Charting the history of midwifery education

Despite the recent popularity of exploring the history of midwifery practice, there has been minimal attention paid to the history of midwifery education. The purpose of this paper is to display a visual map and timeline of midwifery education from the eighteenth century, when formal midwifery programmes were introduced, to the present day. The paper will be inclusive of the history of midwifery teaching through the use of the High Coombe College archives (Lorentzon et al 2008). Prior to the eighteenth century, processes for learning midwifery were informal and unregulated. Traditional apprenticeships were gradually replaced by formal, regulated educational midwifery programmes, which were assessed. Midwifery teacher training finally became established in the twentieth century.