Student Life and Culture in Alberta's Normal Schools, 1930-1939
Abstract
Normal schools in 1930s Alberta prepared the province’s future teachers. Several hundred students entered normal schools in Calgary, Camrose, and Edmonton every year to complete the one-year teacher preparation course. Student life in normal schools revolved around relationships between faculty and students. Normal school faculty regulated behaviour in and out of the classroom, supervised extracurricular activities, and oversaw off-campus accommodations in fulfilment of academic and social responsibilities to care for students. They aimed to prepare Normalites (as students called themselves) for the teaching profession and so reinforced existing gender and social mores—expectations to which students were largely content to conform. From the perspective of students, faculty were to be respected because of their power over teacher certification and because they demonstrated genuine care for student wellbeing. Faculty involvement in student affairs, more than any other factor, determined the character and course of student experience at Alberta’s normal schools.
Description
Keywords
Education, Education--History of, Education--Teacher Training, History--Modern, History--Canadian, Education
Citation
Brackett, S. (2016). Student Life and Culture in Alberta's Normal Schools, 1930-1939 (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/27908