Professor Geoffrey Blainey
Learning Through History
The Australian gold rushes of the 1850s was an event of world significance. Some commentators thought it might turn the world upside down, because so many poor people were suddenly becoming rich.
The gold transformed social and economic life in Australia. It trebled the population in ten years.
Ballarat became the largest gold town in the world in the 1850s. To reach it from Europe was a long and often dangerous voyage. Many of the fast clipper ships which carried British gold seekers sighted no land all the way from Britain to the coast of Victoria.Even the short journey overland from the ports to Ballarat could be arduous. The first glimpse of daily life in the gold mines and in the tent towns fascinated newcomers.
Sovereign hill, sometimes described as “one of the world’s great outdoor museums”, was created to bring to life the experience of the early goldfields. It has a special attraction for children.
Biography: Professor Geoffrey Blainey has a long and distinguished career in academic circles. For twenty years, he was a Professor of Economic History and then Ernest Scott Professor of History at the University of Melbourne. He also held the Chair of Australian Studies at Harvard University.
In the early 1980s, he was Visiting Professor of Australian Studies at Harvard University. In 1988, he received the International Britannica Award for excellence in the dissemination of knowledge for the benefit of humankind.
A member of various Federal Government committees, Geoffrey Blainey was Chairman of the Australia Council for four years and Chairman of the Australia-China Council for five years. In 2001, he was Chairman of the National Council for the Centenary of Federation.
Professor Blainey is the author of many books, including ‘The Tyranny of Distance’ and ‘The Causes of War’. Amongst his recent titles are ‘A Short History of the World’ (2000), a best seller now issued in many editions and translations extending from Italian to Portuguese, and ‘A Short History of the 20th Century’, released in 2005.
His presentations draw on economic events and their effects on the future. He is a witty speaker with a warm, approachable manner that delights his audiences.
Annemarie Augschöll Blasbichler
Free University of Bozen/Bolzano, Italy
An informal examination of childhood and school at the extracurricular learning space-research and documentation centre of South Tyrol’s educational history
The importance of history awareness for the development of self-identity has been sufficiently addressed by scientific literature (see Rüsen 1994). The analysis of the structural components shows that individual history awareness is produced by the complex interaction between cognitive and emotional levels with personal and collective identity.
Biography: Ass. Univ.-Prof. Mag. Dr. Annemarie Augschöll Blasbichler (German mother tongue) researches and teaches at the Faculty of Education at the Free University of Bozen - Bolzano (Italy), focusing on historical and present educational research. Her current researches examine small schools as living, learning and working spaces and consider the historical perspective as well as the latest challenges. Since 2007 she has been directing the “Research and documentation centre of South Tyrol’s educational history” at the Free University of Bozen - Bolzano, organizing research partnerships for school classes of all age groups through the organizational framework of the “Junior-Uni” which involves her as part of the scientific committee.
Anne Katrine Gjerløff
Project manager, University of Aarhus
We shape the school-the school shapes us! -How to create a national celebration of school history
Throughout 2014 the bicentennial celebration of compulsory education in Denmark is celebrated with a vast number of local and national events, TV-programs, exhibitions, publication of books and teaching material - and parties. As national coordinator the Secretariat for “Skole200” (School200) carry the responsibility for the project webpage, engaging local and national cultural and educational institutions, lobbying for private and public funding and cooperating with the Ministry of Education as well as a large number of stakeholders.
As the head of the secretariat for Skole200 I will present the ways in which the bicentenary is communicated to the public, to teachers and pupils, and how skole200 projects were developed to engage the diverse audience. This is carried out though a careful consideration of a visual identity, presentation of histories in books and on www.skole200.dk , and especially by engaging both children and adults through memory, senses, role-play and a discourse on school-life as both an individual and unifying experience. This is also expressed in the Skole200 slogan: “We shape the school, the school shapes us”.
The celebration of skole200 coincide with a much debated reform of the Danish school system, beginning in august 2014. Thus it was a prerequisite that the bicentennial did not contain any political agendas, as both the minister of education and the opposition are represented in the skole200-board. Not to mention the fact that the Crown Princess HRH Mary is the protector of skole200.
The main basis for the skole200 popularization of school history is the recent and innovative research carried out in the five volumes Dansk Skolehistorie (Danish School History) (2013-15), combined with memories, fictional representations and roleplaying about school-life past.
