Life Politics. Conversations about Culture and Education

Life Politics

Life Politics Conversations about Culture and Education

Ivor F. Goodson University of Brighton, UK

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DEDICATION

To Mary Louise My life partner of forty years. Through thick and thin, rich and poor. With thanks and much love, Ive

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction .............................................................................................................. ix 1. A Conversation with Ragna Adlandsvik ...............................................................1 2. Talking Lives: A Conversation About Life History with Pat Sikes - Using the Content of a Conversation between Ivor Goodson and Barry Troyna ................15 3. Mediation is the Message: Interview with Ivor Goodson by Daniel Feldman and Mariano Palamidessi. Published (in Spanish) in Revista del Instituto de Ciencias de la Educación, Año IX, No 17. Buenos Aires, December 2000 ............................................................................31 4. Interviews with Raimundo Martins and Irene Tourinho in Barcelona................43 5. Interview with Jerry Brunetti...............................................................................75 6. Interview with José Pacheco: 9th November 2007, Braga, Portugal ................101 7. Developing Life and Work Histories of Teachers: Lecture and Conversation at Tokyo Gakugei University, 11 January 2010 .........................117 Publications by Ivor F Goodson – A Summary .....................................................131

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INTRODUCTION

I have chosen the name ‘Life Politics’ for this collection of interviews and commentaries. The title ‘Life Politics’ covers a number of different meanings. Perhaps most important is the way that the interviews cover a range of cultural contexts and intellectual milieux. Part of the life politics represented in this book is built around the belief that if we are to act as public intellectuals in the current globalised world we need to travel. We may believe in Gramsci’s notion of organic intellectuals but in the current world we need to be ‘travelling organic intellectuals’. Of course the term public intellectual is itself (besides sounding somewhat pious!) subject to considerable contestation at the moment. As the public sphere comes under attack the very relevance of applied research and public intellectual discussion is itself challenged. One of the most salient features of the current period is the way that for the first time for many centuries complete narrative control seems to be in the hands of corporate elites. So much so that a complete failure of the economic system that they represent in terms of the latest economic meltdown can be presented as a crisis of public sector and public service. As a result the failures of bankers and economists are re-presented as a problem of over-spending on public services. Nonetheless the commitment to public service and applied research remains part of the enduring life politics of a significant number of people. In this sense this book is merely representative of the moral career chosen by certain people in the current economic conjuncture. I see no reason for that form of life politics to be abandoned merely because for the moment narrative control has passed to global elites and for the moment we appear to live more under corporate rule rather than representative democracy. I have some confidence that the pendulum will swing back and that this is not the culminating phase of the ‘end of history’. At a more practical and everyday level the book represents life politics as it is played out in conversational and institutional activity. Again the question of the moral career comes to the fore but here it is expressed as a series of opinions, arguments, anecdotes, dreams, and visions. This gives much more realistic personal flesh and personal aspiration to the notion of life politics. As I have said the conversations and interviews cover a range of different cultural contexts. The first interview took place on the small Norwegian island of Eo. This is the home of the noted Norwegian educationalist, Ragna Adlandsvik. Ragna grew up on a small farmstead on the island of Eo and as can be seen in the substance of the interview has remained loyal and in close touch to her roots. Whilst this may sound a romantic and idealised notion as readers will see in the interview, it is one that moves her to moral engagement and moral commitment of a much wider sort than just roots revivalism. She and I share strong ties to our own originating tribe and both believe this is an important moral imperative in the way that we conduct our life politics. But lest this all sounds too purposeful, puritanical and pious it should be said that most of the interviews, but this one in particular, were enormously enjoyable existential events. The interview actually took place in a potato shed in the garden of the farmstead on the island. Typically Ragna had refurbished the potato shed ix

INTRODUCTION

and set it up with two nice chairs and a blitz of candles all around the porato shed. So there we sat in semi darkness talking about the issues that are covered in the interview. When the interview finished we went inside for a splendid meal that had been prepared by her brother Paul and as I remember the major constituent of the meal was indeed potatoes! Chapter two was compiled by Pat Sikes and as a generous co-author and collaborator over many years I would like to thank her herein for allowing me to use this. The substance of the article is a conversation between myself and Barry Troyna, the noted anti-racist professor who died prematurely not long after the conversations carried herein. The context of the interview was that Barry had been invited over to take part in the REMTEL project (Racial, Ethno-cultural Minority Teachers’ Lives). The project was funded by the Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada and Barry was much exercised by the way in which life history work confronts or colludes with racist commentaries. The interviews and conversations we had were often highly engaged and heated and immensely enjoyable. But at the heart of them was a shared belief about egalitarian social orders and the need to root out racist and other prejudicial practices. I believe the conversation says important things about life history as a potentially emancipatory practice and about the way in which life history methods should proceed to fulfil the objective of listening to the voice of others. The third conversation took place in Buenos Aires in the late summer of 1999. This was a particularly harrowing period for Argentinean society as the economy was in severe financial straits. In due course there was a sovereign default on debt rather than accept the programmatic demands of the International Monetary Fund. Two sociologists involved in the three-way conversation were Daniel Feldman and Mariano Palamidessi. These were both leading critical theorists in the country and Daniel had been in prison during the period of the military junta. The conversation took place in a hotel room in the backstreets of Buenos Aires and was followed by a very interesting trip to the Boca area of Buenos Aires which led to a series long conversations and ruminations about the future prospects for Argentinean society. The set of interviews in chapter four comprise six different interviews in six different settings. Ranging from a long talk on the train up from Barcelona to Portbou and interviews in apartments and bars around the city of Barcelona. Our conversations grew from the course on narrativity and narrative capital that I was teaching at the University of Barcelona in the six months from January to June of 2005. Raimundo and Irene were visiting professors to the university at the same time and attended my course and contributed a great deal to the discussions. As a result our conversations carried on quite naturally from the formal situation to the informal where we could explore our joint interests in democracy and civic society and critical theory in a more open manner. The long conversation with Jerry Brunetti in chapter five took place at the end of 2004. Jerry was a visiting professor at Brighton and had been instrumental in setting up the Special Interest Group on Teachers’ Lives at the American Educational Research Association. The focus of the conversation is therefore primarily on the relationship of narrative and life history work to understanding the teacher’s life x

INTRODUCTION

and work. This was a central interest for both of us and the conversations carried in this chapter were part of a much broader set of conversations carried on whilst Jerry stayed in Sussex. I was later able to follow up these conversations in a visit to San Francisco, which is close to Jerry’s university base, in 2006. The connection to education and teaching is also pursued in the conversations with José Pacheco which took place in the baroque Portuguese city of Braga in 2007. José runs one of the most important research centres in Portugal and is interested in employing curriculum history and life history methods to examine and elucidate the complexities of Portuguese education. He has translated a number of my books into Portuguese and has a sophisticated understanding of the complexities and conundrums of these theoretical discourses as they impinge on the world of schooling. The conversation tries to situate my work in these areas in a broader context, not only Portuguese, but also global. Having first met at the Brazilian educational research conference in Caixambu he and I now manage to have at least two meetings each year normally arranged to coincide with the advisory committee meetings of his research centre in Braga. The final chapter employs a slightly different format. It begins with the lecture that I gave on a recent visit to Japan in 2010 which addresses the issue of the way that educational discourses are undergoing change in Japan. This is followed by a question and answer session with the audience. I always enjoy this format but particularly in Japan where the questions often have a precision and conciseness that sometimes is missing in more disputatious cultures. Whilst I welcome conversations in both genres the probing questions that one encounters in Japan and indeed China are a source of considerable challenge and leave one thinking hard about these issues long after the event is over. My visits to Japan have been rich and rewarding and a stream of Japanese visitors have reciprocated by coming to spend time at the Universities I work at in England. This has provided an interesting and challenging set of dialogues over time. As with all confrontations with different cultures the way that this challenges one’s basic assumptions is profoundly helpful if not at times disturbing. In a more general sense, to return to my original point, this is for me the major rationale but also great excitement of travelling and exchanging ideas on the global circuit. By challenging our more insular national assumptions it is possible to interrogate new ‘world movements’ of educational and social change and set them in the broader global context in which they now originate and circulate. In a globalised world this comparative dimension is critical if we are to develop concepts and theories which interrogate and challenge some of the orthodoxies emerging from the new world order. Ivor Goodson 24 November 2010

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A CONVERSATION WITH RAGNA ADLANDSVIK

RAGNA: You have been a school teacher for seven years. Why did you choose to become a teacher? IVOR: Maybe I should go back a bit. I trained as a historian. I took my PhD. on immigrants in Victorian England, and then I got a job as a history lecturer at what became the University of Kingston. And I did that for two years. And then, in 1968, there were a series of social upheavals. What really happened was that in England they began to change the schooling system, from a selective system - with grammar school and others - to a comprehensive system which aimed to teach children of all classes and abilities together. And I, who came from a working class community, was very interested in teaching working class children and less interested in teaching middle class university students history, so I decided I would abandon the university career to become a teacher. So I trained at the Institute of Education, London University, and went off, in 1970, I think, to teach in a comprehensive school in the Midlands of England. So I stopped being a lecturer, became a teacher and spent the next six or seven years in that school and another school where I became head of humanities. And then I decided I would take a year out to do some work on environmental education which I was teaching, and that began the second university period in my life. I became a teacher because I wanted to teach my own group, the children of my own group, some of the things I thought I knew. I have to say I still look upon this as one of the most wonderful periods in my life. It was in a small village and I met my wife there. She was a nurse in the village. Yes, it was a fantastic time in my life. I loved teaching those kids. I loved them. RAGNA: You were a teacher and she was a nurse - were you important people in the village? IVOR: Yes, quite, I think. Both of us were very committed to public service, in a sense that we would never - Mary would never nurse in a private - you know, and I would never teach in a private school. Both of us tried to give what talent we had to the people, and particularly the people that at the moment did not know how to get a decent education, or a decent health in Mary’s case. So we were engaged in the same social project when we met and have stayed the same way all the way through. We both came from working class and we kept our loyalty, through a long journey together, to the same groups. That doesn’t mean that I exclude others. I am interested in education for all, how you develop pedagogy for all children. It remains my main interest: How you include rather than exclude children. And I am still interested in inclusive ways of being a social man. As a person I like to include everybody 1

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in a dialogue. That is the way I have been since I was a child, I think. That is the way my parents were. RAGNA: How did you come into your curriculum studies, and is that still an important part of your work, or is it past? IVOR: Well, how did I come into it? I had been teaching in this comprehensive school at a time when they were trying to move away from the traditional subjects because traditional subjects were excluding too many children. A lot of children were disaffected and were dropping out of traditional subjects. A number of us saw that you needed to invent new areas of knowledge to include more children. Some of those areas were subjects that I started: community studies, urban studies, environmental studies, parents’ studies and so on. And I got very interested in that because the children got very engaged. All the children got very engaged. So I started to try to develop examinations in it, and was told this was not a proper subject. Since it was a subject which seemed to educate everybody and that was not a proper subject, and proper subjects were things that did not educate everybody, I became interested in the question of ‘what is a proper subject?’ So I got interested in the history of where subjects came from and why subjects that seemed to engage a lot of children were thought to be not proper subjects and that led me to do that one year study in where environmental studies came from, and that let me into curriculum studies. Am I still interested in curriculum studies? Yes, I am, but I am less optimistic about the inclusive possibilities at this moment in time. A lot of the forces in the world mean that the public sector is clearly threatened. And what is really threatened is including everybody in education. I am not sure any more if we can solve the problem of public service for all children through the curriculum. It has to be a broader project to regain inclusiveness. There has to be a war to regain inclusiveness. When the powers want children included, it is a curriculum solution. When they don’t want the children included, it is more than a curriculum solution. That means the start of a new structure in education. In a way I have drawn my focus from curriculum into wider issues on how schooling is delivered and how teachers operate. RAGNA: In an article you speak about the importance of the teachers. You maintain that the teachers have been neglected in the educational process. The teachers’ opinions have not been heard. Norwegian teachers will love you for this! They have got a school reform without having asked for it, and in the core curriculum they are told how to behave, how to feel, and which national canon to use. They are also told how to evaluate the knowledge, how to document it etc. IVOR: I think the way you describe the Norwegian situation is very much how I see it. I think teachers are being pushed away from the power to define education and schooling and curriculum which is in a way part what I was saying earlier, and I am agreeing with your diagnosis. I think what is going on with the core curriculum in Norway is a search for symbolic control by the bureaucracies in Norwegian education. They want to be seen to control, and that means that the teachers should not be seen to control education, but they face the paradox that still - whatever you do - the teacher delivers education or does not deliver education and the only way 2

A CONVERSATION WITH RAGNA ADLANDSVIK

that defining the curriculum can affect that, is to decide to co-operate or decide not to co-operate because they feel disenfranchised. So the powers that define the curriculum in Norway face a central paradox at the moment that I don’t think they will be able to solve, which is: The more they push the symbolic control, and the more they push the teacher out of control, the less actual success there will be in delivering education, because teachers will feel demoralized, disenfranchised, disempowered and generally dismayed. That is the paradox that bureaucracies always face when they push for too much control. Too much control equals less good education. And particularly - to go back to my point - less good inclusive education. RAGNA: Education and politics are closely connected, aren’t they? In all questions of education there is always an element of power involved. Important questions will always be: whose knowledge, knowledge for whom, and for what purpose... Are these questions important for you? IVOR: Yes, they are very important, but particularly the disenfranchised groups in society, those who know least about the way power manipulates knowledge, and it has always been my intention to act as a public intellectual. And part of that task is to stand on behalf of those who do not speak, in favour of them, and to try and develop cognitive maps of power for those groups, so it is a difficult task to represent groups who in some ways don’t know how it operates and in some ways get a worse deal. You have to decide early in life whose side you’re on. And given my own history, it has always remained obvious to me that I would remain on the side of the group I came from. And I have never thought there would have been another way to live my life in terms of my original loyalties. That doesn’t mean that I am bigoted about more privileged groups - I am happy to interact with other groups, but my questions always are when these new initiatives come in: How will they work with the groups of people who are my people, my tribe? What does it mean for my tribe? I guess I love the people I came from. I have never met better people. So, I should speak for them. RAGNA: I think they are very much the same people I came from. I was the first person in my family who got an academic education. IVOR: Do you see it in the same way in terms of loyalties? RAGNA: Yes, I really do. But not everybody does. IVOR: What happens to the others? RAGNA: I don’t know. They seem to have forgotten their background. IVOR: Was that ever a possibility to you? RAGNA: No, never. It would never be a possibility to forget my background I think about my grandmothers every day. IVOR: Yeah me too. RAGNA: Every day, every day - these strong grandmothers living close to the ocean. 3

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IVOR: Do you speak to them? RAGNA: Yes, I speak to them. IVOR: Yes, I speak to mine. RAGNA: You do? IVOR: All the time. In any big decision, I speak to them. I speak to my grandparents and my parents and some of my uncles and aunties if it is a big decision. I say: what would you do, uncle George, auntie Ada? Yes, I do! They were all socialists. They were very good people, never seen better. RAGNA: And now I turn to something else. ‘Education is a normative enterprise,’ Elliot W. Eisner says. Do you agree? IVOR: Yes, in a way. But that is the end of a political process. To render education normative is a great achievement of power. In fact of course education is socially constructed and highly socially contested and highly socially manipulated. But to present it as normative is a substantial achievement of power of course. Since subordinate groups seem to think this is how it should be. But it is not as it should be. It is not given either. It is simply made that way for social and political purposes. So - Elliot is right, but he is also wrong (laughing). RAGNA: That was an interesting answer. I think I agree with you. IVOR: Don’t tell Elliot! (laughing even more) RAGNA: According to what I have read you have had a research project on computer use in schools. In which way will the computer revolution change schools? IVOR: That is a very difficult one. I...when I got to Canada I have to say I am not very good technologically. I have always been instinctively RAGNA: (interrupting) Then there are two of us! IVOR: Yes, we were neither very good, there may be something in that... When I got to Canada, I was given a million dollars to study the introduction of computers in the schools. It was very intriguing for somebody who was technologically illiterate to do that. So I built a team of researchers around me. All of them were very good on the computer. But I, the director of the project, was not. And it was very interesting, the sort of questions that I started to come up with... which... in a way you are socialized into computer use. So you see what I call a cultural inevitability. Computers are everywhere. Computers must be used. Computers are obviously central in the school. I began to ask questions like this: Is there any evidence that computers help with learning? Is it obvious that we should have computers in school - even though they are very important parts of society? But so is the refrigerator, and the car, and the television. We don’t argue that they should go into the classroom. So why computers? It is not more obvious. So I went to ask some leading member of the ministry: Why do you think computers would help with learning? And he gave me a very interesting answer: Oh well, 4

