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Mary Dawson and Newton Park Training College: Education, Teacher Training and Expressions of Citizenship in the Long 1950S

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Mary Dawson and Newton Park Training College: Education, Teacher Training and Expressions of Citizenship in the Long 1950S James, K.E. (2019) Mary Dawson and Newton Park Training College: education, teacher training and expressions of citizenship in the long 1950s. PhD thesis, Bath Spa University. ResearchSPAce http://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/ Your access and use of this document is based on your acceptance of the ResearchSPAce Metadata and Data Policies, as well as applicable law:- https://researchspace.bathspa.ac.uk/policies.html Unless you accept the terms of these Policies in full, you do not have permission to download this document. This cover sheet may not be removed from the document. Please scroll down to view the document. MARY DAWSON and NEWTON PARK TRAINING COLLEGE: EDUCATION, TEACHER TRAINING, and EXPRESSIONS OF CITIZENSHIP IN THE LONG 1950s KATHRYN ELIZABETH JAMES A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements of Bath Spa University for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Culture and Environment, Bath Spa University March 2019 Acknowledgements This research reflects and builds upon my own perspective as a mature student. I was born in the early 1960s, and throughout my childhood knew women who clearly had agency of their own in their lives and work, within family businesses, the teaching profession, or through self-employment. The discovery of previously unseen archive documents and oral history interviews through my work with the Bath Spa University Archive presented the opportunity to research real lives and to uncover the nuanced detail of women’s experience in the long 1950s. My thanks go to my supervisors: Dr Roberta Anderson for the initial challenge, and Professor Lynn Abrams for her insightful and challenging comments along the way. For her kindness, honesty and support, Dr Alison Hems, whose encouragement kept me going to the end. And for the final push, Professor Astrid Swenson. My gratitude also extends to my colleagues, past and present, in the History and Heritage team at Bath Spa University. They have inspired and encouraged me since my first tentative steps as an undergraduate in 2008. I could never have imagined coming this far. My fellow PhD candidates have provided a range of support, as well as many crucial discussions over coffee. Thank you for your friendship, advice, company, expertise and technical support. My thanks also go to the former students of Newton Park College, who returned to share their memories and experiences with me. It was a privilege to listen to everyone who told their stories. Many of them donated material to the Archive we were building at Newton Park, and so my thanks also go to the undergraduate students – especially Richard – who helped me there, and shared the discovery of the College history, transcribed the interviews, and made new layers of memory. Finally, I want to thank my family, here and gone, who have encouraged and supported me through this long process. For asking, talking, listening, advising and an awful lot of proof reading. Abstract Following the Second World War, revolutionary changes to national education resulted in a huge demand for teachers. It was women who stepped into this void, taking advantage of a profession which combined present opportunity and future flexibility. This thesis provides a case study of one establishment which trained such teachers. Newton Park Training College was founded in 1946, under the leadership of Mary Dawson, who served as Principal until her retirement in 1968. Dawson, as a university-educated woman herself, is part of a significant network of women who led the training colleges over this period, and she used the rhetoric and ethos of citizenship to validate the development of women’s participation throughout the teaching profession. This study argues that, as part of a widely expanding educational sector in an era of post-war reconstruction, women teachers were integral to public life and were able to demonstrate their personal agency and conduct their own lives in ways not possible for previous generations. This led to a new confidence for many women, who in turn served as conduits for change for those who followed. The period of the long 1950s presented women with a number of contrasting choices, of which the media image of the ‘lipsticked and aproned’ woman at home remains dominant.1 Such imagery presents much of the period as offering limited opportunity to women, yet this assumption is belied by the increasing visibility of married women engaged in public life, and the expectation of the women themselves that their contributions as active and responsible citizens were vital to national life. The thesis focuses on just one woman, one college, and a small group of students. But in doing so it unpacks the changing nature of a period of history in which women were