Creating liberal-internationalist world citizens: League of Nations Union junior branches in English secondary schools, 1919–1939

The League of Nations Union (LNU) was one among the many organisations, in different countries, that promoted internationalist education among the young in the interwar years. But it was a particularly large and prominent one and appealed to a wide cross-section of teachers and pupils in English schools. LNU junior branches were established in many English secondary schools. Occupying a space at the intersection of youth organisations, a larger political movement, and the school itself, these junior branches were part of a wider agenda of active citizenship through extra-curricular means. Their focus was a liberal-internationalist version of “world citizenship” which accommodated existing loyalties to nation and empire as well as loyalty to the wider international sphere, and which sought peace but would countenance the controlled use of armed force against breaches of international agreements. Case studies of junior branches in two girls’ schools and two boys’ schools draw on school magazines and other relevant sources to shed light on what world citizenship could look like in different school contexts. The traditions and cultures of these different schools, the LNU’s ideals and resources, and changing international events, all emerge as important shapers of junior branch activities, and the response to what junior branches offered. Examining the micro-contexts of junior branches in schools contributes new, grounded, insights to a historiography of internationalist education, indicating ways in which ideals of liberal-internationalist world citizenship were negotiated, promoted, taken up, passed on, altered, and, sometimes, challenged or ignored

The struggle for moral education in English elementary schools 1879-1918

This thesis examines moral education in English elementary schools from 1879 to 1918. It investigates why there was widespread interest in character formation in the elementary school at this time but not support for one particular sort of programme. It investigates how moral education was perceived, approached, and implemented by the education department, the general public, School Board and Education Committee members, and teachers in schools, offering a comprehensive and detailed investigation into these issues. Much of the study focuses on one distinctive approach to moral education in this period - secular moral instruction. A range of sources are interrogated, allowing access to the different, but sometimes overlapping, perspectives of policy-makers, educationalists, the organisations and individuals who promoted moral education (particularly the Moral Instruction League, George Dixon and FJ Gould), authors of teaching material, and inspectors and head teachers in schools. Chapters One to Three have an England-wide focus. Chapters Four to Six discuss local studies of Birmingham and Leicester which allow a detailed analysis of educational policy-making, activism and practice in schools. This thesis concludes that moral educators were energetic, skilful at promotion, and engaged in innovative curriculum development. Nevertheless, they faced a range of ideological, political and practical barriers and were ultimately unable to translate generalised interest in character formation and the moralising function of the elementary school into widespread support for their programmes of moral education, or to ensure that statements of interest were translated into effective activity in schools. The issues they grappled with are being worked through still in relation to moral education and citizenship in English schools: the struggle for moral education continues today

Episode 11: Susannah Howe, DC Director

This episode features an interview with Susannah Howe, the Design Clinic Director at Smith College. The interviewers are recent graduates Harriet Wright and Sophie Yates from the Zipline-DC2122 team

A Constellation of CubeSats for the Measurement of Thermospheric Density

The ODU CubeSat is part of a multi-university collaborative project that aims to build a constellation of three small satellites that are shaped in the form of a cube with dimensions of 10 x 10 x 10 cm and will be deployed into Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to study phenomena that influence the varying thermosphere density. Variations in the density of the thermosphere fluctuate due to seasonal differences, changes in solar activity, solar radiation, and geomagnetic variations, along with temperature and altitude. These factors lead to uncertainties in current atmospheric drag models, which are a major source of error in orbit prediction for most LEO satellites and contribute to flaws in atmospheric density models of the thermosphere. Sponsored through the Virginia Space Grant Consortium (VCSG) the project brings together students from Old Dominion University (ODU), the University of Virginia (UVA), Virginia Tech (VT), and Hampton University (HU) to form the Virginia CubeSat Constellation (VCC), a first of its kind for undergraduate small satellite research projects in Virginia. The VCC mission has been manifested and given a delivery date of July 2018 for an anticipated deployment during the fourth quarter of 2018/first quarter of 2019. ODU, UVA, and VT are building three satellites that will be simultaneously deployed from the International Space Station (ISS). Each satellite will collect and transmit GPS coordinates, Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) and attitude data, which will be compiled and analyzed by HU. Among the constellation CubeSats, the one built by ODU has a unique design and will implement a deployable drag brake to accelerate its orbital decay. Currently, the ODU team is making progress with the design and fabrication of their CubeSat chassis, drag brake, and antenna deployment system, as well as with the onboard electronic microcontroller and radio systems

War and peace: Armistice observance in British schools in 1937

This article examines individual narratives of armistice observance in British schools at a moment of polarized public debate about war and peace. Teachers and pupils described what they did, thought, and felt during their school’s commemorations on November 11th, 1937, in accounts penned for the social research organisation Mass Observation. They experienced the symbols, rituals, and texts of acts of collective remembrance in complex ways. Whilst participating in compulsory acts of observance their articulation of a common civic act was shaped by the power dynamics and priorities of the school setting, and individual histories and ideological commitments

