [1920], 9.
65. Lydon, Nature Lessons, [1902], 1.
66. Cowham, A New School Method, 1894, Part 1: 10.
67. Board of Education, Suggestions for the Consideration of Teachers and Others Concerned in the Work of Public Elementary Schools (London: Wyman and Sons, 1905), 48-49.
68. Sharp, Writing, [1888?], ix-x;
69. Elsom, Notes of Lessons, [1890], 12-14;
70. Wilson, Manual of Methods, 1892, 37;
71. Hackwood, Practical Method, 1896, 16-24, 44-45.
72. Lydon, Nature Lessons, [1902];
73. Pycraft and Kelman, Nature Teaching, 1910;
74. Shoosmith, Nature Study, [1920].
75. Pycraft and Kelman, Nature Teaching, 1910, vol. 3: 1.
76. W.F. Rankine, Nature Study and Brush Drawing (London: Cassell and Company, 1908), 1.
77. Elsom, Notes of Lessons, [1890], 9.
78. Morgan, Manners, 1994, 2.