Girls Becoming Teachers: An Historical Analysis of Western Austra ...

The first strand of continuity is that my study progresses the exploration of the patriarchal structures within which my participants grew up, lived, and worked, while I simultaneously consider acts of agency and autonomy. The second way in which this study contributes to the collective exploration is that it is localised and particularised. It is bounded by both period and location, and seeks the detail of contextualised lives and the prevailing discourses. The third strand of continuity is attention to subjectivity, personal lives, and stories that add a further dimension to our understanding of becoming a woman teacher within this context. Finally, I have constructed my narrative with an ongoing reflexivity about the way we create our historical texts, and an acknowledgement that when scholars tell our stories—for that is what they are—we recognise their provisionality.

This study is thus part of the ongoing historical exploration of women teachers’ lives. It makes a unique contribution, partly due to the location—Western Australia—and also in its focus on the process of becoming a woman teacher. Western Australian historical works on education have, with a few exceptions, not foregrounded the role of gender. In choosing to make gender a key theme in the conceptualisation and creation of my project, I staked a claim in an as yet under-explored and potentially rich seam in the educational history of the state. Within this potentially rich seam lies a particular layer, which concerns the professional preparation of teachers. It is this lode that became the focus of my investigation.

The major works on teacher training in early twentieth century Western Australia, such as Turner’s The Training of Teachers in Australia¹⁷ and Mossenson’s A History of Teacher Training in Western Australia,¹⁸ are records of institutions, courses, qualifications, and the actions of senior bureaucrats and politicians. They are, like many publications of their time, devoid of the personal experiences of the students who attended these institutions to gain an entry to teaching.