No undergraduate or postgraduate programmes currently exist for the professional education of informal educators. The authors outline the development of previous programmes and consider the emergence of informal education as a discrete concept. The article then highlights some key failings in the professional education of informal educators and…

The relocation of teacher preparation to "new graduate schools of education" (nGSEs) is a highly controversial "innovation" within the rapidly expanding field of teacher education. This introductory article to a guest-edited issue of "The New Educator" focused on nGSEs defines teacher preparation at nGSEs and analyzes…

The ambitious project to nationalise the Australian Curriculum has prompted great interest among policymakers, academics and civics teachers in Australian schools. The government-led citizenship education initiative "Discovering Democracy" (1997-2007) comprehensively failed to meet its objectives, most prominently the stated goal of…

This article investigates how girls were educated about sex, pregnancy and childbirth during the years 1930 to 1970. Based on the results of 92 oral-history interviews with Oxfordshire women, it explores how national debates surrounding sex education influenced what girls in Oxfordshire were taught. In addition, it examines how successful the…

Belize (formerly British Honduras) has achieved a good deal of success with its Rural Education and Agriculture Programme (REAP). REAP was initiated in 1976 to create the attitudes and provide the skills necessary for rural youth to make meaningful contributions to the country's agricultural development. Initiated by an intraministerial and…

From its inception in 1914 until 1940, the New Mexico Agricultural Extension Service was quite successful in delivering educational programs to non-English speaking, Hispanic women in Santa Fe County and almost totally unsuccessful in Dona Ana County. Criteria for success were involvement of ethnic women in the program, ability to adapt national…

It was not until the end of the 1970s that public debate on the problem of functional illiteracy among adults began in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). Even afterward, Germans were reluctant to admit that illiteracy was a problem in their country. Literacy education efforts began at the local level, and the first national conference on adult…

From 1910 to 1935 a campaign was waged in the southern United States to eradicate adult illiteracy. This program was primarily based on volunteers, and it revolved around night, summer, or cotton mill schools that were often termed Opportunity Schools. Many parallels can be drawn to current efforts to address the problem of functional illiteracy…

The school-to-work (STW) movement began in the mid-1980s in response to concerns about the U.S. education system's ability to prepare most students for the "new economy." Despite the fact that most of the STW programs and activities funded by the School-to-Work Opportunities Act of 1994 have only recently been established, a fairly…