Women Educators’ Sojourns Around the British Empire from the Interwar Years to the Mid-Twentieth Century

Abstract

Historical research currently articulates women educators’ transnational careers around the British Empire but they also shaped ideas at home. This chapter focuses on two groups of teachers, the first being British, Australian, New Zealand, Canadian, and South African teachers who spent one-year teaching in the dominions or London under the auspices of the League of Empire exchange teachers’ scheme in the interwar years. British women teachers who joined the Colonial Education Service and worked in the tropical colonies of Africa after World War Two comprise the second group. Both cohorts were expected to return home rather than taking up permanent residence abroad. The chapter explores their experiences of living and working away from home and highlights their subsequent repatriation, demonstrating that both groups were generating interconstitutive connections between people, places, and education. Indeed, they were shaping mental maps of empire in their homelands during and following their sojourns abroad.