In my presentation of the skole200 activities, and the connection between communications, events and research I will touch upon most of the main themes of the symposium - role play, museum representations, fundraising and research perspective, and how these are interconnected in the case of the Danish celebration of Skole200.
Biography: Historian Anne Katrine Gjerløff, (MA, PhD) is project manager at AU Library, Campus Emdrup (former Danish Pedagogical Library) at the University of Aarhus, where she is coordinating the events, fundraising and communication about the bicentennial celebration of the Danish compulsory school system in 2014. She is also the co-author of the two of the five volumes of “Danish School History through 500 years” published in 2014. Her main research areas are the history of science, childhood and culture in the 19th and 20th century, and she has published several articles on history of prehistoric archaeology, physical anthropology, history of education and pedagogy, as well as on animal history.
Peter Hoban and Marion Littlejohn
Sovereign Hill Education Officers, Australia
Time is of the essence
Sovereign Hill hosts approximately 90,000 student days per year. 16,000 of these days are spent at the Costumed Schools while the rest are facilitated by Sovereign Hill Education - a separate and parallel education entity. Evaluation tells us that an important part of the school visit is the education sessions we offer. Most education programs are one-hour duration and we do not have student trails. This presentation will describe some of the most successful programs conducted by Sovereign Hill Education and explore how they have been designed to engage students and to encourage higher order thinking about our gold rush history.
Biography: Peter and Marion have both been education officers at Sovereign Hill for over 20 years. Peter is a Placed Teacher with the Catholic Education Commission of Victoria, helps conduct a network of cultural organisation educators for the Victorian Department of Education and is treasurer of Museums Australia Education. Marion is a historian and author of text books and is on the board of
Senior Exemplar Teacher, ELTHAM College
Storying our Learning: Performing our learning
The ‘fashion’ of schooling has returned to communities of practice wherein inquiry models of teaching and learning connect multiple aspects of the curriculum and enhance student engagement. In this presentation, I posit the view that all students would benefit from the storied approaches of Egan, Booth and Heathcote. Heathcote’s narrative curriculum structure (Mantle of the Expert) challenges students to invest themselves at the deepest level. The “in-role” experience -fundamental to the narrative approach -enables students to: experience deeper levels of inquiry; continue to explore the world through play; make connections across subject areas; access (at a visceral level) real world events; and develop a sense of agency in their own learning. Daily examples of such a curriculum design are evident in The HIStory Centre, where creative and innovative drama based practice provides the context for learning in Years 3/4 at ELTHAM College -a K-12 Independent School set in a rural environment 30 km northeast of Melbourne.
The HIStory Centre: how the physical structure of learning spaces, collaborative teaching teams and sympathetic timetabling enables creative arts pedagogies and the narrative curriculum to flourish;
Mantle of The Expert: how to structure and scaffold student experiences so that every student embodies an authentic role and directs her/his own learning;
The role of the teacher and the teacher in role;
The power of role-play to engage students across all aspects of the school curriculum.
Biography: Catherine Howard has 25 years teaching experience in both government and independent schools across Australia, the UK and Europe. She has qualifications in Professional Writing, and is a published author in the fields of Philosophy For Children and Outdoor Education. Catherine is currently a Senior Exemplar Teacher for ELTHAM College Junior School, leading the Years 3/4 Neighbourhood-known as The HIStory Centre. Catherine is particularly passionate about the unique and innovative drama-based program that drives the curriculum at this level of the school. In The HIStory Centre, students and staff work together in-role to explore a variety of historical eras and stories. In doing so, they experience first-hand the issues, dilemmas, dramas, conflicts and relationships that form the basis of culture, tradition and story.
Moses Sunday Jayeola-Omoyeni
Adeyemi College of Education, Nigeria
Learning through History a case of the school museum in enhancing proficiency in learning African Traditional History in Nigeria 2000-2012
The poor performances and examination results of the secondary school students in African History as a subject in the college curriculum, and in the West African School Certificate Examinations, yearly conducted in Nigeria, gave most African history scholars and researchers a high level of worrisome concerns. It was realized that the Nigerian secondary school students were no longer interested in offering and learning history as a subject in the secondary schools in Nigeria. This had a lot of implications on the development of Nigerian youths and the entire nation. Paulo Freire (1972), puts our present dilemma very clearly. He indicated that education is suffering from narration sickness. This action research activity elucidated the school museum as a good laboratory that served the various secondary school communities and aided effective teaching and learning of African History in some selected schools in Ondo and Osun states of Nigeria between 2000 and 2012.