A CONVERSATION WITH RAGNA ADLANDSVIK

with computers “you can talk to each other.” And I thought... There was a long silence before somebody said: “We already do that.” This seems to me the most pathetic answer, and it was an answer from somebody who just had no idea somehow to actually argue for computers because in fact there is very little evidence that computers specifically help the learning process. They help resource it, indisputably, but to learn from computers as opposed to learn from teachers seems to me not self-evident. So then I asked the question: How many extra teachers could you buy for the computers that are put in every classroom? And of course the answer was that you could have three teachers for every one you have got at the moment. My own suspicion is that might be a much better way to go, since teachers are traditionally quite useful for learning. Computers have no tried record. So instinctively I am uncertain as to how central computers should be in the learning process. I think they have to be around in schools. They are vitally important in schools. They are not in my view central agents for learning and teaching. They might be important tools. RAGNA: That is really interesting. They are important for giving information. IVOR: They are tools. No more, no less. RAGNA: What kind of social consequences do you think computers can have? IVOR: Well, they could go either way, I think. I mean the optimistic view is that they will democratize information. The less optimistic view is that they will stratify information. Privileged groups will have that information and less privileged groups won’t, which is already the case. Most poor families do not have computers, most rich families do. Bill Gates has a great deal of control over what goes into computers. The poor have no control. So already it is very stratified. My nightmare scenario is that these small industrial groups will control the software ideologically, and control what gets on to the net and that is an absolute disaster for learning if that happens. I am not sure at the moment, but I am sure that the computer should not be the central agency for learning and teaching. It should be a tool and a resource. No more, no less. RAGNA: And now I turn to something else, to your work on story - ‘the turn to narrative’. Is man a story - telling animal? IVOR: I think human beings are extremely central story - tellers. They story their lives, every minute of the day. When you say you talk to your grandmother, you are talking with your grandmother and grandfather about the story of your life, of how to live your life. We are compulsive storytellers; we do it all the time. RAGNA: (interrupting) My grandmother was an extremely good story-teller. I have never met her. She died a long time before I was born, but she was a great storyteller. She told the story of her life to my oldest sister, who is 23 years older than me, and Agnes, that is her name, listened to the grandmother, wrote it down - what she was told - when she grew older, and 40–50 years later Agnes published it as a book, as a novel, a true, documentary novel, about our grandmother’s life. 5

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IVOR: Did you have lots of brothers and sisters? RAGNA: Yes, there were nine of us. IVOR: Is that oldest sister still alive? RAGNA: Yes, she is, and she is still a great story-teller. IVOR: I think you put your finger on something that is very important, and that we have not spoken of. I came from a family that could not read and write, traditionally. Neither of my grandparents could, and my father had a lot of trouble with that. But my grandfather was a fantastic storyteller. He could make it all live. Not only a story-teller, but a compelling joke-teller. The stories were often humorous, but often important too. And I went back to my village two years ago, and I was sitting in the pub, talking to a really old man, and he said: “You’re Jim Goodson’s son, aren’t you?” And I said: “No, I am Fred Goodson’s son.” And he said: “But did you ever know your grandfather, Jimmy Goodson?” (James). I said: “No, I didn’t.” “He was a fantastic story teller!” This was a man who could not read or write, who had thirteen children, who never had a permanent job, and yet he told stories that everybody in the village spoke about. He was the village story-teller, and he could not write. Now, what is interesting for me is always when you move from the story, the oral - to the written, what you lose. Because in a way, that is what my family has lost. And I was now the keeper of the saga, the saga-teller, the story-teller. Always keep that pedagogic jaw of the story, even when you write. So I most like to talk, and most like to tell stories in my own research. I least like, actually, to write. At the moment I do write a lot, but I least trust that. What I do trust, is the word, the delivered - what we are doing now, talking to each other. Eye contact, word - that is what I love. RAGNA: For some years now we have seen the turn of narrative in educational research and in school E.g. in the subject Norwegian the story has become central. The pupils should learn to tell stories, and to listen to the teacher’s stories. So it is not only in research - There is a turn to narrative also in school. How do you explain that in our time, just now. Why this turn to narrative? What is it about our time? IVOR: That is a very good question. Well, part of it I think is explained by what we have been saying earlier. The computer, and the written word, and we must always remember that computers are entirely targets of the written word, are beginning to demolish our saga-telling, the story-telling side of the animal. We realize, as story telling animals, that part of our nature is being attacked. In fact it is often the most important part of our nature, in teaching, or in the general transmission of community memory, stories are what carry them. And remember what you said about your grandmother: You could not have known of your grandmother were it not for the stories. But also you wouldn’t know if it weren’t written down. So it is not... The real question is: That’s why the interest in the story. But the more interesting question in a way is: Once you start to write down the story, you put it into the computer program. 6

A CONVERSATION WITH RAGNA ADLANDSVIK

How much of it will you lose in the process? So, and specifically with regards to the teacher stories and stories about education: Is it really an attempt to colonize people’s story or history? And break it away from the context where it stands and... So, I am ambivalent about stories. As we both said, we are both from storytelling families. We love the story. But the way stories are used and colonized by people whom I might not trust so much, and divorced from the histories of their communities, divorced from history and teachers, divorced from history and classrooms, then I am wanting to, as you know, argue that it should be the life story, but also the life history, the community story, but also the community history. And if it is only stories without histories, I think it is not a very helpful instrument. And a lot of the stuff in education is stories without history, and that is not something I would put my name to for support. RAGNA: That is what I find in one of the articles you have written - you quote somebody who characterizes it like this: ‘The song of the individual teacher is part of a larger song’. It is wonderfully expr... IVOR: It is indeed. It is wonderful. RAGNA: Poetic! The song of the individual teacher is part of a larger song... IVOR: Yes. But a lot of those songs get disconnected from the larger song. And that disconnection is part of the way power works. It divides the song from the wider song, story from the wider history, and stories of that sort work for power, not against power. It is deeply manipulating. RAGNA: And that is now clear to me, how important it is for me to explain that this is your opinion. I don’t think everybody here has got that point in your research. IVOR: No, you are right to say that again in a Norwegian audience. Because that is what I am saying. You are right: People don’t sometimes hear me saying that. RAGNA: I have just discussed that with some colleagues. There was this question the use of narrative. What can you really learn from the story? There was a bit of scepticism. A colleague - she was not actually criticising - wondered if it was really democratic, this storytelling. Isn’t it a bit authoritarian, she wondered then I explained to her what we have been talking about now, and she said: ‘Oh, is that what he means?’ IVOR: Yes, the story could be a very good device for reconnecting us with our own social history. If it is just a free floating story, colonized by an academic ...then it is of little use. But if it is a story grounded in a social memory, of communities, about our people, about our tribes, then it is part of the project you and I talked about earlier: Recovering our own memory, of keeping a alive our loyalties, of inscribing our own histories on this earth - then it is a very democratic matter. But that is story plus history, that is not free floating stories, that is not just narrative. RAGNA: You have pointed on the danger if anecdote replaces cultural analysis. IVOR: Yes. 7

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RAGNA: And I think you have made that very clear. IVOR: Well, it sounds I have not made it clear enough! RAGNA: A Norwegian professor, Gunn Imsen, characterizes your approach as extremely post-modern - ‘small stories without the larger one, - and at the same time she seems to hold the opinion that this methodology is about to become oldfashioned. Could you comment on Gunn Imsen’s critique? IVOR: Well, first of all she has got a contradiction there, hasn’t she? She is accusing me of being post-modern, but also out of date. But actually I like her work very much and I like her approach, and in general I like her genre. She is a very eloquent commentator on education. So to have a dialogue with her, even at the distance, is useful. So I take any comment from her seriously, which is not something I would say about anybody. But I do take her comment seriously, and I think there is a question whether the message about stories has got through, that I am really talking about a new fusion between stories and history. My hope is that the message gets through that this is about story plus history. And that that comes out of a long tradition of life history work that was first set up in Chicago in the 1920s, 1930’s, and I have written a lot about that period. And what I am trying to say is that we need to re-invent and re-position and re-habilitate the life history tradition according to the current post-modern conditions in which we live. And I think that is a wholly new kind of project that needs to be worked through. That needs a great deal of time to find its way into educational discourse and social discourse, but I think it is extremely important, given what we talked about of why story telling is important, and life needs to be connected with social memory, and how that speaks to groups, particularly those that are disenfranchised, and literally dismissed. I am convinced that is a central social and intellectual project of great importance, and I am certain that there is a great deal of thought in it. And I think that is a way I want to go on living my own intellectual project. RAGNA: I would like to ask you a question about educational research and the writing process. How do you work? How important is the rhetorical dimension in educational research? IVOR: What do you mean by rhetorical dimension? RAGNA: Language. IVOR: As to the mechanics of writing I write always with a pen and a pencil and paper. So I don’t use a computer. I can type, and I typed in my past, but I write always with the tactile thing in my hand, just to set up my mind, and often I scribble notes. And I write most days. And I write intensively for periods of time. I just get into a writing phase, and sometimes I write for hours and hours and hours. And I often process a lot of it before I begin to write. Sometimes my wife can laugh at me, but I can wake up in the morning with a whole kind of branched program of an article sitting there, and all I have to do, is write it down, so to speak. I have always been like that since I was a child. I like, I like, to write. I find it hard, but I like to write... Language is something I love, I love words, and I love books, love books 8

A CONVERSATION WITH RAGNA ADLANDSVIK

with a passion - as you do - I know. So language, and the manipulation of language, the display of language, has always been a joy, and intense joy to me, and I think that goes back to a family that was actually thought to be educationally disadvantaged and educationally incapable, but who could use language with the most fantastic facility. I teach lot of black students in the university where I am teaching in the States, in America, and they are thought by some fools to be educationally subnormal. But their use of language can be so eloquent! So there is an odd disjunction there, between their oral capacity and the capacity to write it down. So the love of language is very much a part of me, of my life. It is mostly all language I love. But of course I like that sort of medieval role of the ‘scribe’, who writes down things. I think it is in a way what you described your sister was doing. It is very much what I see myself doing. Every community, but particularly disadvantaged communities need a ‘scribe’, somebody to write down the social memory and carry it on. The problem of the oral story telling communities, as you can see it in regions with Indians, the whole thing can be lost. And I never want that to happen to my own tribe. I want my tribe’s history to be written down, and I want the flame carried on, the memory kept alive. And I think in a very small way, and I mean very small, that is what I do. So language is important. RAGNA: And what about poetic language? Should there be a place for that in educational research? IVOR: Yes. Oh! Above all, in educational research there should be a place. RAGNA: (interrupting) Oh, I like to hear that! IVOR: Above all. I think in educational research we create very arid, scientistic, uninteresting discourses. And that is why I like Eisner. I like Eisner’s work and Van Manen’s work. Bring back the poetic, the joy, which should be crucially part of education above all. It should be audacious, exciting, lively, vivid, vital, and all those things will make it emancipating. And above all in education. We get it the opposite way. RAGNA: This is music in my ears. And the game of writing should be music in the ears of those who hear it. RAGNA: That is education. IVOR: That is education. RAGNA: When you are an educator or a pedagogue, you want to influence people, you want them to hear, so you must have a tool for that, and that is in the word. IVOR: Yes, in the poetry of the word. Yes, I think there is an aesthetic..., an art. I see it all as art work. In fact, I tend to see teaching more as an art work than a science. And there are two ways we can see this enterprise: One is: This is a scientific enterprise. Education is a discipline, a scientific discipline. We teach people that discipline. Another way to see this is that you are in the business of poetics, of art, drama. We try to lead people into an art, which is pedagogy, which is teaching. I take the 9

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latter view. We are mainly in the art business. We are teaching people to sing, to really engage with an audience in a way that artists do. This is art. Not a science. I believe that. RAGNA: I believe that too. I think, like Elliot Eisner and Max Van Manen, that we need texts with the ability to move us. We need to be moved, to be touched. IVOR: Yes, yes. And what Van Manen calls ‘thoughtfulness’ needs to be there, the aesthetics and the connoisseurship - all that has to be there. But that is all positing it as an art form. These different writers, and I hope I am part of that, speak to the art forms. RAGNA: And all kinds of art are dialogic in a way. Art invites us to answer. It doesn’t have the whole truth. Art asks questions, and is waiting for an answer. IVOR: I think you are mentioning two of the criteria of good education. One is: it invites us, namely it is inclusive, not exclusive. But the other side of it is that knowledge and education should be tentative, because to be inclusive, you have to be tentative. If you already have the answer, as a pedagogue, or teacher, or writer, if you have the final solution, that is exclusive. Then you are the exclusive expert. I would want to be the inclusive, slightly tentative pedagogue. Tentativeness is the way I see knowledge. Knowledge is conditional, contextual. It works differently for you, as it does for me, in different situations. So it is a negotiated product, a tentative product, it is a very fragile, but loving product. It is not a scientific box. It is something that moves around, it is tentative, it is engaged, but in a fragile way, but can move mountains if it is engaged. And that is how I see knowledge: inclusive and tentative, not exclusive and final. RAGNA: And that is a place where art and education meet. They ask questions, but they don’t have the answer, that is for the other to find out. IVOR: Always for the other to find out. Everybody has a different kind of answer. If you could find the right question, you are more than halfway done. The answer is something that is negotiated. In the end the learner has to find... That is always difficult to understand, because it sounds like educational licence, which means that the learner always knows best. I am not saying that at all. And I am saying that there is a massive role of the pedagogue to influence, to question and to set up of the process. But at the end of the day it is always a personal thing, it is a personal decision whether you learn or not. You have the final arbitration of whether you choose to engage to learn, or you choose to switch off. And I am saying that exclusive, final products, sort of lecturing, more than anything switches off the learner. So if teachers think they have the absolute compete final answer, there is no grade to switch off. And there is no grade to switch off in the conversation between you and I, for me to sit here and tell you all the answers and you to listen. You would be out of the room in no time. But if we have a conversation, and an equal one, and if it is dialogic, then we are both engaged, we are both contributive. RAGNA: And what we have been talking about now: language and the use of stories, is very close to the phenomenological perspective, which we find in Max van Manen’s work. How close are you to that perspective? 10

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IVOR: I am very sympathetic to it. In that sense: close and supportive. I think there is another dimension in it which is - the one we talked about - which is really connecting it, in a very systematic and grounded way, to the history of the community, to the memory of the community. And that moves a little sort of beyond. It seems to me they are all parts of the same artistic approach, so I think we are all in the same enterprise. Just, I would go for a different mix, I would add in history in it. But, generally - the answer is: close. IVOR: Interesting. RAGNA: Yes, that is interesting. We often climb into our little boxes and defend... RAGNA: (interrupts) And then there has to come a little amateur from Norway... IVOR: (laughing, loud and long) Not so amateur, I think. RAGNA: Yes. IVOR: Very professional I think. RAGNA: No, an amateur. But now I turn to the question of your relation to Norway. Now, Ivor: You are an international capacity. They ask for you in New York, Hong Kong, Malaysia...How could you possibly find anything of interest of in an outpost like ours, where ‘there are flowers, but no soil’? IVOR: (laughing) RAGNA: So, apart from the midnight sun - do you find any special qualities in the Norwegian society, and perhaps in the research community here, and in school? What on earth brings you to Norway? IVOR: Lots of things, but mostly the enduring values in civic life and public places which are part of Norwegian everyday life. So I come to Norway to be revived in my belief in community, in inclusiveness, in egalitarian politics, engaged community cultures. All the things that are still part of Norwegian life. Very similar to my own community that I grew up in England. The same values. And so I come here to engage, to revive my belief in human conditions and human possibilities. I find this in Scandinavia generally, but mostly in Norway. So I come, selfishly really, to be revived in some of my root beliefs about human life. It has to be a live community, it has to be about treating all people equally, and it has to be above all about how having a long social memory. I think there is a strong connection actually, without being a romantic, between Norwegian groups and the group I came from. I think that obviously goes back to the war, and to many other things. We have a very similar sense of humour, sense of engagement, sense of... we have very strong habits. We are strong in a historical sense. We fight against oppression, as nations. We have done, traditionally. Bergen has been bombed, so has Trondheim, South Wales, and so have some of the cities in England. We always fight against tyrannical forces. And I am being a bit romantic, but I think there is a strong connection between Norway and England. There are few places where you can tease people, like you can in England, 11