Educating the secular citizen in English schools, 1897–1938

This article examines secularists’ efforts over 41 years to shape civic morality and civic culture in their own image. Through pressure groups – the Moral Instruction League (1897–c.1923) and the League of Nations Union (1919–1938) – activists aimed to create secular citizens in English schools. In so doing, they aimed to act as ‘agents of secularisation’. Some (limited) political influence was achieved, and their publications reached many thousands. Yet campaigners were unable to unite a majority of Christians, or even all secularists, behind their proposals. The process of forming the non-Christian citizen proved a complex one, involving shifting alliances, dialogue and compromise

Remembrance and ritual in English schools

This article explores war remembrance and ritual in English schools. The Remembrance in Schools project (2013–2020) investigated remembrance practices in schools in England through questionnaires, interviews and observations. Schools are unique as sites of remembrance because children constitute the majority of participants in rituals. School‐based rituals of remembrance might potentially reproduce dominant discourses of war‐normalisation that conflate military values and nationalism with morally ‘good’ values and an imagined community of the nation. They also provide a contested, ambivalent space in which ambiguities of practice and thinking may encourage the emergence, in small ways, of counter‐narratives about war and its remembrance

What factors are associated with positive effects of dog ownership in families with children with autism spectrum disorder? The development of the Lincoln Autism Pet Dog Impact Scale

Scientific literature exploring the value of assistance dogs to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is rapidly emerging. However, there is comparably less literature reporting the effects of pet (as opposed to assistance) dogs to these children. In particular, there are no known validated scales which assess how children may alter their behaviours in the presence of the dog, to evaluate the efficacy of pet dogs to these families. Additionally, given the highly individualised nature of ASD it is likely that some children and families gain more benefits from dog ownership than others, yet no research has reported the effect of individual differences. This pilot study reports the development of a 28-item scale based on the perceived impact of a pet dog on a child with autism by parents (Lincoln Autism Pet Dog Impact Scale, LAPDIS). The scale is comprised of three mathematically derived factors: Adaptability, Social Skills and Conflict Management. We assessed how individual differences (aspects) may be associated with scores on these three factors. Family Aspects and Dog Aspects were not significantly associated with ratings on the three factors, but Child Aspects (including: contact with horses, child age, disability level and language abilities) were related to impact of the dog on all factors. Training Aspects were related to scores on Social Skills (formal training with children with ASD and dogs and attendance at PAWS workshops run by Dogs for Good). These results suggest that individual differences associated with the child and the training approach may be important considerations for a positive impact from dog ownership on families with children with ASD. Differences in family features and the dog may not be so important, but may be worthy of further investigations given the early stage of development in this field

The history of education in Britain and Ireland : changing perspectives and continuing themes

Reviewing the historiography of education provides insights into both the past and present of this growing area of research across the UK and Ireland. In the nineteenth century research reveals a close association with national identities. These were often Whig histories that celebrated the present and emphasised the progressive nature of educational development, sometimes characterised by an ‘acts and facts’ approach. From the 1960s, it is possible to identify a series of revisionist histories, which diversified further in the coming decades and morphed into the familiar patterns that we can identify today: theoretical and conceptual complexity; a concern with inequalities; an eclectic and widening interest in primary sources; a focus on schooling but moving beyond it, for instance to childhood, welfare and literacy; and a (re)discovery of new topics such as the emotions, senses and identities

Remembrance Day practices in schools: Meaning-making in social memory during the First World War centenary

Each November, commemoration of the First World War armistice (and subsequent military events and conflicts) is almost ubiquitous in UK schools and has been given increased importance during the centenary years of the First World War. Yet as seemingly isolated occasions outside the regular curriculum, school practices of remembrance, and the understandings and perceptions surrounding them, have been subject to surprisingly little scrutiny. The Remembrance in Schools project (2013–19) investigates armistice commemoration in primary and secondary schools in three counties in southern England. This paper considers the theorisation of public commemorative rituals and relates this to teachers’ reports of school-based events. It analyses teachers’ accounts and perceptions, from survey and interview data, of the ways in which the First World War and subsequent conflicts are remembered, presented and discussed through school commemoration events. We conclude that such events mirror the ‘social technologies’ of public remembrance rituals. However, behind almost ubiquitous practices (the two-minute silence) and symbols (the poppy), these accounts reveal nuanced variations in teachers’ views of the knowledge and values children gain from armistice commemoration in schools. These variations are inflected by individual schools’ histories, community contexts, and pupil demographics, as well as teachers’ own histories, values and ideals