The purpose of the article therefore, is to report the findings and:
(a) Provide a new insight into the teaching and learning African traditional history.
(b) show-cases how museums could be used to promote the learning of African History in Nigerian secondary schools.
(c) Aid the expansion of information and dialogue about issues demanding more precise concepts which would facilitate understanding rather than obfuscate the learning of African History.
(d) Maintain a balance between text book history and creative neologisms with all the problems of making history teaching and learning real in the schools.
(e) Redress the difficulty the learners often encountered in learning African History in Nigeria based on a dearth of textbooks.
(f) Initiate national and international applications for positive education and knowledge of African History.
Mr Jeremy Johnson
Chief Executive Officer Sovereign Hill Outdoor Museum, Australia
Sovereign Hill Australia’s Leading Outdoor Museum
Sovereign Hill’s mission is to tell the story of Ballarat’s fabulous gold rushes and those of the mid to late 19th Century together with their impact on Australia’s development as a nation. The Outdoor Museum covers a 30 hectare site, has over 110 exhibit buildings including many which are from the gold rush period and more particularly presents an educational program that is accredited for the education standards that apply in Australian and Victorian education.
In pursuit of this mission we employ over 380 staff and enjoy the valued contribution of more than 300 volunteers. We have on many occasions won the award as the State of Victoria’s Major Tourist Attraction, including in 2014, and on two occasions the National award for that category. The most recent of these was in 2006.
Sovereign Hill exists as an independent company limited by guarantee. It is a community-based organisation based on a membership model. The secret of the success of Sovereign Hill has been the fact that it is not a Government or Local Government entity and therefore it does not have the strictures of reporting, political interference nor budgetary control that those Government structures impose. Its capital base has come from three main sources: fundraising, retained business earnings and grants from Government sources. Sovereign Hill has become very adept at both its fundraising from individuals and foundations and has enjoyed success with lobbying activities for gaining Government financial support for its programs and exhibit developments.
The expanded development of the Outdoor Museum over the past decade has included exhibits such as the fourth costumed school, the inclined tramway, the underground mine “Trapped” experience and expansion of the Museum’s reach into the ever-expanding China outbound market. Sovereign Hill presently receives around 30% of the inbound market from China into Victoria.
The success of Sovereign Hill’s education program has been based on it being fundamental to the learning standards within the school curricula for both the national and state school learning outcomes.
Biography: Dr Jeremy Johnson has been the Chief Executive Officer of Sovereign Hill, the Outdoor Heritage Museum at Ballarat, since December 2002. Prior to taking up an Executive appointment at Sovereign Hill in 1995, he held various senior and CEO positions within local government in Victoria.
He is Honorary Treasurer of the Council of Australasian Museum Directors, Board member and Past President of the Board and the Executive Council of the Victorian Employers’ Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Chairman of the Victoria Tourism Industry Council, and has been Chair of Central Highlands Water Board since 2010.
In 2011, he received an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Ballarat for distinguished eminent business and community service. He was the recipient of the Award for Outstanding Contribution by an Individual at the 2012 Victorian Tourism Awards.
Chairman, Support Association School Museum Bremen, Germany
Post war education 1945-1960
In this presentation, the project work of the School Museum Bremen with the successful special exhibition at the townhall in 2014 will be introduced.
Focus of the project “Hunger - Democracy - Rock’n’Roll - Childhood and Youth from 1945 to 1960” was the post-war history. The keywords in the title point to the main themes of the special exhibition: We wanted to highlight the living conditions of childhood and youth after 1945 which created the basis for the school education. “Absence due to lack of shoes” is an example of the close connection between economic situation, domestic conditions and school. A substantive focus was also the question how schools succeeded to “educate for democracy”. Finally, “rock’n’roll” stands as a buzz word for the youth culture of the 1950s.