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but Norway is one place. And teasing is part of breaking down social hierarchies and breaking down pompousness. RAGNA: Yes! IVOR: And I believe that you should always do that: break down social hierarchies and pompousness, and Norway is a good place to do that. (laughing, long). RAGNA: Oh, that is nice to hear. That brings me to another question: You have written, or said - I have in any case written it down - I think you said it last time you were here: ‘I try to create egalitarian moments as often as I can in my life’. You try that, Ivor, and I can assure you that you have succeeded in this project: ‘to create egalitarian moments as often as I can in my life.’ It is wonderfully said. But that you really do it, that is what makes us ask you to come back, and you will always be welcome here. And we feel that you are our neighbour, living next door, you are just one of us. Professionally you are not, you are far above us, but you are so egalitarian in your way of behaving and thinking. And that is a marvellous thing to experience. IVOR: I don’t think I am deliberate in this, I have always been like that, my community never did. RAGNA: And you have never left your community? IVOR: No. RAGNA: You are still part of it? IVOR: Yes, I am. RAGNA: That is what really impresses me. IVOR: I think that is why I want to come back to England from America. It is about returning to your own tribe again, without too much pomposity, I suppose. I mean none of us are very pompous when we see it in relation to what we have been talking about. I can be pompous, but I try not to be, and that is important. It is not so much: Are you good? It is: Do you try to be good? And what is your conception of good? My conception of good is: Always treat everybody as equal as you can. People are created equal. And I believe that. It is just a base belief. It is an obvious truth that that everybody is the same inside. So treat people the same way. If you do that, it has a small effect against a stratified world. RAGNA: In an article on the use of narrative, you (and Rob Walker) ask: Are the researchers we are, the people we are? IVOR: Yes. I think above all it is the other way round: The people we are, is the researchers we are, the teachers we are. And I am always loaded to the people... It is relationships with people and the way other people behave which is always my clue as to what kind of social interaction or what kind of business I can do with others. I am not very interested, ever, in what formal positions people have. I think you already know that. I couldn’t care whether anybody... RAGNA: (interrupts) Otherwise I wouldn’t use my time talking to you! 12

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IVOR: (with a noisy laughter) Oh my god! RAGNA: I hate snobs! IVOR: Yes. RAGNA: You find them everywhere. IVOR: Yes. RAGNA: And those who know least, they often. IVOR: Yes. And often the ones who know least are in the most important positions. RAGNA: Yes. IVOR: It is a kind of spiral hierarchy. If somebody views other people in terms of what they are, what kind of values they represent, and if they deal with other people in a non-egalitarian way, an authoritarian way, then I - in that sense I am exclusive. I do select, because life is too busy, too short, to waste time on authoritarian types of people that hold onto titles... I don’t mind if somebody has a high title if they are human beings, but I find it somewhat dysfunctional. Yes, I think the people, the person you are, is what matters to me, not the title you hold or the position you occupy... It is the person behind I continuously see in you. That is how we remain human, I think. RAGNA: ‘I have a dream,’ Martin Luther King said. What is your dream or vision for the future? And now I speak professionally. IVOR: I suppose my professional dream is inseparable to my personal dream. RAGNA: That makes sense. IVOR: I mean it is the old dream, of a world where people are more included, where people are treated equally for what they are, for what they represent. And where, you know, it is a cliché, but - where human love and affection dominates over human hate and disaffection. That may sound romantic, but sometimes you see moments when that vision is realized, for example, that is what just happened in Northern Ireland. It quite simply is a victory of compassion and forgiveness over bigotry and hate. Moments like that happen rarely in life, but they happen. Everybody says that in the world there will always be bigotry and war. But you have to fight against it. Often love and forgiveness breaks out. Well, my vision is that it would break out more, and it will break out more if we treat everybody in an equal way. So, we are likely to be in more harmony and happiness if we treat everybody equally and we try to help those that are having more difficulties rather than giving more to those who already have abundance. That for me is a long way to go. I am more interested in giving more to those who have least. And that is a way for building a more compassionate, equal, loving, harmonious community. So my vision is the same as it always was, it is the vision of the happy community where I came from. RAGNA: And what you have said now is very much the same as old Comenius said: A world where people can live together, with different backgrounds. Bring people together, and let them make a better world together. 13

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IVOR: That is important when we see distraction, disaffection and global pollution. RAGNA: And then we have these tendencies that we were talking about in the seminar with Lars Lovie, this individualistic, and... Oh! So we have to fight a lot. IVOR: Yes. I think one of the messages you find in these paradoxes is: You don’t get a world of love and equality except by fighting. RAGNA: Yes!? IVOR: It doesn’t have to be military power. To get peace, you don’t always have to behave obediently. You have to contest the world to create harmonious moments. And you must be politically engaged to create egalitarian, harmonious moments. That is one of the paradoxes, and then my question is: How hard do we need to fight? And that is the problem Ghandi had, and all the peaceful protests had: you really have to contest reality. But at the moment we can contest a lot of things without it being a military... but we do have to contest. We have to fight hard for the harmonious, compassionate society. And that is somewhat paradoxical, but to me it is still perfectly, easily, coexistent. Yes, you fight hard for a harmonious world, and you should. You should do it with every breath in your body as long as you live. RAGNA: And teachers and educators should do that more than anybody. Now, are there any questions you would like me to ask, and that haven’t been asked? IVOR: No, I think you have covered the whole text very well, as I expected you to. RAGNA: Have I? IVOR: Yes, you have.

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TALKING LIVES: A CONVERSATION ABOUT LIFE HISTORY Pat Sikes - Using the Content of a Conversation between Ivor Goodson and Barry Troyna

In the Spring of 1994, Ivor Goodson invited Barry Troyna to London, Ontario to contribute to a study entitled ‘Racial/Ethno cultural Minority Teachers’ Lives’, focusing on the career experiences of ethnic minority teachers in Canada and funded by the Social Science and Humanities Research Council which I was directing. As part of this contribution Barry agreed to conduct some life history interviews and scrutinise some of the material already collected by the research team, of which Ivor was co-director. Throughout the last 20 or so years Ivor has been a leading advocate for the use of life history methods to study aspects of education and, particularly, teachers’ lives and careers. Not only has he done a considerable amount of such work himself but he has also been very encouraging and supportive of other people using biographical approaches (e.g. Goodson, 1988; Goodson, 1992). Barry Troyna, on the other hand, is best known for his work dealing with aspects of racism and education (e.g. Troyna, 1993), although he too has used life history and is sympathetically disposed to it as a research method and as a strategy for personal and professional development (Sikes & Troyna, 1991). Ivor asked Barry to Canada largely because Barry had recently given a paper at the bi-annual ISATT conference in Gothenburg (1993) in which he criticised the way in which, in his view, certain sociologists, myself included, had ‘de-racialised’ what he termed the everyday world of teachers. By this he meant that writers had ignored or underplayed the significance of racism in the way they had interpreted and presented sociological understandings of teachers’ career experiences and the teaching profession. The paper also questioned the efficacy of the challenge to de-racialised studies posed by research which, like Ivor’s present project, has concentrated exclusively on ethnic minority teachers. Such studies, Barry argues in the revised, published version of the paper, tend to ‘articulate with the discourse of multiculturalism and, as a consequence (involve) implicit legitimation of ethnocentric conceptions of ‘the norm’’ (Troyna, 1994a, p. 325). In proposing this he is following the African-American sociologist, Joyce Ladner who, 20 years ago, wrote that, studies which have as their focal point the alleged deviant attitudes and behaviours of Blacks are grounded within racist assumptions and principles that only render Blacks open to further exploitation. The challenge to social scientists for a redefinition of the basic problem has been raised in terms of the ‘colonial analogy’. It has been argued that the relationship between the researcher and his subjects, by definition, resembles 15

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that of the oppressor and the oppressed, because it is the oppressor who defines the problem, the nature of the research, and, to some extent, the quality of the interaction between him and his subjects. This inability to understand and research the fundamental problem, neo-colonialism, prevents most social researchers from being able accurately to observe and analyse Black life and culture and the impact racism and oppression have upon Blacks. Their inability to understand the nature and effects of neo-colonialism in the same manner as Black people is rooted in the inherent bias of the social sciences’ (Ladner, 1971, p. vii). It was Ivor’s contention that his project was set up in such a way as to, as far as possible, minimise neo-colonialist problems of power and that, rather, his approach was more likely to result in some form of helpful collaboration with the ethnic minority teachers who were involved. He wanted Barry to experience this for himself and also to act as a ‘critical friend’ in assessing the extent to which the methodology was achieving what was claimed. For his part, Barry’s position is that all research is potentially exploitative and that, in any event, claims for the ‘empowering’ or emancipatory properties of any research, within whatever paradigm and regardless of the methods used, are at best grandiose and naive, at worst, disingenuous and deceitful (Troyna, 1994b). After spending some time on the project and conducting a couple of life history interviews with ethnic minority teachers in London, Ontario, Barry held an ‘interview conversation’ with Ivor. Their discussion focused on fundamental dilemmas which, in these post-modern days, are constantly faced by researchers concerned with eliciting accounts of lived experience; that is, is it possible to do research with ‘vulnerable’ often disenfranchised groups (e.g. Black people, women, children, teachers, lesbians, gays) without being guilty of ‘othering’ or of affirming, even exacerbating differential power relations? The discussion was recorded and a transcript made. Partly because I am an enthusiastic supporter of life history methodology, partly also because of my familiarity with both Ivor’s and Barry’s writing, I was asked to collaborate in the construction of a contextual commentary and it is this which is the substance of this paper. Before moving on to a critical encounter with the transcript it is worth considering why those who use life history see it as being a uniquely valuable and, indeed, privileged method for studying teachers’ lives. In 1981, in what has since become a much cited article, Ivor wrote ‘in understanding something so intensely personal as teaching it is critical we know about the person the teacher is’ (1981, p. 69). While this might now sound a common place, self-evident statement of the obvious, it sounded much more radical then (although there are, of course, still those will have no truck with such allegedly soft, ‘unscientific’, subjective thinking). Life history provided and continues to provide a way of getting to know more about the person of the teacher. In comparison with other research methods the chief values of the approach lie in its capacity to: a) explicitly recognise that lives are not hermetically compartmentalised. What happens in one area of our lives affects other areas too. For example, an ethnic minority person’s various experiences of racism in society have both practical and psychic implications for their experiences and perceptions of being 16

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a teacher in that society; b) to acknowledge the crucial relationship between individuals’ experiences and perceptions and historical and social circumstances; c) to provide evidence to show how individuals experience, create and make sense of the rules and roles of the social worlds they live in; and, d) to provide opportunities for personal and professional development. Thus life history can help to locate lives within the historical and social contexts in which they are lived, providing, of course, that the researcher and/or the life-story teller are aware of the necessary information. Its potential to do this offers a strategy for making theoretical links between the self and society. As Goodson puts it, life history enables us to ‘gain insights into individuals’ coming to terms with imperatives in the social structure’ (1980, p. 74). In the present project it is the giving of ‘voice’ to the ‘marginalised’ and ‘vulnerable’ individual, and the collaborative process by which they come to an enhanced understanding of their life within the social structure, which are seen as the main purposes of the enterprise. The first part of Barry’s and Ivor’s conversation was concerned with the nature of this collaborative process and the part played in it by the researcher: BARRY: We spoke a bit about the interview itself.... and you reckon that you choose to be fairly passive, fairly recessive. Two questions arising from that. Firstly, can you give me a justification for starters, and the second question is, is that the routine start? Are there any situations in which you would change that? IVOR: Taking that in reverse order, I guess there would always be situations where I would change being a reflexive researcher (ha, ha). But in terms of being passive, that’s the question of my analysis of the stages that one goes through in an interview for life history; so whilst I would start passive, I would think one would get more and more active as the process went through. So we talked a bit last week about these three stages which are not discreet, but which I believe exist, which begin with a more passive attempt to elicit what I call the raw narration of the life story from the life story teller which of course isn’t raw but which is a script coming from them without much prompting. So, in that sense, the interview is passive in that first period where they’re eliciting that prime narration, the first narration, a kind of script to the life, but then there would be some more stages which I describe as collaboration and location where you would ask a series of questions about that first narration of the life story which seemed to locate it, challenge it and interrogate it and position it, sociologically and historically. BARRY: So it would become progressively focused? IVOR: Yeah, progressively focused and progressively more interactive I think to be honest with you. Progressively, I would prefer to say, collaborative. BARRY: What happens if your respondent... didn’t want the interactive relationship that you request? IVOR: You mean all you get is just their first telling of their life script? Well, all you’ve got is their first telling of the life script. 17

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BARRY: Does this undermine the whole enterprise for you? IVOR: Not necessarily but I mean, obviously, you have to deal with that as it is which is something where you haven’t had any chance to seriously interact or question or locate as I call it, and so it would be of limited use and it would be particularly of limited use for me because I see the collaboration around that initial life story as a crucial piece of collaborative research and investigation and what works. That seems to me that the very important stage for me in trying to get some sort of collaborative ‘trade’ going with the life story teller otherwise, I mean, they end up with exactly the knowledge of their life that they first had and their understanding hasn’t been broadened in some sense as mine hasn’t either. So the collaboration around that first telling of the life story script is a crucial trading point for research, understanding, investigation, theory building, whatever that collaborative pact that we develop with the life story teller is. Barry takes Ivor up on the implications of what he has said for the nature of the power relationship between the researcher and the life storyteller. Taken at first glance it seems as if Ivor is adopting some sort of superior role vis à vis the storyteller in that he can help them to understand their life. Such a position appears to be at odds with his contention that the project avoided or minimised ‘neo-colonialism’. Ivor’s response again put the emphasis on collaboration: BARRY: Why would they want (their) understanding of their lives to be enhanced by you? IVOR: I’m not saying it would be enhanced by me. I think it would be enhanced collaboratively: a simple distinction. Why would they want me to be part of their enhanced understanding, to rephrase you? Well, because I think it’s often useful for some people, sometimes, to have another person or another presence while they work through and, in fact, another position, if you will, somebody standing there in an alternative position involving them in a conversation about their life. Some people would want that conversation, some wouldn’t, so I think the question of why would people want enhanced understanding is obviously a key question. Some people do and some people don’t. My business has tended to be to try to help people broaden their understanding of themselves, but that’s just my purpose, but I would want to work with people who had that as a belief that they wanted to pursue, that they want to come to understand their life, their life history, better. I would imagine that I wouldn’t be working collaboratively with people who didn’t because, clearly, they wouldn’t collaborate, I wouldn’t want to. That would be fine, I have no problem with that. Although Glesne & Peshkin reckon, In most instances... the researcher maintains a dominant role that reflects his or her definition of the inquiry purposes. As long as the purposes are his or her own, the researcher sustains a power imbalance that may or may not get redressed. (1992, p. 82) 18