able to exploit a public life through teaching. It adds to the knowledge of women teachers in the period and makes an original contribution through the in-depth analysis of one institution and its leader, and makes further contributions to scholarship in several areas. Specifically, these feature country house history in the post-war period, biographical and institutional history, and the 1 Selina Todd, The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class, (London, John Murray, 2014) p. 211. contribution made by women like Dawson and her students through education in the twentieth century. The story of Newton Park College provides an assessment of the longer-term impact of women’s education and forces a reconsideration of the significance of this era. It also reinforces and complements recent scholarship which establishes the long 1950s as part of the continuity of progress towards women’s equality over the course of the twentieth century. Mary Dawson, circa 1945. Photographer unknown. (Mary Dawson Collection, Bath Spa University Archive) List of Abbreviations ATCDE Association of Teachers in Colleges and Departments of Education B.Ed Bachelor of Education LEA Local Education Authority TCA Training Colleges Association TES Times Educational Supplement ‘This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. I have exercised reasonable care to ensure that my thesis is original, and does not to the best of my knowledge break any UK law or infringe any third party’s copyright or other intellectual property right.’ Contents Introduction 1 Chapter Overview 13 Chapter 1: Historiography and Methodology 16 Chapter 2: ‘My opportune moment’: A Revolution in Education 39 Chapter 3: Dawson as Educationalist: Early life and Career 66 Chapter 4: Dawson in Practice: The Creation of Newton Park College 88 Chapter 5: The long 1950s at Newton Park: Development and Diversification 129 Chapter 6: Into the 1960s: Education, Institution and Society in Transition 173 Conclusion 208 Bibliography 214 Appendix A: Summary of Oral and Written Testimony Subjects 236 1 Introduction In 2012, in the first few months of the Bath Spa University Archive Project, I was granted permission to access the basement strong room of Main House at Newton Park.1 Main House now provides office accommodation for the University’s senior staff, including the Vice Chancellor and the executive team. I had been told that a portrait of Mary Dawson, which used to hang for many years in the stairwell of the house itself, might be found there. Behind a heavy iron door, the small stone room with flagstone floor is an original part of the eighteenth-century house, and there on the floor I found the portrait. Following this, the portrait was rehung in Main House, and a new generation of staff and students became aware of Dawson, after an absence of many years. This thesis examines the founding of Newton Park Teacher Training College and the leadership of Mary Dawson, who served as Principal from 1946 until her retirement in 1968.2 Its central question considers how the ethos and development of the College under Dawson, reflected ideas of citizenship and women’s agency in the post-war world. Founded as a college for women, Newton Park was established as part of the changes in education which followed the 1944 Education Act, to address the acute shortage of teachers – a shortage initially created by the conditions of war, then seriously worsened by the demands of the act. Led by Mary Dawson, the College offered training to women at a time when their contribution to the teaching profession was in high demand. Dawson herself described the Act as ‘revolutionary’, in the opportunities it created for women, for children, for the teacher training colleges, and for education as a whole. Dawson and the students she trained stand as examples of educated women in the twentieth century, and the ways those women expressed their agency. They used the opportunities provided by education, and the rhetoric of citizenship to embrace ‘full and 1 The Archive Project, initially known as the Newton Park Project, was established by the History department in 2011, to look into a small collection of primary sources held in the Estates office at the Newton Park Campus. The Project carried out oral history interviews with alumni, and gathered further primary source documents from across the university as they emerged. 2 In terms of the college itself, several name changes have occurred throughout its history. Originally set up by the local authority, it was named the City of Bath Training College, but quickly became known as Newton Park College, after its location. A few years after Dawson retired it amalgamated with other Bath institutions to become Bath College of Higher Education, later becoming Bath Spa University College, and in 2005 Bath Spa University. I refer to ‘Newton Park College’ throughout. 2 abundant lives’ in a way not possible for previous generations.3 The College community, based at Newton Park, became the backdrop for their endeavours and entrance to public life.
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