Designing Australian schools: a spatial history of innovation, pedagogy and social change is an ARC Discovery Grant with an interdisciplinary team of researchers comprising architectural, urban and heritage historians, and scholars working in Australian social and cultural history and the history of education. The research team members are Julie Willis, Kate Darian-Smith, Philip Goad, Hannah Lewi, David Nichols, Elaine Harwood and Julie McLeod. The project examines innovations in the design of Australian primary and secondary schools across the twentieth century in relation to developments in government policy, curriculum reform and community expectations. As part of this broader study, Julie has developed research strands on school design and progressive education, looking closely at alternative and community schools, and the regulation of segregated and integrated school spaces – including the built and natural environment – in relation to the education of Indigenous students.
Associated publications:
McLeod, Julie and Healy, Sianan (2016) ‘“We make no discrimination”: Aboriginal children and the socio-spatial arrangements of the 1960s Australian classroom’, in Kate Darian-Smith and Julie Willis (eds) Designing schools: space, place and pedagogy in the twentieth century, Routledge, London, 144–157.
McLeod, Julie, with Phillip Goad, Julie Willis and Kate Darian-Smith (2016) ‘Reading images of school buildings and spaces: an interdisciplinary dialogue on visual research in histories of progressive education’, in Julianne Moss and Barbara Pini (eds)Visual research methods in educational research, Palgrave, London, 15–35.
McLeod, Julie (2014) ‘Experimenting with education: spaces of freedom and alternative schooling in the 1970s’, History of Education Review, vol.43, no.2, 172–189.
McLeod, Julie (2014) ‘Space, place and purpose in designing Australia’s schools’, History of Education Review, vol.43, no.2, 133–137.