We devised the exhibition as a model project. Two essential criteria therefore were:
1. A clear focus on the inter-generational dialogue - we wanted to encourage schoolboys and schoolgirls to investigate their family history and to come to grips with their grandparents’ and grand-grandparents’ generation. The result should become a “landscape of memories”.
2. The cooperation of schoolboys and schoolgirls was not to be confined to conducting prepared interviews, but they were asked to formulate their own questions to the grandparent’s generation and to transform the results in a creative way for display in the exhibition.
In the course of this project, the School Museum Bremen saw its main task as facilitator and coordinator and had to step back when it came to creating content, in order to make room for the exploring children. The School Museum supported both the explorative process and the creative implementation by pointing out possibilities and providing experts. The school’s project results accounted for the liveliness of the exhibition and showed a new approach to a participative exhibition model. The presentation will address the following points: In which way can a historical research project be conducted as cooperation with schools and within the scope of regular school lessons? Which conditions does it need to implement such a form of participation? What are the results of the evaluation of this project? The project presentation will focus on research-based learning with contemporary witnesses in a school class environment.
Biography: Born 1942, married with 3 children and 6 grandchildren. 1965 end of teaching studies and start of employment as a teacher in Bremen. From 1971 employment with the Bremen Senate of Education; responsible for school development and from 1978 for school inspection as well.
Started the school historical collection in same year, to preserve material after 25 schools closed down within 10 years. 1994-2003 director of a school which combined the departments school museum and primary school. Since 2009 chairman of the organization which supports the school museum now instead of the town council.
Curator of Museum of Education, University of Padua, Museum of Education, University Museum Centre (CAM), Italy
The ‘time room’ in the Museum of Education of Padua University
The Museum of Education of Padua University was formally established in 1993 to protect, study and expose the heritage related to the history of education, seen as a complex phenomenon occurring in and out of the school, bringing people up from birth to adult life. In addition to the strong commitment for the scientific research and to the constant teaching activity aimed to university students, the Museum is opened to the community. In fact it is a place dedicated not only to the production of culture but also to its transmission. It organizes guided tours for schools of all levels and for groups with special educational needs or for associations of adult and senior people. The Museum is firmly convinced that knowledge can be better memorized if the message touches the strings of emotion, therefore it uses interactive activities and workshops that are set in an Italian style classroom replica made of original materials of the early twentieth century. In this “time room” the guide-animator plays the role of a teacher meanwhile the children interpret their grand-grandparents when they attended school. In this way the pupils have to follow the behavior rules of the past century. They attend to a lesson of calligraphy, which subject disappeared from the nowadays Italian school. Even during the visit aimed to the adults, the Museum offers evocative happenings, sometimes with the aid ofprofessional actors performing in costume. In these occasions the major role is played by the surprise and the curiosity of the texts. These experiences will be compared with the most recent studies on the topic.
Biography: Mara Orlando has been working as curator of the Museum of Education of Padua University since 2010, where she collaborates with professor Patrizia Zamperlin, who founded the museum in 1993. She is in particular responsible of guided tours organization and of the realization of animated path for Primary School, which takes place in the museum site. She supported the organization of temporary exhibitions arranged outside the museum for specific initiatives. In her previous role she was administration manager in human resource department of University of Padua.
Masters student at Deakin University, Museum Studies and Cultural Heritage
Five decades of Innovation: The Visual and Performing Arts at Sovereign Hill.
Sovereign Hill was a regional community initiative of the 1960s, which has grown to include three properties and several collections, with over 450,000 visitors annually and an international reputation. The innovations of each period are seen through the prism of the Visual and Performing Arts and contextualized by the international growth of museums and museology. A lavish photo-essay of images from each decade illustrates developments at the museum, in tourism and a range of technologies. I also include my changing perspectives and relationship to Sovereign Hill, growing up in Ballarat, leaving and returning, as it constantly grew. My research is based on a wide range of publications, a survey and interviews I conducted with past and present employees and volunteers.
Inherent tensions between business and historical accuracy and community and professional perspectives have existed since inception. These resulted in an clear, early vision for Sovereign Hill and a vibrant and creative approach. The buildings and time frame were limited to Ballarat 1850-61, well documented by writers, artists and photographers. The 25 hectare authentic gold-mining site provided room and inspiration for expansion. With its amateur-professional mix, constant challenges and need and desire to work in house, traditional demarcations were never firmly established. Collaborations crossed disciplines and engaged with educational institutions, local industries and tourism.
