The Decorated School: Essays on Visual Culture of Schooling is a new multi-text publication discussing the relationships between architects, artists and educators, specifically through the art which became an integral part of the fabric of educational buildings and their immediate environments in the twentieth century. The Decorated School Research network is an Arts and Heritage Research Council-funded initiative led by Dr Catherine Burke of the University of Cambridge and Dr Jeremy Howard of the University of St Andrews. The network holds seminars and conferences focussed on discourses within structural arts in schools, the planning behind them, and the ideas about education and childhood conveyed through the works.

The book maintains a multi-national focus, with essays on subjects as geographically varied as the Edinburgh Schools Beautiful Scheme of the 1930s; the shaping of Chicago schools through murals in the early 20th century; Asger Jorn's school decoration in Aarhus Statsgymnasium, Denmark, 1959-61; Soviet and Post-Soviet decorations and impressions in the context of School 6, Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan; and Colorism in 1950s in Hertfordshire schools.

The Decorated School: Essays on Visual Culture of Schooling is a beautifully illustrated and thoughtfully revealing take on a familiar--if little discussed--topic. The book is edited by Dr Catherine Burke, Dr Jeremy Howard and Decorated School Research network participant Peter Cunningham.

About the Author: Dr Catherine Burke is Senior Lecturer in History of Education at the University of Cambridge. She is an historian engaged with cultural and material histories of educational contexts and of childhood in the nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first centuries. She is currently the editor of the Sources and Interpretations section of the History of Education journal.

Peter Cunningham is an historian and educationist at Homerton College, University of Cambridge, teaching Educational Studies in the Faculty of Education as Senior Lecturer from 2001 to 2008, and is now a member of the Faculty's team for teacher professional development in Kazakhstan. He has published books and articles on the social and cultural history of education, with particular interests in school curricula and pedagogies, teachers and their professional identities, higher education and educational policy development. He has researched and written on educational innovators and progressives, and is a contributor to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

Dr Jeremy Howard is a Senior Lecturer within the School of Art History at the University of St Andrews. He is particularly concerned with the representation, spaces and experiences of schooling, and grapples with the socio-political and pedagogic values that these may entail or involve. He has published numerous papers and books on the topic, as well as extensively on central and east European art, architecture and design.