A Wedding Has Been Arranged? The Unhappy Courtship of the Hamilton Teachers’ College and McMaster University

Abstract

This article is a case study of the long and complex history of teacher education in Hamilton, Ontario. Hamilton's first institution of teacher education, the Ontario Normal School, was an attempt to create an environment in which to effectively prepare secondary school teachers outside of a university setting. Its closure in 1907 was the result of the placement of secondary school teacher education within a university setting. The Hamilton Normal School (later Hamilton Teachers' College) that replaced the Ontario Normal School was eventually closed in 1979, a result of the failure of negotiations between Hamilton's McMaster University and the Ontario Department of Education. The role of local and provincial politics and the tensions in professional education are analyzed. Further, this article unravels a complex tale of competing objectives, and what could best be described as bad timing. Debates are identified from deep inside the core disciplines of the academy on the nature of teacher education that still haunt faculties of education today.