The Visual and Performing Arts provide focus and method for innovative decisions, such as the commitment to an accurate and immersive experience, extending to accommodation, the first son et lumiere in Australia, celebrating the Eureka rebellion (Blood on the Southern Cross), an extensive web presence and the extraordinarily successful role-play education programs. Increasingly the arts have provided ways to document and engage with issues such as the experiences of the Chinese and role of women on the goldfields. The challenge is to maintain relevance through generational change and continue developing global audiences and international standing.
Biography: Susan Pilbeam has worked in the Arts as a theatre director, community artist, administrator, teacher, tertiary lecturer and researcher. She grew up in Ballarat and was awarded a Sovereign Hill/University of Ballarat Scholarship, enabling this study. She is a Museum Studies and Cultural Heritage student at Deakin University.
Director, Livingstone Museum, Zambia
Zambian Traditional Toy making- time to “Play” History, a case of Livingstone Museum in Zambia
My paper will discuss the Zambian traditional societies way of making toys for children in the home were parents, elder siblings and children themselves made toys in the home using local materials that were available around the home. This tradition has survived today in Zambian societies especially in the rural areas of the country. However, in the urban areas because of modern toys this tradition is slowly being lost. The Livingstone museum came up with a programme for children to come to the museum and make toys of their choice under the guidance of adults. What is unique about this programme was the selection of the materials to be used in the toy making and the types of toys. Different time periods in the history of the Zambian society used different materials for toy making. The children were given the materials according to the time period and encouraged to make toys out of the materials. The adults helped the children to make the toys of the era and also told stories of the particular time period. This paper will therefore tell the story of this project that made children explore the history of their societies through toy making.
At the end of the programme the museum and the children put up an exhibition based on these toys but put up according to the era and around the stories of the Era; for example “the wood and mud era”; “the cooper wire era”, “the coca Cola era” etc.
Biography: I am woman age 42 who has been working from museums in Zambia as a researcher in Ethnography and creating museum educational programs for schools since 2002. I have done research on traditional dances that tell the history of our people and translated them into programs of dances in a cultural dances competition from different parts of the country. I have also done a number of research activities in traditional arts that have historical connotations and turned them into museum school programs. Currently I am Director of an Ethnographic museum were I have designed a children’s programme based on traditional children’s education that used emblems as teaching aids.
Sovereign Hill School, Australia
In their shoes-Children comparing their modern experiences to those before them
Children are very egocentric learners. They engage with and interpret the world based on their own experiences. As museum educators we can draw on this world view to engage children in authentic and deep learning experiences. Immersive experiences that children can relate back to their own lives and compare are rich opportunities for learning. The Sovereign Hill School program creates a unique environment that offers on opportunity for children to directly compare their daily lives to those of children in the 1850s.
In this paper, Stephanie explains some of the unique opportunities presented at the Sovereign Hill Schools and Education Sessions and the special moments that create for the children. She explores the playful interactions and banter that are designed to create shock and disbelief in the students - thus giving them fun and memorable moments to contrast and compare.
Biography: Stephanie Rosestone is a teacher at the Sovereign Hill Costumed School. Prior to this she had worked as an Education Officer at Sovereign Hill and the State Library of Victoria. Stephanie is an experienced Primary and Secondary school teacher with a passion for offering authentic and engaging learning experiences to school children within a Museum setting.
Research assistant, School Museum North Wuerttemberg in Kornwestheim, Germany
Archive- and material culture and their contribution to research on the history of Elementary schools in Wuerttemberg. A micro-historical study
With their signatures given on 16th December, 1930, two civil servants confirmed the correctness of an inventory of the so-called Evangelische Volksschule, a public elementary school in Mühlhausen am Neckar, then an independent rural community, now part of the capital of Baden-Wuerttemberg, Stuttgart.
Little did they know that more than eighty years later, inventories like the one mentioned, originally created for administrative purposes only, have developed into a source of great significance for historians of education. The reason for this is simple: Whereas sources like educational legislation show the legal framework in which the institution school and its employees were operating and whereas the large number of different teaching materials being preserved in school museum collections today bear witness to the variety of different teaching methods available on the marketing the past, inventories enable historians to do a reality-check: Were regulations and laws actually converted into school practice and which teaching material for certain subjects could really be found in schools? These are just two of the many questions that can be answered by having a closer look at these documents.
