This groundbreaking and thought-provoking book puts the care experience at the centre of education history. Engaging and accessible, Critical Histories in Care and Education provides historical insight to the growing field of care studies. It reveals how nineteenth century assumptions and prejudices about care-experienced pupils helped shape education policy and continue to do so today.

Drawing together original archive research with critical theory and written by an academic researcher and writer who is a foster carer herself, the book challenges some of the key myths and stereotypes involving the care experience and shines an illuminating light on their origins. Aimed primarily at undergraduate and postgraduate students in education, this book identifies discursive threads and provides fresh insights through a critical retelling of the history of the care system. In combining the histories of care and education, it challenges some taken-for-granted assumptions about both. Throughout the book students are invited to critically examine relationships between gender, class, care and work, and how they continue to impact on the role today.

The book is a vital resource for anyone involved in studying childhood, education, welfare and care, and will appeal to anyone wanting to broaden their knowledge and critical understanding of this complex topic.