The Toronto Normal School employed 33 individual teaching staff during its founding decade (1847-1857). In that role, they occupied a unique position, as direct intermediaries between political authority and the teacher on the ground, in the new administrative grid of education in Upper Canada. The recent digital turn in historical research has provided the tools necessary to efficiently explore numerous, disparate corpora – enabling the recovery of these actors from historical anonymity. Historians have begun to explore the role of middle actors as this area of study offers the opportunity for new perspectives and, presciently, insights into the development and functioning of power structures in modern bureaucratic organizations.
Examining historical newspapers, commemorative books, and other documents, this thesis assembled numerous fragmentary references to create biographical sketches of staff members. In doing so, it has highlighted several individuals of keen interest for further, focused historical investigation. Foremost among these, Dorcas Clark, Headmistress of the Girls' Model School, emerged as a figure of accomplishment, mobility and impact whose story reflects the kind of agency available through employment with Toronto Normal. Clark, like many others in this study, was hired as part of a pattern of promotion from within observed amongst the Normal staff of this period. This trend accords with observations made by other historians studying the development and entrenchment of the power of middle actors within organizations. This thesis further observed that the Normal staff provided an archetype for the 'good' teacher which gave further definition to the rather vague statements of educational authorities on the subject.
This thesis demonstrates that the Normal staff frequently succeeded in building relationships with and a positive reputation within the educational marketplace in Toronto. This may have disassociated some of the educational ideas it was promoting from the political divisiveness associated with the system's political leadership. This thesis also suggests that the Normal was seen, notably within marginalized communities in the colony, as a lever of power and point of access to participate in the drive for social change that was at the heart of the Reform program.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:uottawa.ca/oai:ruor.uottawa.ca:10393/45666 |
| Date | 27 November 2023 |
| Creators | Burke, Andrew |
| Contributors | Gaffield, Chad |
| Publisher | Université d'Ottawa / University of Ottawa |
| Source Sets | Université d’Ottawa |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
| Format | application/pdf |
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