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My view, and Barry’s, is less hesitant on this matter. We share the contention that researchers remain in a super ordinate position at all stages of the research process (see Frankenberg, 1993, for instance). The degree and significance of the power imbalance varies and depends upon the relative social and structural positions of interviewer and interviewee (see Neal, 1995; Walford, 1994) and upon the theme of the research. Concern centres on what the researcher does with the information given by the informant, on the means by which the information is elicited, and what the informant is told about the research and what it will involve for them. With regard to this last point, Ivor explains why he does not initially go into detail about what collaboration involves: BARRY: So at the initial stage of the life history enterprise, you would explain in detail what is required of these people? What their commitment should be? What your role is? IVOR: Yeah, I don’t know whether I would is the truth... laying out in detail what the collaboration is about is actually jumping the gun. Because... many people might not want to go to stage two. So if you, and they have the right not to, so if you from the beginning define this as something which is about enhancing their understanding or working with them towards understanding, which is the way I prefer to put it, you’re kind of pre-judging immediately the kind of person that you are seeking and the kind of collaboration you are seeking. Obviously, there are as many positions on this as there are people. And I think it is perfectly legitimate to say, as some people have, actually, ‘look, I’ve told you my life story, that’s enough, I don’t want to know any more’, that doesn’t invalidate that particular rendition that you’ve got, it is a life story which you have not been able to collaborate around, but it is still a life story. Ivor is emphasising that much hinges on the respondent’s willingness to become involved. He cannot do what he wants without their agreement to collaborate with him. Put this way there does appear to be some redressing of the way in which the relationship between researcher and researched is usually perceived. And of course, the nature of this relationship is critical. Much has been written about relationships in research interviews. Feminist and black researchers have been particularly concerned to explore the dynamics between the two parties and to develop methods which are less hierarchical than those where only the researcher asks the questions (Hill Collins, 1989; Reinharz, 1992, for instance). In the case of this project, interviewer, interviewee relationships are clearly of significance because the interviewees are ‘vulnerable’ ethnic minority members and the interviewers are white and are associated with a high status institution, a university. And yet, following this line of argument means eventually ending up being constrained by a simplistic, reductionist logic; namely that only women can interview women, only ethnic minority members can interview members of the same ethnic minority group, and so on. This demand for symmetry has the potential to deny other, arguably more important structural and individual differences between group members (Allen, 1994, for instance). It also seems to deny the researcher’s 19

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responsibility to be reflexive and actively to research, rather than make assumptions and take things for granted. Also, and, in my view, of paramount significance, is that it fails to acknowledge the importance of the personal relationship which develops between any two people. It is extremely difficult to conduct interviews with someone who, for whatever reason, you dislike, regardless of whether or not you share key characteristics. That Ivor also shares this view is reflected in his response to Barry’s question as to why his respondents should trust him, and what benefits they derive from the collaboration. IVOR: I don’t think I can answer that theoretically. You see, I think the question about who collaborates with whom and why they do it is... a deeply personal one. Often to do with eye contact, body language, chemistry, background, a million things which are quite impossible to legislate or predict so there is no answer in a vacuum to what you say. All that I can say is that some people at some times have trusted me, and I don’t quite know why. I can certainly list a number of things that the shadowy researcher, as you described me, might bring to this trade, this collaborative action, which would be a whole range of different kinds of thoughts and insights about life stories over time and about school histories and curriculum histories. There is a range of information that I would bring to the collaboration which might be different from the range of information that the life story teller would bring and would, I think, make for a nice fusion, a nice collaboration. As to why people might or might not trust the shadowy researcher, that is just inevitably a matter of personal negotiation around the issue of when you first start talking to somebody about whether they would like to do life story work with you. Some researchers have written about the techniques they use to expedite the development of relationships which are likely to be productive in terms of the data they result in. Oakley’s (1981) paper on ‘reciprocity’ was highly influential in this context. Others, however, have questioned the ethics of such manipulation (e.g. Measor & Sikes, 1992). Barry asked Ivor if he would deliberately use any strategies of this kind. IVOR: Yes, I think I would. I mean, one of the things that I deeply believe in as part of the collaborative conversation that follows the initial kind of unmediated narration of the life story, is a lot of exchange around the life story, the researcher and the life story of the life story teller. So I would nearly always in my conversation, in that conversation, in the collaborative second stage, bring in quite a bit of information about my own biography. Now, whether I would, as I have done sometime, also give them a sort of potted written account, sometimes I do that and sometimes I don’t but the judgement about that is a very personal one. Sometimes people... before they even tell you their life story, would like to hear a little bit about who you are and what you are doing and what your value position is. And sometimes I’ve said, ‘have a look at this, it is a potted biography’, or, ‘have a look at this, it’s something I’ve written’. So I would sometimes give them text or sometimes I would introduce it in that sort of conversational collaborative stage, either at the beginning before they tell their life story, or more likely, in more detail in that second collaborative period. 20

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And again, I mean, I don’t think I’d want to divide everyone of these into different stages, where you always start with narration and then you move to collaboration and location. I think sometimes you just get into a terrific conversation from day one. But often it works in the way I described. What Ivor is emphasising here is the essentially personal and individualistic nature of the methodology. Just as some people don’t make very good life storytellers, so some are not likely to be very good as life historians. The role demands being able to get on easily with people, but more than this, it calls for the sort of person that people want to talk to. It is very difficult to specify the characteristics that are needed because so much comes down to what Ivor calls intensely ‘idiosyncratic personal dynamics’; but a genuine interest in people’s stories, the ability to listen beyond what is actually being said and to ask pertinent questions, and the willingness to share one’s own experiences, are all necessary. Life history is a methodology for nosy people who are intrigued by the minutiae of others’ lives. It’s for people who read novels like A Suitable Boy, War and Peace, and The Magic Mountain, rather than aficionados of detective and adventure tales. Put this way life history is not a conventionally ‘scientific’ methodology, at least not according to positivist criteria. It cannot easily, if at all, be made ‘reliable’ because so much hinges on the particular relationship which develops between the two parties. Nor can ‘validity’ be assured because, once again, what is told and the way in which it is told, is, to some extent, dependent on that relationship. The concepts of ‘validity’ and ‘reliability’, so important in the canon of positivism, are not appropriate in assessing this methodology. This is not to say, however, that the method is without rigour, or that there are not techniques which can be used to situate life stories within their social context and, thereby, imbue them with wider meaning than they possess when left to stand alone. It is with respect to this that Ivor, like Bertaux (1981), makes the distinction between life story and life history. IVOR: The crucial distinction to grasp for me, is the distinction between life story and life history. The life story as I understand it is the version of events that you render to me over time. Your partial, selective story. It is a story and we all have one. Often the story we tell ourselves. ... One of the most common questions in seminars is, how do you get people to tell their life story? My answer to that is, how do you stop them, they nearly all do. One of the reasons it sounds so rapid when you switch on the tape-recorder is that most of us have already got a script that we’ve rehearsed endlessly with ourselves. In other words, we are storying animals and we constantly story our lives and when someone asks us for a story (Ivor snaps his fingers) it’s there, we’ve got it.... The question now is what you get when you get that. That’s the story anyhow and there might be a different number of life stories and we would tell different stories at different times in our life. The life history would seek to position and locate that story by bringing in other data, other insights, other theories, other questions which have not been raised in the initial rendition of the story. So it would, you know, to use Denzin’s phrase, it’s not a phrase I like much, but it captures it a bit, triangulate. You would bring other sources and you 21

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would get other documents, other historical factors, maybe even other testimonies which would position and question and you would collaborate around the original life story in the light of those life history documents. So you would move from story to life history by, in my case, that crucial intermediary collaborative act which brings in other data and other questions to try and locate the quotes of the life story and make it, render it, life history. Another issue related to the centrality of the personal relationship between interviewer and interviewee concerns how researchers learn to use the methodology. Barry raised this point: BARRY: I have a problem... It is a problem with this whole issue of reflexivity... which is, how would you describe this process? You put a great deal of emphasis on one’s own personal resources, being intuitive, ‘duck and dive’ when necessary, the development of certain tactics which are appropriate here, but not there, and so on. How does this coalesce around the methodology; how can you package this as a methodology which others can learn from? It seems there’s a whole array of different and individualised tactics. Ivor’s response is that it is indeed difficult to socialise young, inexperienced researchers and that, in direct reply to Barry’s question IVOR: Rather than doing what I think implicitly most people want us to do which is, as you say, your phrase, ‘how do we package your methodology?’, I think that there are some methodologies which are frankly un-packageable because... personal dynamics are themselves un-packageable. There are dangers attached to such an idiosyncratic approach. An inexperienced, or even an unlucky, experienced, researcher can find themselves out of their depth. In some respects the life history interview situation does resemble the approach used by Rogerian counsellors and interviewees do sometimes use it for therapeutic purposes. At other times, life stories just become painful. As Lynda Measor and I wrote elsewhere, ‘There are problems of the ‘intimate’ and ‘painful’ areas in life histories that may be full of purport and intellectual interest for the issue under discussion, but raise traumas for the individual. Self-reflection is a fashionable and useful tool, but there are things in perhaps every life that the individual prefers to forget, and emotionally it may be necessary for them to do so.... A life history does deal with intimate material, and carries a high ethical load as a result’ (1992, pp. 222–223). Barry’s view was that the dangers are, perhaps, heightened in Ivor’s project because of the differential social and structural power possessed by the researcher and the ethnic minority teachers. He also raised the possibility that, by focusing on the teachers rather than endemic racism, the research might, in some way, actually exacerbate the problems ethnic minority teachers face. Ivor’s reply brought the discussion on to research as ‘empowerment’, a notion that Barry has strong feelings about. 22

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IVOR: But what’s the logical conclusion for that if you are asking difficult questions of people? Not to ask them? Not to speak to them about it? What’s your alternative? Silence? BARRY: Well, one of the arguments which goes on in race relations research is, the focus shouldn’t be on the black community, the focus should be on racism. How would you respond to that? IVOR: No, I think it is a legitimate question, but you can see what I’m saying and it comes back to whether... we exacerbate questions by talking to people and questioning people about things, or whether we help create the flow of dialogue around perilous and problematic issues, and I think a lot of that cannot be prejudged. I think it depends on the way it’s done. I don’t inevitably always think that asking difficult questions of people, even if they are, as in some case, as is quite rightly the case here, in subordinate positions, that inevitably these invoke some form of colonising or genome or whatever you want to call it. It depends on the form of the collaboration, the form of the trust, to use your phrase, and the form of the trade... it would be wrong, I think, to say across the board.... if you ask difficult questions of people who are differentially located in the power structure (it) inevitably exacerbates their situation. I don’t think it does inevitably exacerbate. It might, on the other hand, it might actually help and enhance their understanding of their situation..... So it all depends on the nature of the conversation and the dialogue and the form it takes. It might exacerbate or it might enhance. BARRY: I guess I’m dubious that it could ever enhance and I’m dubious because I don’t believe in the empowering properties of research. I think it’s a grandiose and disingenuous conception of social and educational research which has been perpetuated from, reproduced mainly for the benefit of, the social and educational researchers. IVOR: I’ll buy that.... which is why we are now talking about the form of research which certainly has properties behind the - which is certainly attempted to engage in more everyday life kind of conversational forms of research... You may well be right that any form of interaction across such power divides inevitably exacerbates. I would be reluctant to accept that. I think that even if, if we for a moment could conceive of less grandiose forms of research, and I would hope that in some ways this might be one route to that, I would be reluctant to think that conversations across power divides could not enhance understanding because that would mean simply that groups can’t talk to each other in any meaningful ways. BARRY: Understandings of what? Understandings that they are members of oppressed groups? IVOR: Well no. Let’s push it a bit more. What about if, for example, let’s take teachers and let’s for a moment think of them as an oppressed group, which certainly some people would argue they are and certainly they have some properties of an oppressed group. Let’s for a minute imagine that the kind 23

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of conversations around life history, around studying the teacher’s life and work, led teachers to have much more vivid and cognitive maps of the groups of people that influence them, of the groups of people that oppressed them, and the groups of the sort of strategies that might work against those oppressive practices. And if those cognitive maps of resisting oppression or of understanding how oppressions are administered came out of the conversation that we are talking about, I would think that might enhance teachers’ understanding of the world in which they live and work. I would think that would be a good thing. BARRY: It’s a liberal humanist position to adopt isn’t it? They are all dressed up, to use Meatloaf ’s phrase, they are all dressed up with no place to go. OK. So now they know that the world is an oppressive place in which they live and there are certain things that have gone on in their life which have accentuated their vulnerability. What would you do about it? IVOR: Mine might be a little humanist, yours sounds unduly determinist in the sense that.... to pursue the argument that when people have a better understanding of how they might politically and actively work for a better world, is meaningless. Is to cut up almost any possibility in action. Is that what you are doing? BARRY: No. What I’m saying is that the life history methodology, with it’s highly individualised focus, doesn’t actually prepare the ground very well for collective action. Barry makes tough demands on researchers and research by implying that outcomes should lead to social change (Troyna, 1994c). Traditionally one of the chief values attributed to life history, its ‘supreme’ value in Herbert Blumer’s opinion, is its ability to take seriously ‘the subjective factor in social life’ (Blumer, 1979, p. 81). ‘Giving voice’ through life history to marginalised peoples is clearly not in itself going to result in structural changes but there are few methodologies which have this effect (but see Fay, 1987; Harvey, 1990). What life history does do is make accounts of experience accessible to others and raise the awareness of the life storytellers when these things would not have happened without the research. And accounts of experience are important factors in the process of social change. Rosa Park’s story, for example, constitutes a form of life story which most of its hearers could historicise and contextualise and who knows how many people were politically mobilised by hearing it. It is, however, true that a focus on individuals can mean that the power of social constructions and imperatives to influence lives is neglected. It can isolate individuals by appearing to privilege their experiences, thus preventing them from joining with others in some form of collective action. And it can also lead to erroneous assumptions that either everyone else belonging to the same group shares the same experiences, or that the individuals concerned are completely idiosyncratic ‘one offs’. Whilst maintaining that ‘one-on-one’ work is of value, Ivor does, however, have a strategy to minimise some of the effects of individualised life history. This involves 24

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groups of two or three teachers working collaboratively together on their life stories and life histories. Barry found this a more attractive proposition. The corollary of the question, what of value do respondents get out of life history work is, what do researchers get from it? This question applies, of course, to all types of research, but it may have added poignancy here. BARRY: The reality is that Professor Ivor Goodson will go to New Orleans and Kings College, London, and here, there and everywhere to talk about this research. That’s the reality. There is an inevitability about that that may be over determined. How would you respond to the claim, therefore, that, that to use perhaps an indelicate phrase of Patti Lather, you are simply involved in ‘rape research’? IVOR: I think it’s, again, I don’t think you can give total admissions or definitive restrictive answers to what might or might not be there. It’s obviously quite conceivable that this could be presented as ‘rape research’ in a sense that, yes, I have these conversations and then I go off to other arenas and talk to different audiences, in different ways about these things. But it begs the question of what I do in these other audiences and other places. If I thought that I gave addresses which presented the people I’ve talked to in an unwitting and unwilling light, then yes, that would obviously be a prime case of rape ‘research’, but it begs the question very much, of what I talk about. As a matter of fact, I never talked about anyone’s life history in the places that you’ve just talked about. So I never talk about those personal histories in a personal way in those places. I do talk about the methodological and ethical issues that they raise and the possibility that this may be ‘rape research’, but then that’s something that I should talk about and it’s important to talk about in those hallowed halls of the academy. But, I mean, all I’m saying is that it begs the question of how one talks about this research in other places. One might talk about it in a way that does confirm the allegation of ‘rape research’, or one might talk about it in ways that raise issues which in some sense resonate with the concerns of the prior collaborative life history work. So it may or may not be exploitative. BARRY: But the rhetoric still remains, doesn’t it, in so far as you talk in terms of the three stages of narration, collaboration, location and hope that with the subject you will achieve those goals. You can go through those stages and achieve it. That’s the ambition, that’s the aspiration and it may or may not happen. What will happen is that ultimately you have responsibility, the research team has the responsibility for selecting, filtering and representing that person’s life in the academy, either personally through being invited to talk in New Orleans, or through the written word of an article in the Journal of Education Policy or whatever. So there is no doubt whatsoever that you will benefit as a researcher from this activity. There is some doubt that the life history teller will benefit. That’s more dubious. IVOR: Absolutely true. 25

