Faculty of Education - Theses
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Item'With a smile in her voice' : a life of Jean Lawson 1908-1986( 1996)Jean Lawson was born in England in 1908 and migrated to Australia with her parents in 1914. Educated in private schools and at the Universities of Sydney and Melbourne, she had an exceptionally varied career for a woman of her generation, becoming a teacher, acting headmistress and school counsellor, a radio and stage actress and radio broadcaster, a senior officer in the wartime Women's Auxiliary Australian Air Force (WAAAF) and a writer. She was also an active member of the Melbourne Lyceum Club and of the Christian Science Church and she participated in a range of voluntary community activities. With interests spanning the sciences and the humanities, she was a well known figure in Melbourne's educational and cultural circles. Her life offers insights into several aspects of twentieth century education, particularly that of women - the role of small private schools in the education of middle class women in the first half of this century, the experience of female students in science faculties in the interwar years, the wartime training of WAAAF airwomen and officers, the impact of educative radio for children in the 1940s and 1950s and the nature of career counselling for girls in the fast changing world of the 1960s and 1970s. Thus rather than providing a traditional account which would spotlight Jean Lawson, throwing her life into a kind of isolation, while endeavouring not to diminish her own contribution in a variety of fields, her life has been used as a focus for exploring the wider experience of women involved in similar events and interests. Given her ability to alter direction and reinvent herself as circumstances changed, her life has also been considered in terms of the formation of female subjectivity and since much of her writing was autobiographical, theoretical issues concerning biography and autobiography have also been central.