Joseph Lancaster (25 November 1778 - 23 October 1838) was an English Quaker and public education innovator.
Lancaster was born the son of a shopkeeper in Southwark, south London.
In 1798, he founded a free elementary school in Borough Road, Southwark, using a variant of the monitorial system. His ideas were developed simultaneously with those of Dr. Andrew Bell in Madras whose system was referred to as the "Madras System of Education". The method of instruction and delivery is recursive. As one student learns the material he or she is rewarded for successfully passing on that information to the next pupil. This method is now commonly known as peer tutoring (also Learning by teaching) but the economics of Lancaster's or Bell's methodology is not widely discussed.