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BARRY: OK, if you accept that, is it morally reprehensible to engage black people in this project, given your own hegemonic position as a white, male, Professor? IVOR: For a white project on black people? BARRY: Yeah, that’s right, I don’t want to develop a hierarchy of oppression... Well, maybe I would focus on black people because it is well documented that this has been, this relationship of the colonised is well documented in the literature. IVOR: But what you are asking is a question that seems to me to move beyond blackness. BARRY: Yeah. IVOR: This is a question about researchers, privileged researchers in this case, dealing with groups at other levels of their hierarchy, normally subordinate positions. I don’t know. I don’t know how you resolve that... I’ve just done a summer school where I was doing life history work with principals and administrators who are, I think you’d admit, a less oppressed group than some of the groups of teachers we’ve been talking about. By researching upwards you turn some of these issues on their heads, but that isn’t the way out of the problem. I mean the issue is if you are researching or conversing with, or however you want to present the relationship, oppressed groups, you are implicated in the differential power structures of society. But frankly I can’t see any way that you could suspend that. You can either try and deal with it and seek not to exacerbate it and to confront and to find strategies that resist it in your work as far as you can, but you are still, since you are located in a power structure, you are still implicated. And you are as well as them. This part of the conversation touches on the issue of whose story is the research really about? The life story teller has their story that they tell, and others that they don’t tell, and the researcher has the story that they tell when writing up the research which, in itself, is a part of their wider life story. What happens when the storyteller’s story doesn’t fit in with that of the researcher? Ivor’s project focuses on ethnic minority teachers so he clearly has a story that he wants to tell in which experiences relating to ‘race’ and racism are expected to play a part. What happens if the teachers themselves do not recount such experiences? BARRY: OK, so if from this project you had two or three appointments with life history tellers and the issue of ethnicity, racism did not emerge, would that not prove troublesome to you? IVOR: I think it would not worry me at all if it didn’t emerge in the, what I call, early stages of narration of the script. It would worry me enormously if in the interactive collaboration and the discussion it wasn’t raised because I would expect to raise it... One of my questions in that next phase would be, ‘OK, you’ve told me your life story but I don’t have any sense of you 26

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as a black man and that is what I see in front of me, why is that?’ So yeah, I would pose it in that form, but the important point to grasp is, I would be posing that question in a very different way to the way we talked about using it yesterday. Where you go in and say, ‘OK, you’re a black man, tell me about it’. One way you’d obviously get that, the other way, you’ve got a longer run at the issue and I much prefer my strategy to yours. BARRY: But the issue didn’t come up with Walter (one of the life storytellers in Ivor’s project) IG: It didn’t with Walter yet... but that’s not over yet. BARRY: But that’s 300 pages (of transcript)! IVOR: Yes that’s 300 pages but what we’ve still got to do.... is go back and raise a lot of other issues about location..... Walter and I need a conversation about that before we push at some new questions. For Kathleen Casey’s self-confessed ‘activist’ women teachers, ‘being a black teacher means ‘‘raising the race’’; accepting personal responsibility for one’s people, and, especially, for the education of all black children’ (1993, p. 152). Talking about their ‘race’ and their experiences of racism was part of the life story they chose to tell Kathleen. This was not the case for Walter and Ivor, or at least, the issue did not appear to have arisen. On one level, perhaps, life historians have to accept that people tell the story that they, for whatever reason, want to tell to the person who is listening. If this does not involve their ‘blackness’ then that has to be accepted as part of the methodology. They can be asked, and the reasons why they may not wish to talk about this may be illuminating, but it is up to them and then to the researcher’s interpretation which they may or may not agree with. But it also depends, to some degree, on what questions are asked. In the present case, the pertinent question is, is it possible to talk about ‘race’ and racism without emphasising ‘otherness’? Barry asked this: BARRY: How would you respond to the observation that what this project is doing is strengthening the sense of otherness? A tendency that characterises race relations research, where de-contextualising black people from the normal conceptualisation of the teacher identifying the others as odd, different or deviant while naturalising whites in that role. How would you respond to that? IVOR: I think I would respond with a counter to you which is to say that by going out and pushing from the beginning to blackness and other issues, you’re doing that. BARRY: I’m responding to a research agenda in a tactical way. The research agenda has been set by you and your colleagues and that research agenda differentiates black teachers from others. IVOR: Yeah, but you see, in some ways you want it both ways there. Which is that you’re saying that you want us to get at this sense of otherness and that it hasn’t come out yet, and then you are turning around and telling me that 27

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I’m strengthening their sense of otherness. You can’t have it both ways. The truth is, I think, we’ve tried in ways that are not always successful, I would accept that, to try and deal with the question of otherness, which is undoubtedly there with any of them, whether that be a racial other or another, other we’ve tried to deal with that in ways that give a reasonable degree of voice to the beginning, to the person, to phrase that particular question as they will themselves. Now that doesn’t get me off the hook of otherness but it allows the otherness to be dealt with by them, rather than from day one by you when you go straight in and say, “OK, tell me...” No, I don’t think either of those solves the problem of how we’ve researched otherness. They are just two different ways of going at it, I think. And I wouldn’t, I think, claim priority for this method but I think it’s at least a sustainable way of approaching a considerable problem in our society. The problem does seem to be intractable. Prohibiting, even discouraging white people from doing research which focuses on black experiences is not a solution because even black researchers have to have research populations. Ferrarotti called for ‘sociology as participation’ in which, ‘knowledge does not have ‘the other’ as its object, instead it should have the inextricable and absolutely reciprocal interaction between the observer and the observed’ (1981, p. 20). Laudable as this is, it is unrealisable because it demands that ‘subjects’ be as committed to the research as its initiator. It also demands that they share a common understanding of the relevant discourses of research and whatever specialist area the research concerns. Such demands are unlikely always to be met. Indeed, researchers who have built in respondent participation in their project have often been disappointed with the low level of interest expressed in anything other than being a respondent (e.g. Acker, et al, 1983; Kelly et al, 1994). Explicit recognition of the difficulties in and through processes of reflexivity seems to be the most propitious way of confronting this dilemma if we are not to be disenfranchised entirely from carrying out research on sensitive and controversial issues. REFERENCES Allen, S. (1994). Race, ethnicity and nationality: Some questions of identity. In H. Afshar & M. Maynard (Eds.), The dynamics of ‘race’ and gender: Some feminist interventions. London and New York: Taylor & Francis. Bertaux, D. (1981). Introduction. In D. Bertaux (Ed.), Biography and society: The life history approach in the social sciences. California, CA: Sage. Blumer, H. (1979). Critiques of research in the social sciences: An appraisal of Thomas and Znaniecki’s ‘The polish peasant in Europe and America’ with a new introduction. New Jersey, NJ: Transaction. Casey, K. (1993). I answer with my life: Life histories of women teachers working for social change. London and New York: Routledge. Fay, B. (1987). Critical social science. Oxford: Polity Press. Ferrarotti, F. (1981). On the autonomy of the biographical method. In D. Bertaux (Ed.), Biography and society: The life history approach in the social sciences. California, CA: Sage. Frankenberg, R. (1993). White woman, race matters: The social construction of whiteness. London and New York: Routledge. Glesne, C., & Peshkin, A. (1992). Becoming qualitative researchers: An introduction. New York: Longman. 28

TALKING LIVES Goodson, I. (1980). Life histories and the study of schooling. Interchange, 11, 4. Goodson, I. (1981). Becoming an academic subject: Patterns of explanation and evolution. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 2(2), 163–180. Goodson, I. (1988). The making of curriculum: Collected essays. Falmer: London. Goodson, I. (Ed.). (1992). Studying teachers’ lives. London and New York: Routledge. Harvey, L. (1990). Critical social research. London: Allen & Unwin. Hill Collins, P. (1989). The social construction of black and feminist thought. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 14(4), 745–773. Kelly, L., Burton, S., & Regan, L. (1994). Researching women’s lives or studying women’s oppression? Reflections on what constitutes feminist research. In M. Maynard & J. Purvis (Eds.), Researching women’s lives from a feminist perspective. London and New York: Taylor & Francis. Measor, L., & Sikes, P. (1992). Visiting lives: Ethics and methodology in life history research. In I. Goodson (Ed.), Studying teachers’ lives. London and New York: Routledge. Neal, S. (1995). Researching powerful people from anti-racist and feminist perspectives. British Educational Research Journal, 21, 2. Oakley, A. (1981). Interviewing women: A contradiction in terms. In H. Roberts (Ed.), Doing feminist research. London and New York: Routledge. Reinharz, S. (1992). Feminist methods in social research. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sikes, P., & Troyna, B. (1991). True stories: A case study in the use of life history in initial teacher education. Educational Review, 43(1), 3–16. Troyna, B. (1994a). ‘The everyday world’ of teachers? De-racialized discourses in the sociology of teachers and the teaching profession. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 15(3), 325–339. Troyna, B. (1994b). Blind faith? Empowerment and educational research. International Studies in Sociology of Education, 4(1), 3–24. Troyna, B. (1994c). Critical social research and education policy. British Journal of Educational Studies, 42, 70–84. Walford, G. (1994). Doing research on the powerful in education. London: University College London Press.

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MEDIATION IS THE MESSAGE Interview with Ivor Goodson by Daniel Feldman and Mariano Palamidessi. Published (in Spanish) in Revista del Instituto de Ciencias de la Educación, Año IX, No 17. Buenos Aires, December 2000

QUESTION: We found very interesting your idea about the ‘crisis of positionality’ and the way in which this processes can change the sense of our practices and discourses... IVOR: Let me give you an example. The National Health service was a democratic invention, in 1945, of the Labour government where the rich and the poor were in beds together, waited on by nurses, and my wife use to be one of those nurses, who could give equal treatment, in the same room, to rich and poor. So it was a democratic health service. But since the conservatives took over in 1979, with Thatcher, the health service has been transformed into a privatised situation: the rich in one room or in a different hospital, the poor in other hospitals. So my wife, even if she’s in the same hospital, her work has been repositioned. She’s either now just serving the rich, or the poor. But I mean, she’s no longer dispensing democratic health care, equal to all, and inclusive. She’s just giving second rate health care, reduced health care, under-financed health care to the poor people. So even though she believes the same things, she’s in the same hospital ward, with the same beds, her work has been repositioned. And that’s the crisis of positionality. We haven’t changed, our own identity, our own beliefs, our own ideology, our own personal project is the same, but it’s been repositioned. We can hold on to our own beliefs, but if we do not contest structural change, we are repositioned, in spite of our beliefs. QUESTION: And how do you see the impact on the curriculum theory? IVOR: I think it’s very similar. Let’s change the map again so, the year is 1965, I’m teaching in a complementary school, the room is full of rich children, poor children, children with high academic ability, children with less defined academic ability. We teach them all equally, we attempt to create an inclusive pedagogy. And it’s a mixed ability classroom. Now, if I were in the same classroom, the rich would have gone away to a private school, the middle class would have gone to a charter school, I would be left in a school essentially for the poor in the wrong part of town, with less resources. I would still be believing in the same things, still believing in democratic schooling, still wanting to include everybody, but everybody wouldn’t be there. QUESTION: But the questions are if our beliefs are the same or they have been changed, and if we shall support in a political way our own beliefs and how. 31

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IVOR: Whether our beliefs are the same? I suppose when I say our beliefs are the same, I mean our big beliefs. For example, that you treat everybody equally or that everybody has equal power. Our big beliefs remain the same, but our strategic responses have changed. As I said to you, the belief in progressive pedagogy was the correct belief in the early sixties, because inclusive possibilities were there. So our belief was equal to our position. Now our position have change. We have to adapt the belief in some way. Actually the big belief is the same, the aspiration is the same, to treat everybody equally, but because of the substantial repositioning, there are two different ways to respond. I’m mentioning here (Briend)’s distinction between pre-figurative politics and strategic politics. The strategic politics is: you take a new situation and you work out a way in which your beliefs are reactivated in the new situation. You find a new way to speak about what you believe in. And that may mean changing your strategic position on, say, progressive pedagogy. We are not talking about changing our beliefs. I don’t think we can talk about changing our beliefs. We are saying: at this moment that doesn’t work anymore. But that’s a strategic point, not an ideological point, and that’s a very important distinction. Strategically we are saying, “It’s no good any more”. That wouldn’t deliver the belief by now. So he said: there are two ways that you do politics in a situation where you don’t like your positionality. One is you invent a new strategic politics, you involve yourself in some way in contesting the things that are creating a bad position. And he says the other possibility is what he calls pre-figurative politics, where you find, once again, a room or space where all of those things that you believe in can be done. So you bring together all the different children in one room, all the different students in one room. And just in that room you do what you believe, for example, that you should deal equally with everything. Let’s see a simple situation: you have a lecture, and there are all sorts of people in a lecture, people from different races and different classes come to the lecture. And at the front the professor is sitting, the professors ask most of the questions, but you deliberately disrupt the (...) of the room by asking to the class, by asking somebody in back what they think. You bring in, you include all the people in the room. In some symbolic way, the janitor comes and you thank him for your coffee, you speak to him in front of everybody. You’re doing prefigurative politics in that moment by saying “what I believe in is to include everybody in the room, and I’ll make sure that if somebody is making a special claim for privilege, I’ll disrupt now: “thank you professor for your prestigious question, what do you think at the back?” That is, just in a moment, trying to do pre-figurative politics. You can be more substantial than that, you can try and create that room permanently, but that’s pre-figurative politics, where you’re showing people “this, in this moment is what I believe about the world”. So that’s different in a way from strategic politics, that’s saying this is my honest belief, this is how I deal with people, I believe in all to be equal, and in second stage it means that you act equally with them. So it’s a daily politics. QUESTION: Then, when we are speaking about pre-figurative politics, are we speaking also about micro politics? IVOR: Let’s think about three levels: macro, mezzo and micro. Strategic politics, from my point of view, moves as far up from the micro as it can go. If you remember 32

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I talked about those waves going up towards the macro, when you get a substantial social movement, you move into de media and up towards structure. Let’s put an example. You move from the classroom up into the world of politics definition, talking as you do with the Educational Department about education policies, about distribution and resources. And there you’re involving yourself closer to issues of structure and distribution in strategic politics. It’s not just about micro activity, this is about contesting how resources are given to other people’s activities. That’s strategic politics. And you push it up as far through the mezzo to the macro as you can in any one point of time. Obviously the further up you get, so to speak, the more distributional effect you are having. So that’s not micro, not in the way I understand strategic politics. I’ll go as far as I can up in that debate. And I will cut my arguments as best as I can to achieve what I want. That’s strategic politics. It’s different from prefigurative politics and actually doing the daily activity, which is honest and truthful. There’s a distinction between truth and strategy. Strategy involves some dishonesty. QUESTION: Why do you think that? IVOR: Well, because to persuade a corrupt person to do something, an honest argument won’t work. You may have to be quite cunning, shall we say. Not dishonest maybe, but cunning to persuade a corrupt person to do something that’s good. So that’s the distinction between truth and strategy. Speaking truth the power doesn’t know what helps the powerless. So the old idea of speaking truth with power that’s one way, but another way is a much more manipulative and rather slippery kind of strategic politics. I believe that’s what the moment demands. QUESTION: As we understand your point, strategic politics implies a certain knowledge of the social cycles in order to make decisions. Is the role of the intellectual read the tendencies? IVOR: There are many potential roles. But the ideal role of the intellectual, I mean, there are many things, but one of them is to understand trajectories, to understand what social political trajectories at the moment are. And to read those particularly in the moment. I said, as I talked with you about pedagogy, that the kind of trajectory which I see there is that student demand is finally going to be celebrated. The trajectory of student pedagogy, looked at historically, implies always resistance to it. Suddenly there is no resistance and no one asks why. But the trajectory of economic change implies that at this moment this has more to do with actually selling postgraduate courses, and celebrating student demand is a way of, in a way, forcing universities to do it. So that’s reading a trajectory at a moment, and arguing. Otherwise, you get what’s happened in both of the conversations I’ve had in Argentina, which is people making timeless arguments, excited arguments about the introduction of pedagogy as a science now. And being very excited by it. In a way, I must say, to some extent I guess it is. But the question I have to make is “OK, but, why now?” And the “why now” is an analysis to do with the understanding of trajectories of this point in time, to do with the coming privatization of many courses in Argentinean universities, which make, suddenly, student demand enormously desirable to groups that have resisted it for decades. So, let’s go back to your reformist politics, let’s look 33

