The late fifteenth to the mid-seventeenth centuries marked an important time in the development of education in England, as new grammar schools were founded and existing ones re-founded: teaching in these schools was, in theory, an important job. Yet in practice, teaching was not generally well paid or highly regarded, its qualifications and training being loosely defined and non-standard. Previous studies of schoolmasters have focussed on this gap between theory and practice, evident in many aspects of early modern English education. This article intends to expand upon this appraisal of early modern teaching, by approaching the schoolmasters themselves as a prosopographical category. Who were these grammar school masters? What was their education level and social standing? What did their career patterns look like, and how did they become schoolmasters? Grammar school foundation documents and rules, outlining the hiring and conduct of the schoolmaster, as well as schoolmasters’ wills, are some of our most important sources, as are the schoolmasters’ biographies found in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Approaching schoolmasters in this way will broaden our understanding not just of early modern schoolmasters and their work specifically, but also of wider educational developments during the early modern period.

中文翻译：

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早期现代英语教师的专业研究，c.1480–c.1650

15 世纪末到 17 世纪中叶标志着英国教育发展的重要时期，新的文法学校的建立和现有的学校的重建：从理论上讲，这些学校的教学是一项重要的工作。然而，在实践中，教学通常没有得到很好的报酬或高度重视，其资格和培训定义松散且不标准。以前对校长的研究集中在理论与实践之间的这种差距，这在早期现代英语教育的许多方面都很明显。本文打算通过将校长本身作为一个专业类别来扩展对早期现代教学的这种评价。这些文法学校的主人是谁？他们的教育水平和社会地位如何？他们的职业模式是什么样的，他们是如何成为校长的？文法学校基金会文件和规则，概述了校长的聘用和行为，以及校长的遗嘱，是我们最重要的一些来源，牛津国家传记词典中的校长传记也是如此。以这种方式接近校长不仅会拓宽我们对早期现代校长及其具体工作的理解，还会拓宽我们对早期现代时期更广泛的教育发展的理解。