Conference litmus: The development of a conference and policy culture in the interwar period with special reference to the new education fellowship and british colonial education in Southern Africa1

Abstract

There is a great need for a historical understanding of policy environment: the political and ideological context from which policy, both as rhetoric and reality, arises. The purpose of this chapter is to promote a more nuanced understanding of the transformation of educational discourse in the interwar era as reflected in the deliberations of major professional conferences and to attempt to develop a deeper understanding of how these debates helped shape the background to shifts in British colonial education in the 1930s. The following discussion links professional educational networks promoting the exchange of ideas in the era of New Education and tertiary teacher education development to the emergence of missionary and government "policy" and to the origins of educational studies as a scientific or research field at this time.