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at the reformist moment in 1918. The University of Cordoba, a university founded in 1610 by the Jesuits, in 1918 becomes the centre of the reformers which is, in a way, the celebration of student demand. Usually resisted by all the groups we would expect to resist it, celebrated by the progressive groups we would expect to be supportive of it. Move the reform moment forward, from 1918 to 1999, you find the groups in favour of student demand to be precisely the groups that were once opposed to it. The reason is, obviously, that that fits with, now, suddenly, marketisation and repackaging of education into a series of financial commodities to be sold. Suddenly, student demand is the way to make sure that university professors and others do that with their courses. So that’s how you read history on trajectories against the moment. Or you could just make a series of philosophical arguments. In a sense some of my Argentinean colleagues were just making them when they said: “this is really exciting, finally, power is listening to arguments about pedagogy”. That can be an example of a strategic reading by an organic intellectual of the situation. Which would lead you to think differently it as opposed to the timeless philosophical analysis of the argument of pedagogy, which is a strong argument, I believe in it, I’ve always believed in it. But the situation in 1918 is totally different from the situation in 1999. And that gives an important clue to the fact that powerful groups are finally supporting the argument of pedagogy, whereas one figures the question of “why now”, “what’s happening”, is a crucial intellectual question. QUESTION: What you say leads us to one question - how can we think against the particular thought that dominates a specific moment? IVOR: I don’t actually think that being an organic intellectual is inevitably subversive of power, and all subversive of domination. I don’t think it’s inevitable I’m not inevitably oppositioned. That’s not my position in the world. My position in the world is: I look at each situation, evaluate it in terms of my own beliefs and concerns for the collectives I’m interested in, and make my judgement. So I’m not always a subversive person, I’m not always subversive of power. Because power is a variable, it’s not inevitably bad, it’s sometimes better that in other times, that’s a historical judgement. So I’m different to those people that see themselves as always oppositioning, always against domination. We know some of those people. I think that’s more to do with their own kind of psychoanalytical conditions. I’m normally interested in domination and I’m normally opposed to much of what comes there, but I will make the judgement according to the historical moment. That’s my point. So it makes all sorts of differences as to whether you believe in just constant opposition, constant resistance. I mean, I tend to come out a lot of the time, but not always. I’ll evaluate each historical moment. Let’s go back and look at the politics in England in the 60’s and then in the 90’s. In the 1960’s, domination, as you call it, was reasonably progressive in its orientation. You had a Labour government, much influenced by a lot of progressive forces in the society, you had a very affluent kind of economy. Profits were being made anyhow. There was enough money to build up schools, to pay an inclusive pedagogy, to actually develop a whole kind of set of very interesting social experiments. At that time, I was not opposed to domination, I was working with the general kind of liberal force of that domination. At other times I would be 34

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opposed, but in that moment the two were in reasonable harmony for me to create the kind of pre-figurative politics I talked about. So I think it’s a very interesting question, as whether one is inevitably subversive in a position as an intellectual. My own instinct to it is no. I take, I evaluate. This is the link between analysis and action. For me the two things are the same actually, which is you look into a situation, you try and read the situation and the trajectories as best as you can with the things you have in mind in terms of action, you make a series of judgements and then you take action. There was a man called (Stanley/ Stan Lee) in England who set up a commune, under (...’s) times. And fought like hell for this piece of land for all the people. In the end they killed all the people and put him in prison. The last thing he said was “I thought, I acted, I am at peace”. And that’s kind of the way I feel, you know, you think it through, you act as best as you can, and that’s your contribution. But it’s not inevitably always fighting, it’s not always opposition. There’s this belief though that annoys me about certain aspects of life in politics, that you always have to be fighting, that you always have to be on the barricade, you always have to be oppositioned. It isn’t true. I mean sometimes yes, sometimes no. Of course power tends to be of a particular sort, but sometimes it’s more benign. Sometimes you can work better with it than at other times. Sometimes I would be very oppositional, and other times I’d be less though. I don’t see it as a kind of psychological need to always be contesting power at every point. I mean, you know the history of Argentina, there’s been power that you could work with, and power that you would oppose with everything you’ve had, you’d leave the country, you’d go away, you’d fight it in any way you could. But at other times, you know, in 1916 maybe power was ok, 1928 to 1940, you could work there. Power is not monolithic any more than anything else is. It doesn’t always work badly. Sometimes it moderates, and you can work with a moderate (...). QUESTION: We are speaking now about the relationship between political action and theoretical activity. And it seems to us that your ideas point the need to reconsider the tradition of certain critical theory and the connection that is made between theory production, political position and conception of power. IVOR: We can set two difference issues. In terms of the first of those, critical theory. I think some of the comments I’ve just made are in some ways related. If a theory becomes a constant oppositional posture, whatever power is doing, a constant ongoing conspiracy theory, then that does not square with my understanding of history. History is a little more variable than that. Its true power is often very corrupt, that’s true, but sometimes less than other times. And I suppose I have a number of problems with it that we talked about before. Although I’m much inclined to think myself in a very independent way. And one of them is what I said that it’s a posture of constant opposition. The second one is that it seems to me to proceed in the wrong sequence towards understanding of the world. It starts with a theoretical presupposition very often, not always, generally. Some theories of that sort start with a theory of the world, which then search the world for proof. I prefer to work in the other sequence. You go into the world with a set of obviously theoretical training’s, no doubt, and prejudices and desires. But basically, you come to theory through the 35

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battle with data. I believe you saturate yourself with data, you live among data in the world, and you come to theory. Of course you travel from theory to theory, I understand that. But none the less, you come to theory in a particular way. My way of working is through a very detailed, hard working analysis of the micro and mezzo activities in the world, to develop some theories about what is actually going on. And that leaves me with a different presupposition about power. As I come to understand how power is affecting the way people act and look in the world, I can make distinctions between relatively, shall we say, liberal times, and relatively oppressive times. And I believe that these do have some cyclical kind of (…). So if I was to analyse the world with a theory which I thought would always stand, I would stand against the kind of cyclical understandings of different changes that have happened. I make a very important distinction, in the first book I wrote in 1982, called “School subjects and curriculum change”, between “domination” and “mediation”. Domination and mediation go this way that there are certain “conjunctures” where dominant interest groups intervene to set up a structure. At the moment a reform is coming down, which will set up certain structural parameters by action. That’s a moment if you will - of dominant interest groups wishing to restructure in a very systematic way. At that dominant moment, structure is put in place and it includes a pattern of resources and a pattern of aspirations. That’s a moment of, we can say, domination. Once they put that reform in place, a different politics takes place. It’s not daily domination. It follows very quickly with what will be a public long period of mediation. While that structure is administered and managed and run and activated by other people who will take back from it certain degrees of autonomy space and other strategic politics. In other words, be mediating a structure which was once put in place by domination. That distinction between domination and mediation is naturally the critical point, because it gets the heart of how power works. Power doesn’t work in most places most of the time, by constantly telling you what to do. In my book the phrase which I like the most is: “this is less a story of domination by dominant groups, more a story of solicitous surrender by subordinate groups”. That’s mediation. That is very different to the idea of domination as a founding system. And that’s the root of my different sequence to theory. I read the world differently, I don’t think domination works as systematic pression. I believe it works as mediated surrender by subordinate groups. That’s a very different conception of power. QUESTION: ... I think that a constructionist perspective is a way to deconstruct structuralist arguments like Bernstein’s, and that we are able to use notions as “boundaries” not in a structuralist perspective. But the moment of domination is the moment of the creation of new boundaries in social structure. IVOR: That’s correct, but my point is that most of the time, if you look across history, it’s not times of creation of boundaries, it’s times of mediation and systematic dissolution of boundaries. So people are working within the boundaries, if you will, so they’re working within structure, but in a way, they are re-making daily (…) structure. So it is to say, if you only understand in structuralist terms, you’re only thinking about some very unusual moments in history. The point really is not to understand boundary making per se, but to understand how people deal with, play 36

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with, cross boundaries, border boundaries. That’s the sociological challenge. Not to understand the moment of domination, but to understand long going moments of mediation. Because otherwise you silence agency. The great problem of that kind of theorizing is in many ways it’s complicity with power, because it believes power is more powerful than power is. It celebrates power. Structuralism in that sense celebrates domination. Whereas I would be more interested in celebrating mediation because it hands back degrees of capacity to people, which often ends up with solicitous surrender to boundaries. But sometimes it doesn’t. It gives you a chance to leave the question open as to what your daily activity and habitus is. I’m not saying therefore you are a dominated, powerless individual, which is the basic message of much of this theory. And not surprisingly, most teachers, most of the time have said “no thank you”. Because the message is “you are a powerless person who cannot read structure, you don’t know what you’re doing, you don’t see the boundaries which are restricting your consciousness”. Some of this is true, but not surprisingly, teachers have said “your interpretation of me as a powerless player out of domination; I reject. Whether I am or not, I’m not buying your book”. So I would prefer to spin this in a way which I think is inherently true, which is to say the interesting case is how these moments of structuralist domination get mediated. Most of the time, we’re talking mediation, not domination. QUESTION: In your belief about the power of celebrating mediation and no domination is not a touch of desire? IVOR: Yes, undeniably I hope there’s desire in every theorist. QUESTION: But I understand that it can be a problem when we are speaking about social theory. We are not sure if that is the way things are or if that’s the way we like them to be. That can be considered a very subtle difference but it makes a difference... IVOR: There’s a quote which I like from an English novelist called (Farrow/Farell) and he says that what he doesn’t like about intellectuals is their clinical objectivity in the world. And he says, “What I’m looking for among my academic friends and I don’t find it is a passionate objectivity”. That’s what I want, and I would never want to get to the stage where the blood in my body is not affected by passions and desires. Even at the moment of clinical objective reading. I think yes I’ll always be driven by my own life history, which is a history of desires and I would not want to sterilize the passion in my science ever. But if it led me to ignore what I saw, if desire, like so much theory, led me to ignore what I saw, then I would be worried. But I think I can control my desire enough. QUESTION: I want to go back a little. You talked about cycles, and waves and levels. At that moment I asked you about the relationship between that sort of thinking and the role that you and other academic colleagues play in educational politics. I think it is difficult to give a single answer because in the last 30 years we can consider different periods, but, can I ask you to speak a little more about the micro, mezzo and macro levels, and the different waves and articulations? 37

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IVOR: Well I mean the theory of micro, mezzo and macro is not a well developed theory in that sense. But it’s a sense that there is a spectrum of activity and analysis which takes you from the whole macro - if you will - into a much more contestive middle ground which I call the mezzo, where people can be seen to get to down into the micro daily level of people’s actions in classrooms or in (…) The issue for if whether it’s a level of analysis or action, is how far up into that middle ground of policy and of uses of structure of moments of domination, if you will, we can take our activity. And all I was saying, and is not a particularly profound insight, is (whatever) there are periodically different waves. You can see times when action and analysis move much further up that spectrum towards middle ground and higher ground (barriers/areas?) of definition. And how far up the public intellectual is in a sense allowed to go with his or her analysis or action. This is a function of patterns of politics and economics of that time. So that’s all I’m saying really, that there is a kind of cyclical pattern to how far up into the high ground of reform one can get in terms of activity and analysis. QUESTION: And what is, or was, the role of academic personnel in face of that kind of cyclical pattern of activity and analysis? IVOR: I think, certainly in my own country, England, intellectuals were accepted and expected to play a role in the higher grounds of that spectrum, up into the areas of policy analysis and even government. They were clearly seen as architects of policies. And they weren’t just legitimized as to read policies, but were actually active in the frame of the policy –that can be important to prove-. So in periods of liberal governments, expansion, inclusionist politics, it’s clear that the intellectual can play a public role in the definition of some of those middle ground mezzo level policies and practices. That happened I believe in the 60’s and 70’s. The kind of social contract, if you will, between the intellectual classes and the government classes, seemed to me to rupture in 1979, when Margaret Thatcher was elected. So at that point, the intellectuals - if you will - returned to the micro cosmic habitus, and were disinfunctionised from many of the middle ground discussions about new reforms or new national curriculum. In a whole range of very important moments of domination, moments of boundary definition, the intellectuals were not active, and not even close enough to evolve themselves in analysis. Now this is one of the great rediscoveries of power, which is that you can actually evacuate a whole milieu of policy making and structural renegotiation. Which mean that in a sense you silence theory, (whatever) it is subversive or not, because you can’t get inside the room to see what is going on. And of course, as globalization takes place, that closing of the door to both, action and analysis, has become a world-wide movement. Now where that leaves us as, would be, organic intellectuals, global organic intellectuals in a very difficult position, because we’re trying to read the signs of structural renegotiation or structural readjustment - I believe is the phrase - from outside the room. So we’re back trying to read trajectories, patterns, global incidences which give us, I think, fairly clear clues as to what’s going on. It means we have less detailed empirical kind of understandings than we once did. And this brings me back to the kind of sequence of theory I was arguing for, which is that the kind of patterns I was arguing 38

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for are more difficult at this time than they were. In some ways, I mean, they argue for the kind of grand panoptical theories of the old grand narratives because if you’re not allowed inside the room and you can’t see things in correctly maybe all you’ve got is theory. But I believe it’s not all as black and white as that. I believe you can get a fair bit of evidence from inside the room. Most people, the political parties particularly, are quite keen to talk about their own kind of manoeuvrings and their own power. So a good deal of work can be done in spite of this closure, to understand, to analyse, and indeed to act. And my sense is that we’re probably moving to go back to that point we’ve gone through, a huge moment of triumphalism. You know, a new world order is established, and now is put in place. And at that moment, of course, you’re outside the room. But if my domination-mediation cycle is correct, we are now likely to be moving into a period of mediation. Where the professional classes are to some extent allowed back into the room. Where people that were in the room go back to their original business. And so, once again, we move into that mezzo mediating level. QUESTION: Which clues lead you to that impression? Why can we say that we are going into a new period of mediation? IVOR: Because I think what becomes very clear with the marketisation of education in England is that there are severe limits to how far, for example, business will want to go in running schooling. I think business will probably want to build the buildings and make the profits from leasing out the buildings. So it will manage the buildings possibly in public education. I don’t think it will want to involve itself in the hugely contestive area of education, in the distribution of education. It would be just a too dangerous front line to get into. So my own sense is there will be limits to how far education is actually marketised. And once those limits are realized, the professional groups will have to be brought back in, and allowed back into the room, because after all, they are the ones who know best how to do this. So I think the moment of overreach where such groups thought they could do everything, they could do not just business but culture, that moment of overreach is over. And in terms of culture, much of cultural production, I believe, or some of it anyhow, will be handed back to the professional groups, who will have more degrees of autonomy than they (...). Again, this statement is driven by desire as much as any empirical proof, but I think I sense that happening. Domination doesn’t normally go on, on an everyday basis, that would be very hard to stand. And only works in these moments of triumphalism, and it has clearly been a huge moment of history triumphalism. That’s passing away now. So I think we’re moving into a mediation period, where all of the things I’ve talked about become possible. QUESTION: Perhaps we can think that each cycle leads to some expected results and some unexpected results. And the unexpected results open the new cycle, let’s say, the mediation cycle. IVOR: Yes, absolutely right. QUESTION: And what do you think is the role of curriculum theory and the situation of curriculum theory within this period? 39