In my presentation, I want to use the inventory of the Evangelische Volksschule in Mühlhausen for the years 1926-30 to show how one subject, History, was actually taught by teachers at this school in the given time-period and by doing so, demonstrate how this type of source can increase our knowledge about everyday life in Elementary schools in Wuerttemberg.
Biography: Liane Strauss studied Medieval History, English and Catholic Theology at the University in Freiburg. Since 2010 she works as a research assistant for the School Museum North Württemberg in Kornwestheim near Stuttgart, Germany where she is responsible for the museum’s collection and its research.
Schooling, Service and the Great War: The influences and responses of Australian school communities
What knowledge and values underpinned wartime home front activities by Australian teachers and pupils, and encouraged many age-eligible males to enlist? DVA’s ‘Schooling, Service and the Great War’ investigates the diverse responses of individuals and communities.
Biography: Rosalie lectures in History education at Monash University. She is immediate past president of the History Teachers’ Association of Victoria, an organisation with which she maintains an involvement spanning 33 years, and is active in the History Teachers’ Association of Australia, Royal Historical Society of Victoria and numerous historico-cultural communities.
Tijs Van Ruiten
Director Onderwijsmuseum, Onderwijsmuseum, The Netherlands
Lobbying for funds
Artefacts, costuming and role-play in tertiary history education: An experience in the use of active learning in a first year Western Civilization course
Traditional teaching methodology for first year history education is often fraught with the perils of a lack of engagement from students in class reading, tutorial participation and a sense of practical relevance. Further to this, the highly fragmented experience of secondary history curriculum has created a situation where many first year humanities and social science students lack both a general chronology and broad overview of the issues underlying Western Civilization courses. In relation to these concerns a project to overhaul the scaffolding and teaching structure of the foundation course “The Western Tradition” was developed to assist students in developing a broad contextual overview of the history of western civilization was developed at Federation University. This was combined with extensive use of costuming, role-play, craftwork and historical artefacts within the course pedagogy in order to engender a spirit of active learning and engagement with content. The objective was that by engaging students in an active learning environment, which could be tied into their experiences in popular culture, artwork, food and historic sites, they would have a greater enthusiasm in engaging with the research and writing required for tertiary level education. This paper discusses the process by which the course scaffolding and pedagogy was derived and examines the strengths and limitations on student learning outcomes through the use of an active learning methodology.
Biography: Dr David Waldron is a lecturer in History and Anthropology at Federation University with a research focus on folklore and community identity. He is the author of ‘Sign of the Witch: Modernity and the Pagan Revival’, ‘Shock! The Black Dog of Bungay a Case Study in Local Folklore’ and ‘Snarls from the Tea-Tree: Victoria’s Big Cat Folklore’.
Centre for Design Innovation, Faculty of Health Arts & Design, Swinburne University of Technology
Affective Learning as Effective Learning: Sovereign Hill School:
In this paper, I report on research that I have done on the Sovereign Hill Museum School as a unique example of children’s affective learning. My research indicates that the program that has been developed and implemented has been far in advance of modern curriculum advice and stipulation, indeed anticipating modern developments in curricula. The program leads children to their own affective responses to the scope and variety of print and visual texts in relation to goldfields history in Australia as this has been played out in Ballarat. In doing so, it has put into effect a child-centred basis for its program that builds on children’s personal engagement with what they encounter in the program to develop affective dimensions of their learning. My research confirms the impressions that all concerned with the program have developed over the years in relation to its unqualified success in the culmination of child-centred, affective approaches to learning. I argue that the entire program is a practical demonstration and acknowledgment of the need for narrative as one of the strongest of human needs, evident even in primal records of human existence, as providing the basis for effective and affective teaching and learning.
Biography: Dr Margaret Zeegers is an Adjunct Professor at the Centre for Design Innovation, Faculty of Health Arts & Design, Swinburne University of Technology. Her Research Report, An Affective Pedagogy Success Story: Sovereign Hill Museum School is the first example of such research on the Sovereign Hill School Program since its inception. It may be viewed at www.sovereignhill.com.au/media/…/Pedagogical_success_story.pdf