The Adelaide Teachers College, on Kintore Avenue from 1927, gets its academic courses from the university
The Spanish mission-style building that Adelaide Teachers College occupied on Kintore Avenue, Adelaide city, from 1927. Inset: The college's first principal Lewis Madley.
Adelaide University took over the academic curriculum of was renamed Adelaide Teachers College from the South Australian education department in 1922.
Although ultimately controlled by the education department, teacher training in South Australia drew on the university offering iy a significant number of subjects role in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
The education department set up the first training school in Grote Street, Adelaide city, in 1876. The training school moved to the basement of Adelaide University’s Elder Conservatorium around the start of the 20th Century, then moved into a section of the university’s Mitchell Building and, during the early 1920s, the old police barracks off North Terrace, Adelaide city. The name also changed from the teachers’ training school in 1876, the training college in 1879, the university training college in 1900, the teacher training college in 1913 and finally Adelaide Teachers College in 1921.
During these years, debate persisted over the academic versus practical requirements of trainee teachers. In 1922, the university was providing lectures, without fees, to trainee teachers in all but the professional, or practical, subjects of their work.
In 1927, the Adelaide Teachers College finally moved to its own permanent accommodation in the Spanish mission-style Hartley Building on Kintore Avenue, Adelaide city. Although its more academic subjects were taken at the university, the college increasingly took on its own culture and identity with a student representative body, a campus newspaper, and a sports association.
The Adelaide Teachers College remained for half a century as an Adelaide landmark on Kintore Avenue until it was transformed in the early 1970s into the city campus of the Adelaide College of Advanced Education.
