Document Type
Article
Publication Date
11-2021
Department
Education
Abstract
The “Quincy Method” is widely considered a successful nineteenth-century school reform. Pioneered by Francis Parker in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1875, it fostered broad pedagogic change in an ordinary school system, transforming Quincy into a renowned hub of child-centered instruction. This article revisits the reform and explores its interaction with the Massachusetts teacher labor market. In a market characterized by low wages and an oversupply of teachers but few experienced, well-trained ones, teachers used Quincy's reform to obtain higher-paying, higher-status positions while municipalities used it to recruit competent applicants. Both practices jeopardized Quincy's cohesive system. Though the ensuing turnover may have brought progressive pedagogies to the mainstream, departing teachers frequently assumed positions outside public schools or in systems ill-structured to maintain their expertise. Accordingly, the article probes a celebrated reform's unintended consequences and contributes to scholarship on nineteenth-century progressive school reforms and women teachers.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1017/heq.2021.20
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Published Article/Book Citation
Murphy, Jeremy T. “From Teacher Improvement to Teacher Turnover: Unintended Consequences of School Reform in Quincy, Massachusetts, 1872–1893.” History of Education Quarterly 61, no. 4 (2021): 503–33. https://doi.org/10.1017/heq.2021.20.
Repository Citation
Murphy, Jeremy T., "From Teacher Improvement to Teacher Turnover: Unintended Consequences of School Reform in Quincy, Massachusetts, 1872-1893" (2021). Education Department Faculty Scholarship. 3.
https://crossworks.holycross.edu/educ_fac_scholarship/3
Comments
This is the Accepted Manuscript Version. This article has been published in a revised form in History of Education Quarterly http://doi.org/10.1017/heq.2021.20. This version is published under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC-ND licence. No commercial re-distribution or re-use allowed. Derivative works cannot be distributed. © copyright holder.