Emeritus Professor W.F. Connell 1916–2001

OBE 1978, PhD Lon., Hon D Lit (Ed) Lon., Hon D Litt (Ed) Syd., MA Illin., MA M Ed Melb., FASSA, FACE Foundation Editor of the Australian Journal of Education (1957-1972) William Fraser (Bill) Connell made a profound contribution to research and scholarship in relation to education in Australia, to teacher education and its organisation, and to policy and public understandings of education. He conceived education as a field of practice that was at the same time a field of knowledge, arguing consistently that both should be augmented as much as possible, the one informing the other. Bill Connell enjoyed a long and highly productive career, which continued after he stepped down from full-time work at the University of Sydney at the age of 60 in 1976, `retiring' to Mornington, a beach town located just off the south-eastern edge of Melbourne, to produce major work in the history of education and in comparative and international education. He influenced generations of students and was greatly respected by his colleagues here and abroad. Bill Connell was born on 28 June 1916 in Lockhart, New South Wales. He was raised in Melbourne, attending Glenferrie State School, Mont Albert Central School and Melbourne Grammar School before completing a BA and BEd at the University of Melbourne, where his lifelong interests in the history of education, and comparative and international education, had their roots. During World War II he served in the Navy while enrolled in an MEd at Melbourne, where he won the Cohen Prize. In 1946 he graduated with a PhD from the University of London. The thesis was published as The educational thought and influence of Matthew Arnold. From 1948 to 1951 he worked at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he completed a second MA. This was a seminal period: Bill developed strong and affectionate ties at Urbana-Champaign, returning as a Visiting Professor and encouraging many Australian colleagues and graduate students to make the same journey. The University of Illinois established a Connell scholarship to facilitate international movement. He was appointed as a Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney in 1951, becoming a Reader in 1954 and a Professor in 1955 before turning 40. At that time he had only one other academic colleague in education. The Faculty of Education at the University of Sydney was created in the next two decades. The growth of education at Sydney and other `sandstone' universities was particularly important. It ensured that the emerging field of education was not confined to the teachers' colleges and the colleges of advanced education, which were formally excluded from the university research culture. While at Sydney University, Bill was active on many fronts. He conducted two major surveys of adolescents in Sydney, he chaired the Australian UNESCO Education Committee (1964-1973) and the National Committee on Social Science Teaching (1970-1977), and organised a major international conference on education in the social sciences for UNESCO. He contributed markedly to international relations in and through education, being active in the United States and the United Kingdom as well as Australia, and conducting visits to China and the USSR during the period of the Cold War. He took part in study tours to China in 1972 and 1974, just as relationships between Australia and China were beginning to open up. At different times he was a Visiting Professor at Illinois, Columbia, the University of California Los Angeles, London and Wolfson College at Cambridge. He served as President of the Australian Association for Research in Education in 1973: in 1978 he was made an honorary Life Member of the Association. He was a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, Australia. On his formal retirement, Bill Connell became an Emeritus Professor at the University of Sydney, and a Research Fellow in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. …