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IVOR: Again, this is my empirical reading and it goes against my desires. My desires are that curriculum theory will remain vivid and vital and vigorous. My reading of it, is that it has becomes marginalized and meaningless. And one of the reasons for that, I think, is that it was a space. The argument of the curriculum as a space where arguments about inclusion or social exclusion could take place, arguments about pedagogy could take place. Where, in a situation of democratic schooling, really important debates could place. If you move from that period of democratic schooling into the period narrowing, vigorously partitioned separated, segmented marketplaces of schooling, where there are some schools for the rich and some for the poor and some for the middle class, the argument of the curriculum is a much less central distributional argument than it was in the 60’s and 70’s. Curriculum theory has been repositioned as a set of marginal arguments about inclusion and exclusion. So the big arguments are arguments about the nature of schooling and the distribution of schooling, not about the nature and distribution of curriculum. I spent 20, 25 years writing in curriculum theory. But most of my last 10 years has been making that move from a specific interest in curriculum into a wider understanding of the new patterns of schooling emerge. So, with regret, I would say the curriculum theory is likely to be less interesting. With the new reforms you’ve got a lot of writing about implementation. I talked about implementationism, my opinion, which is implementation is short-sightedness among a lot of English theorists. And that’s just implementing what has been decided as structural readjustment. That’s not what curriculum theory should be about, but it’s what it’s become. It is no longer a field that deploys major arguments about a nation’s schooling as it once was. So I am disappointed and distressed about the state curriculum theory, but one moves on. It was a central milieu; it is now a marginal milieu. QUESTION: In our conversations you use the word “battle’. You were speaking about the battle of curriculum, and the battle of democratic education. And since you speak about battle in curriculum, you speak about theory battle... IVOR: It’s back to this issue about passion or objectivity. I think that one of the things that most disappoints me the most about intellectuals is the kind of dissected, dispassionate withdraw from the world which is almost a plastic common-sense image of the intellectual, as someone who sits on the computer 14 hours a day and (hits) in his theories, and never goes outside, and fights that battle just in a textual way. And I used the word battle again. I think it’s a much more passionate game, I mean I think what keeps us alive as human beings and afterwards intellectuals, human being first, intellectuals second, is a passionate engagement with the issues. That’s what puts the light in people’s eyes. And you look around at any colleague, and there’s an absence of fire. Is that true or not. QUESTION: Listening to you I realize that I have thought about “battle” in a different direction and I ask myself about the meaning of what you call the process of refraction... IVOR: Refraction really, it’s in a sense another word talking about mediation, isn’t it? So let’s give an example of refraction, a global example. Perhaps we can give 40

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a concrete example. So, the big global force is coming to Argentina. And they legislate a number of changes that Argentinean education must adopt, a number of reforms in the new government, promises through the new minister that the new reforms will be put in place in Argentina. That’s the beginning of the promise, the beginning of structural readjustment. The promise is made, the deal is made. The money comes forward. That’s only the beginning though. The process of refraction or mediation led by. At some point the agreed structural readjustment has to be handed over to ministries, and professionals and intellectuals to be negotiated and battled over. And in that battle, what was an initial intention will be refracted into a so called policy parameters and activities. And in that refraction, there will be a displacement between the original agreed structural readjustment and intentions and the actual policies and activities and parameters that are defined, and in that moment of refraction, in that moment of mediation, in that moment of battle, if you will, between particular forces, that is the moment of understanding. Not the moment of structure intention. And not the moment of final activity, but the battle over interpretation mediation refraction of the original intention. That’s how, that’s the process - in my view - which power goes through when it issues a dominating embark for structural adjustment. That’s the intention, but that’s not what comes out in the end. What comes out in the end changes in each national situation or in each context. For example, if the headmaster of the school drives the same kind of structural readjustment, and he will abolish subjects (or what turns up?), that will be played out differently within each department of the school, each subject, each micro-world inside the school will refract the headmaster’s dominant intervention. And it will be a mediated battled over and it will come out differently. So social life and social activity is always a process of refraction. Not just from one to the other, but through a number of levels. You can go from macro structural adjustment announcements, through to the most minute habitus. And the refraction (…) continues through the various levels. So that the actual habitus which comes out, as you said, you may have a very unintended habitus coming out from a dominant proclamation. Very likely anyway. So the task of the analyst is to understand the process of refraction. If you will, the series of battles and micro politics that go on after a structural intervention. That’s our task. Not to understand the structural intervention only, but to really understand processes of social refraction. QUESTION: I guess that the use of an idea like “refraction” can be appreciated only if you ground it in a certain context. IVOR: It’s about the difference between curriculum as I understand it in Spanish speaking countries and in England. The reason for the celebration of curriculum in Anglo American world I think is that it’s most powerfully a celebration of the substantial professional authority. Teachers in the 60’s and 70’s in England and America had a very substantial power of refraction, if you will, of mediation. Because they could control large aspects of the curriculum. So, to go back to the macro, mezzo and micro thing on the role of the intellectual, the intellectual was excited by that because here was an example of substantial movement into the areas of policy and structural renegotiations. The teachers were involved and so the theories were 41

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celebrated in a sense (of agency). Now that’s different from Spanish speaking notions of curriculum, that’s a much more specific definition as a course of study. QUESTION: Now speaking about curriculum theory is the celebration of, probably, the state. IVOR: That’s entirely true, and that’s a crucial point of that. But you see, we talked about coming back and you’ll go out to the circle and you’ll come back to the same point. The Anglo American world has now returned to the same point as the Spanish world again, which is that now the curriculum is simply a course of study. But, to talk about curriculum is nearly to think about power. And to theorize over curriculum is to theorize on the refraction of power. So we move into a situation of convergence between the Spanish speaking and the English speaking world. It’s interesting to think, to see the convergence, the global convergence in Spanish speaking and English speaking understandings of curriculum. For a little while Anglo American escapes for a wider space which made this a very interesting curriculum theory. Now curriculum returns to one small part of the area. What we’ve got to try and find is an understanding of the world matrix of schooling. Have the bits put together of the patterns of distribution. So we need a theory of school distribution. We need a new distributional theory, a new theory of regulation. Because the game has changed we need to understand the new patterns of regulation and mediation. Putting in place the new marketised matrix of education requires a new kind of analysis to understand these new patterns of regulation and mediation.

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INTERVIEWS WITH RAIMUNDO MARTINS AND IRENE TOURINHO IN BARCELONA

Interview 1 - In the Train... Going to Portbou IRENE: In one of your doctoral classes, answering a question about ‘what was it that could make someone transcend social agendas,’ you said that it had to do with individual personalities but also with dislocations - moving outside categories, crossing cultural and social borders. What types of dislocations were important in your personal and intellectual life and what did you learn from them? IVOR: I suppose the biggest dislocation was moving from my own village into another school in another place that had a completely different view of the world. So, I grew up in a small working class village and I had to go to another place where the whole milieu was middle class and everything was totally different even my language - my language was the wrong language, I had a different dialect. So it was a dislocation of language, dislocation of culture, dislocation of world views, of politics, of everything, and that all that all happened when I was ten, because I went to that school and I had to pass an exam early to the school. I had to cycle away from my village everyday so I had to cross that border physically. And I had to dress in a different way which I hated, so just a whole age of dislocations, which started very early for me and made me realise the opposite of what I supposed to realise: instead of realizing that was what I was to become, I was more interested in where I’ve come from, on what I was losing, I was more interested in holding on to what I had - my culture, my class - than I was in a sense of social opportunity, the dislocation. So the dislocations forced me to think out who I was very earlier, I think. So that was the first border crossing, if you will, and there have been many others since. But I think that was for me the transcended moment where I was suspended between my home and class and some other place that I didn’t particularly want to go to. So, in a sense, my position was suspended, detached, looking both ways and trying to judge who I was in the mix of that in a sense transcended moment which, in a way, has continued all my life (I’ve always travelled since) so I think it’s a good question that dislocation began early and has continued. IRENE: Do you remember more recent ones? IVOR: Well, many others, obviously after that going to University, going to a big city, London, to study for eight years was a big shock for me, to move from a small rural village into another big environment, Raymond Williams has told a lot about ‘the town and country border crossing’, that’s another big border crossing. There is a whole border crossing of living in your own country to work in another country, 43

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which is what I did when I went to work to North America, first to Canada and then to the States. In a way that’s the playing out the same transcended moment of being between countries, between cultures, and watching both, watching where you want to go; and then, this endless process of becoming... and then, sort of endless by making a decision of where you are, where you want to be. Which is why I’m back to Europe, why I’m back in Britain, why I’m back with most of my original friends. So, it’s being a process of holding on as well as letting go, so it’s both transcending and re-colonizing; it’s strange double movement: you journey out but then you come back all the time, it’s a strange kind of physical and ideological and ideational minuet really, backs and forwards. IRENE: This constant moving out and in - what does it means philosophically and intellectually? How does it affect your thinking? IVOR: I think it gives me a pedagogical posture which is very informed by where I come from, and it’s consciously evaluating where I’m going and what that means, so it’s a journey through cultures really, and it constantly poses the question of what is being asked of me here, why am I being set up on this particular trajectory by society and how is it set up that way, what is set up to try to do to my loyalties, to my understandings of the world and how can I hold on to a previous loyalty in this new journey. You’ve been sent on a scholarly journey, on a credentialing journey, on a professional journey, how do you hold on to what you hold dear? Well, in a sense of travelling, of crossing these borders and what are the costs and the benefits of crossing the borders. I mean it’s a mistake to think it’s only one way, or one way issue of loss. Because it’s also, in a sense, it’s an escape to better things as well, and one shouldn’t deny that. So, there’re two sides of this formal social mobility: one is you say, I lost this I lost that, I moved on; and the other side is part of you undoubtedly wants to do that, part of you undoubtedly wants to embrace new realities, so it would be wrong to say one is forced on a journey as a journey which you travel on. The really issue is how to hold on to your head in a way, hold on to what you are as you travel. IRENE: Talking about borders, in what sense do you think that this concept of ‘border’ can help teachers? What type of new borders do teachers have to face in this century? What kind of new borders can we talk about? IVOR: I think there’re two sorts of borders here: one is the difference between the local source and the cosmopolitan source. So, there’re people that have travelled away from their local environment and they develop cosmopolitan knowledge, I mean you two would be an example, I’d be another example. We’ve been around, we’ve been in another cultures, we know the meaning of what local is in a different way to those that stay there. So it brings a different more stratified vision of what it is to be local if you become cosmopolitan. Alongside that, there is a difference between living a life in an existential way and being able to theorise that life to understand what has happened to you, my kind of life history work. And so the border crossing between local and cosmopolitan, or the border crossings between a experientially lived life and a theorised life, are both heavy duty border crossings that teachers... teachers essentially set up on that journey with the students because giving the nature 44

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of school knowledge they’re trying to make the students have more abstract theoretical de-contextualised knowledge because of the way school subjects are set up. So, they’re asking the students to go on an intellectual journey, which should involve intellectual border crossings from rooted basic local knowledge into a more generic theoretical knowledge. So, the kind of journeys we’re talking about are precisely the kind of intellectual journeys that the successful student is asked to go on. So, in that sense, these border crossings deeply inform the pedagogy that every teacher has to attend to do in taking the job from its original sense of the world into a more theoretical generic understanding. And as Richard Sennett says, if you taste the food of knowledge it’s really a success, if you test the knowledge it’s really spoiled, that’s also true, because you have - in moving to a generically sense - you have a different understanding of the local, a different understanding of just experiencing life of beginning to theorise and that comes with gains and losses. So it’s very much about teachers and pedagogy really; it’s thinking about what costs and benefits there are to your students; it’s talking about what costs and benefits there are to your students of going on the intellectual journey you’re asking them to go on, you gonna think about what you’re asking them to give up as they move or cross borders intellectually, because that’s a big psychological journey they’re going on and your have to be sensitive to that. It’s not a complete bonus to move from local knowledge to cosmopolitan knowledge, from taken-for granted knowledge to theoretical knowledge; it comes with costs as well. And it’s a difficult journey to ask the students to go and so, the teachers that think this is entirely a good thing of doing here, it’s a full, because they are not being aware of the sort of costs they’re asking the students, as well as the undoubted benefits they are giving, and they should be aware of both and sensitive to the culture that they’re asking the students to give up on, to leave, to extend, to transcend, so I doubt that many teachers are full like that, I think most teachers are aware but they certainly need to be highly aware of it; most teachers in my space are really good about things like this, so... IRENE: To move outside categories requires recognition and/or construction of some categories. What would be the most problematic and simple categories for teachers to recognise? What are the kinds of categories that we are working within the teaching profession? IVOR: The biggest issue with teachers in secondary schools - this may be not the kind of category you’re thinking of - is whether the teacher socialise into a particular formal subject knowledge, and the way that particular formal subject knowledge, which is essentially what they’re selling, comes with both great benefits but also considerable cost, because it’s a category of knowledge which is being abolished in a particular way, because all the facts of subject knowledge is involved in the social order, is about taking groups from one place and moving to another place in a social order very often. So the subject knowledge as a category tends to be at a highest level, abstract and de-contextualised and theoretical, so that’s the category they’re in a sense selling and, as we said earlier about border crossings, that means people have to give up on from formal, rooted, local experiential category knowledge, before they can succeed educationally. So that kind of category seems to be the most 45

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problematic thing that teachers need to think about: to what extend is the subject knowledge they’re selling demanding too much of the students in the sense of what they have to give up on, and how sensitive is the teacher to move away from local, practical, grounded knowledge, which is of an obvious immediate use, to much more exoteric, cosmopolitan, abstract knowledge, which may be of some use, but may not in the new world that we are moving into be much, much helpful than the local knowledge. So, it’s that moving of categories that teachers have to be thoughtful about; and particularly in teaching the lesson, how do they make connections between people’s local senses of themselves - the rooted sense of themselves, the class sense, the gender sense of themselves - and the more abstract knowledge they’re being asked to take on board. And a good teacher makes constant connections between people’s local and immediate concrete sense of themselves and the knowledge that is being added into that. So, they constantly ground the abstract knowledge into local examples, concrete examples which have strong resonance for the people, for the students. So, in a way, it is pedagogy under this, isn’t that what is about a border crossing pedagogy? Helping the students constantly cross these borders. IRENE: Sometimes teachers are themselves too much imprisoned in one kind of knowledge to an extent that they could think that, theirs, is ‘the knowledge’ or the ‘better knowledge’. How can they make those border crossings, those knowledge displacements? This discussion crosses both the circumstances of student-teachers relation but also the relation of teachers with their own lives... IVOR: I think the word you’ve used is right from the teacher’s point of view, as they can be imprisoned in the knowledge that they’ve been socialised into, they can be imprisoned in their own expertise, and that’s not just a problem for the student, in my view that’s a problem for the teacher. Because the whole point of doing the kind of life history work with teachers - which we’ve been talking about these last six months - is that it allows the teacher to be reflective about the border crossings that they themselves has had to go across; many teachers have gone through exactly the same border crossings that I’m talking about: they move from local, sometimes work across homes to become professional people, they almost certainly move physically around: they go to university, they move around, they have to go through a whole age of border crossings. As they think more about their life history, they would get out of that place that they have been imprisoned in, to realise the kind of border crossings they would like to go through, and in doing that, to the kind of border crossings the students are going through. But - what I was thinking - it was simply that the teachers themselves, by being reflective, get out of being imprisoned in one particular formal knowledge which they’ve been trained in, to have a more general sense of themselves as persons: the teacher as person, is at least as important as the teacher as expert. By getting back in touch with themselves as people who go through experiences they become both happier people but better teachers because they will be more sensitive to the way the students are experiencing the world. It puts them back in touch with themselves and, in doing so, puts them better in touch with the students; that would be my argument about reflective life history work. 46

