'To see through Johnny and to see Johnny through': the guidance movement in interwar Australia

In the late 1920s and early 1930s, the guidance movement secured a foothold in the Australian educational landscape. Educators and psychologists looked to new initiatives in Britain and America in the hope that guidance programmes would provide solutions to a range of social, economic and educational problems: vocational guidance to help young people identify their calling and secure employment, educational guidance to assist with post-primary selection and placement, and child guidance clinics for the treatment of emotional, psychological and behavioural problems. The distinctive aims of different forms of guidance, however, have tended to obscure in recent historiography the common ideas and rationales that underpinned their establishment: in short, the preclusion of social, educational and industrial 'misfits'. This article argues, therefore, for a reconceptualisation of guidance as a broader philosophy of individualised education, with a related set of practices, that took root internationally during the interwar years. Through a focus on developments in Australia, an examination of guidance in this broader sense points to the critical place of psychological knowledge and the expanding role of schools in managing the development of children and adolescents and guiding them towards adulthood and future citizenship.