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IRENE: Do you consider yourself an optimistic? You talk about teachers being happier, teaching better… all this thinking is quite poetic, in a sense... IVOR: I guess I’m optimistic. I’ve seen plenty of obvious reasons to be pessimistic about the world. I’ve seen so many examples of people getting in touch with themselves and reflecting on their experiences and getting out of the place in which they were imprisoned. I guess I’m optimistic about human beings’ capacity to develop their self knowledge and, in doing so, develop the knowledge of other people. So, yeah, I’m optimistic, often in the face of quite clear evidence. Yeah, I’m optimistic. IRENE: Let’s do a change here. Looking into another direction, we will be in Portbou in a few minutes and we’re going to the memorial of Walter Benjamin who thinks ‘in the border’ of different disciplines such as history, sociology, aesthetics and theology. What would be the advantage of crossing borders in relation to working ‘in the borders’? IVOR: In a way by constantly crossing borders, you find yourself ‘in the border’ anyhow, and of course, all the things that we’ve talked are about working in the borders, aren’t they? The border between abstract knowledge and concrete knowledge, between cosmopolitan worlds and local worlds and, between classes, between cultures. So, we’re talking about trying to extend people’s self knowledge by looking at the borders that exist as well as the borders that they cross; by focusing on the crossing, you’re already focusing on the borders in which people actually live, and certainly teachers, because they are constantly dealing with people, who are living in that moment of being in the borders, the borders about the lessons, the borders from being untrained to be trained, from being uneducated to educated, those students are living ‘in the borders’ and it’s in one place - it’s quite optimistic - because it’s a good place to live, because in the borders anything is possible, in a sense, you could go anywhere, anything could happen; it’s a place of great human possibility as well as a great human risk, and I’d rather be in a place of great possibility than in a place of no possibilities and no risk. So, for me the border is a place to expertise. IRENE: We are getting to Portbou... Is it still possible to speak about border cities? What is happening with the idea of ‘border’ nowadays? What kinds of borders do we live in? IVOR: Yeah, I mean... what is happening of course with new technology is that our sense of borders in the world is both expanding and shrinking... Expanding and shrinking at the same time. So, the old borders, of course, are gone completely. With new technology we can be as close to somebody else in Brazil as we can in the next house in Barcelona at the moment. So, the whole notion of space is being redefined and Benjamin would say to be sensitive to that. So, when you define space and redefine time, which are also with new technologies, you are certainly redefining also the notion of borders. But a lot of the borders I’m talking about are not related to external space, they are related to the internal places within people, and in those internal places within people - which I cherish as a treasure because they are still the only places that cannot be penetrated by forces in the world that I am opposed to. They are still secret places where people decide on their own modes of judgment 47

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about… decide who they are, decide who they want to be, decide about their identity projects. There’s still some degree of autonomy in those internal places… our hearts and minds are still secret places where good journeys can be undertaken, good work can be undertaken. Is in those internal places where border crossings continue to go on, where people continue to reflect, continue to grow, continue to expand the consciousness of themselves. So, really my border crossings are internal border crossings rather than this external territorial crossing that we talked about. They’re important but it’s the internal journey which matters and that matters particularly in terms of teachers becoming more reflective and understanding themselves and the world better. Lawrence Stenhouse once said: ‘Teachers would change the school most by understanding themselves’ and I think that’s true. The way that education will improve is first by teachers improving their own self-knowledge and self-understanding. So, is in those internal borderlands that the big movements in education would or would not happen; not by government’s decision, not by restructuring things in the world, not by means of jobs. It doesn’t mean anything… it will change as internal borderlands of teachers’ lives and the sense of their mission change. IRENE: The way institutions are been shaped and pressured to ‘sell’ education, I don’t see much time and space, wish or desire for self knowledge, self understanding… IVOR: No, I think it’s just noise, it’s noise in the wrong sense. Most of the ways that institutions are set up by the way they have been restructured - it’s profoundly unhelpful to this notion of internal self understanding that we have talked of. We are against that because it’s more and more a top-down direction as what they should understand. The only root to understand is through self-work; it’s not through government action or government dictates, that’s likely to be as useless noise, in my view. We know from the history of education that it doesn’t change very much, it passes and new noises come, but it doesn’t amount to action in people’s internal landscapes. IRENE: The notion of internal self-understanding places an emphasis on the ‘self ’. It seems to be in contradiction with a post-modern thinking about the de-construction of the self and the fragmented self. How do you see such important dimension ‘the self ’? What supports your belief? IVOR: It’s certainly true that there is an enormous post-modern pressure on the self in the new condition of post modernity. We can see and we have talked earlier about fragmented self, self in trouble, self depressed and so on. And some of those are irrefutable facts. But the only way to remain optimistic in the world is to reassert not the primacy of a singular self, but the primacy of a self which keeps a meaningful narrative going. I see identity as keeping a meaningful narrative going. If you keep a meaningful narrative going, it means you have some purpose in your life which is meaningful to you, which gives meaning to the self or selves that define your identity. So I give the ongoing project of becoming somebody, the ongoing project of selfhood, enormous primacy because we know it is an aspiration and striving that we see in everybody and so, it’s a place to work. The denial of self, the denial of the subject, the denial of identity, for me, it’s just complicity post modern work games which show that the academy is lining up with the wrong side. What I accept 48

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irrefutably is that there are fragmented selves, there are multiple selves, there are selfhoods which don’t work. I still think a place in which selfhood is an important place to work, so that’s still my belief. We could argue philosophically about whether the self exist, whether the self was a modernist construct. Yes, all those things it was… but the fact is that if you talk to people a very short period of time you realise that the self is a very precious place to most people. So, it’s clearly a very important site for definition, action and actually emancipation. Interview 2 - Drinking wine Sangria (not ‘cava’) in Portbou RAIMUNDO: We understand you have been several times in border cities. You have been travelling and, in terms of knowledge and experiences, talking about border cities. What calls your attention in Portbou? Is there something that attracts you… something unusual that calls your attention? IVOR: I think what attracts me to it is, in fact, Benjamin and the idea of the travelling intellectual coming to a harbour with only his words and thinking a lot more about what it is to be a travelling intellectual and what kind of practice and praxis you need to be a travelling intellectual… what you can do with the world as you travel. I suppose that’s what Portbou brings to me. It talks about that, about the role of the travelling, the role of the stranger and the role of the intellectual, which I still think it’s a very important social role; so I guess that, maybe. That’s what I’ve been thinking about. RAIMUNDO: We read Benjamin’s inscription in his memorial. It says ‘the historical construction concentrates itself on the memory of those who don’t have a name’… how does it touch you? How do you feel about that? IVOR: In the introduction to this new book I just sent off on Friday, I wrote almost the same phrase without knowing what Benjamin said. It says ‘my whole life has been dedicated to understanding the fate of my own tribe, my own class, my own group, who of course, are nameless’. The book thinks about historical periods, the book is dedicated to different historical periods and the opportunities for the nameless and the way they differ at different times. I talk about the fact that my own family was dispossessed, they’re dispossessed in the sense that they were not allowed to live on the ‘Lord’s land’ and they were forced to live in a small village on the margins of the big lands of the state where all of the defined criminal elements, those elements which used to poach the game, the rabbits and things… all lived in this one city called cobbler’s city. I think about the importance of what I call the ancestral voices of the nameless to me, and why all my writing speaks about them and their possibilities rather than being interested in the possibilities of what he calls ‘renown’, which is what I call the rich and the global and the corporate. It talks about the period of the 1950’s and 60’s, as a period of ‘extended reproduction’. This is David Harvey’s and he says that the period of ‘extended reproduction’ was really a good period for the nameless in many countries. It may not work for your country, this may not work as well in Spain, in fact, but in many countries they were building into some degree of social justice, some degree of social benefits, social safety nets, education 49

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opportunities for the nameless, for the disadvantages, for the dispossessed. Then he talks about the ‘current period’ as what he calls a ‘period of accumulation by dispossession’, by which he means that the way people make money now is to take over countries, dispossess facilities and make money from that, or they dispose parts of the city from the poor people and make money by turning them into areas where richer people can live. I was thinking a lot about this period being in a sense a ‘period’ where the dispossessed starving are treated badly again - as historically they normally are but there are times where is less bad and times where is very bad and now I think it’s very bad in the world. I think is a time of great inequality and, in some ways, I think it’s a bad time. So I’ve been thinking about what this means to the people I come from, the people I’m still interested in the fate of. RAIMUNDO: We’re together here reflecting about the memorial, about Benjamin’s writings and thoughts. How do you perceive this experience of distance, of being together and alone at once? IVOR: Well, I think what you’re trying to do, if we go back to the idea of a travelling intellectual, I would use Gramsci’s term of ‘organic intellectual being’. The sort of thing that I’d like to do, not maybe as well as I’d like to, but that’s what I aim to be. How does an ‘organic intellectual’ operate in the world now? To answer your question: how do you build communities of action through and for the world that would make the dreams that you have for the disadvantaged more likely to succeed? So, you cannot obviously do that alone through the world. The whole point of the world is to communicate together, to create communities of action, so the whole idea is... obviously one writes some things alone by and large - and then tries out ideas in the community and the community works on the ideas, changes them, acts on them, makes them a communal discourse. That’s not anything one person can do. So, the issue really is how can you build communities around you, especially as you travel? What is the nature of those communities? How can they carry us and how familiar are they? Can a sustainable action come out from the ongoing creation of intellectual community of action? Because we face a global power with nothing now but the words standing between that global power and the dispossession of many nameless people… there are few places from which communities can be built now to fight against that. The whole point is not to be alone but to use the word, to use thought in a collaborative way, as we do when we talk, as we have done for around six months too… share visions of different discourses, different worlds. Essentially what one does in a place like Portbou is imagine worlds where nameless would be celebrated, not dispossessed. Where ordinary people could be allowed to live lives of reasonable dignity, which is the least they deserve and I believe they deserve more. For this moment they’re not getting it. So, yes, the aspiration is somehow to rend the intellectual action communal and create alliances and discourses of opposition to fight against, of dispossessions and distress, I would say. But that’s not an easy task and it sounds terribly holy and precious to put it like that. But that is at its best, what I would hope for. RAIMUNDO: Would you say that in some sense collaborative research has something to do with travelling? 50

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IVOR: I think what we do in our lives, we know that, we’ve talked about that and the fact that we have different experiences. Mannheim - who I read a lot - talked about different forms of generation: he talks about the ‘biological generation’, the age generation. He talks about ‘generation to experience’, the way each of us to some extent is formed by the time we grow up in. Then he talks about ‘generation of actuality’. What he means by that is that by travelling together through life as we do, as well as through space, we build social movements which we share through a generational consciousness. So, I believe that travelling together, which we do, is probably so sympathetic because in many ways we’re in the same age - we were born in the same decade, at least - so we have same generational sympathy and understanding of social justice from the time in which we were born. And that task asked by Walter Benjamin - to go back to his words - is not to work to the nameless but to evoke and sustain memories of times when the nameless were better treated and when opportunities were seen or imagined worlds were possible. To hold those in history as an aspiration. The best documents of culture have been followed by times of barbarism. I believe that we’re in a time of barbarism in some ways, where intellectual particular force is not valued in the way that it was once. In many ways it has been dumbing down by the media, by the news. So, travelling together is a way of generating social movements which have different aspirations still expressing itself. RAIMUNDO: What would be the links between collaborative research and collaborative learning? IVOR: It’s a question of who we research for. The traditional model is that the people do research to people and what I always try to do is to build models of research where you work with people, often the nameless, such as the study I am doing at the moment where we’re looking at migrants, and homeless people and working on how they learn in their lives. But if you work with them in ongoing conversations, the research is itself collaborative learning for you and the people you’re working with. It’s as much collaborative learning for me than it is for them. So, it’s not research done to them which teaches them, but it’s research done together which teaches, all of us, and for which we all... and it’s a group that needs to learn not the nameless but the dispossessors who are doing violence to the nameless. It’s the powerful who need to learn most but they don’t need to learn how to do power - they can already do that - but they need to learn how to do power compassionately and humanely - they don’t appear to have much idea on that. Interview 3 - Drinking wine Sangria (not ‘cava’) in Portbou IRENE: What do you mean by doing power compassionately? IVOR: There is doing power as just power and all the dispossessions and indignities that goes with doing power one way, and there is doing power with compassion. What I mean setting in this idea is that I’m not likely to be able to even imagine a world where power doesn’t exist and I’m not even sure I would want to. I think 51

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power is part of the human condition… So one has to consider that. So the issue is not how to suspend power because that cannot be done. In a collaborative learning situation just as I have described because, in some senses, I’m still proceeding to be the most powerful of the group. So it’s a suspension of belief for me to say that, but I believe one can do power collaboratively and compassionately but that isn’t too much to ask. Let me give you one more concrete example: it would take so little of the rich people’s money in the world to give most people a reasonable life, to give most poor people in the world a living wage. That wouldn’t be a huge consideration. It would be the cost of a number of space rockets that are produced in America, that would be enough to give all the people in the world enough food to eat and a reasonable education. And that’s not asking too much in the world of any sense of all. In a world of absolute unuttered, uncompassionate, unconsidered, un-Christian, un-Islamic power, would that happen? It is unforgivable that those with so much are not prepared to give a little. It is just unforgivable however you look at it. In any rational world that’s an unforgivable act from the part of the powerful group, and I will hold that to my dying day. Compassion would be a graceful way to do power or a religious, spiritual or every other moral way to do power. It’s for me beyond belief; the power is so greedy and utterly unforgiving. So, I don’t think it’s a lot to ask. It appears to be too much to ask the greedy to give up anything and, in fact, as we see, they’re getting greedier and greedier. IRENE: It seems to me that these kinds of social aspirations, social actions, social movements that you’re talking about have much to do with an aesthetic kind of feeling, positioning, desiring, and of course, with a kind of aesthetic ethic or ethical aesthetic, an aesthetic culture. Can you talk about this? You worked with art teachers and professionals involved in the art teaching. Which connections can you make between this kind of social and professional aspiration and an ethic or aesthetic aspiration? IVOR: Yes, I think you can connect those and, I mean, you have connected them better in that sentence than probably I can do. But I think it’s about a human aesthetic which in the realm of art education is best. It certainly allows people to get in touch with their emotions, their spirit and their soul. Once we begin to get in touch with our emotions and our spiritual soul, most human beings have much goodness in them. I believe that about most human beings have it there. The real issue is why is it that culture and education, teaching and pedagogy do not provide more strategies to get in touch with that aesthetic, with that feeling, with those emotions, with our souls… Because a little bit of contact with your soul, a little bit of thought about how short your life is, or what might you do in it, just a little bit of thought about that, would be enough for the greedy to think a little more about why they have to be so greedy. So I think it is; it is a question of how to develop educational and intellectual strategies, reflective strategies which allow people to get more in touch with their emotions, and their soul and their spirit. And if that were achieved I believe that most people have profound aspects of much goodness in them. But the question is: why the systems work against that and produce educational strategies and ideologies which are so opposed to the goodness of people is really the issue. 52

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Interview 4 RAIMUNDO: We have visited Walter Benjamin memorial Passages that is also the title of his last work. What are your impressions and how did it affected you? IVOR: I suppose it would go back to what we said before, that what he represents is constantly transgressing those disciplinary boundaries, national boundaries, other boundaries. His work represents an attempt to move beyond that, it shows the kind of free human condition, beyond borders, beyond prejudice, beyond disciplinary limits. So, I think that’s for me what’s important about Walter Benjamin… he always wants to go beyond, to see, in a sense another world, to see another reference. RAIMUNDO: How do you make a transit from a colonialist to a post colonialist view? How all the lonely people could be characterised in this new view? IVOR: I suppose to think about the lonely people I am trying to show what the potential is in a new world which in many ways transforms an individualised society. So if we accept that to some degree individualization has happened, and people in that sense have become disconnected from others; so in that sense one aspect of post colonialism is that the people’s condition is what we’ve called ‘the Diaspora’ - in other places they are dislocated - as part of post colonialism, because most people actually live in countries they weren’t born in there, and that’s the condition. One of the things I have been trying to do in my last essays say: are there ways back? Can we put things back together again? Not obviously to a colonial position but to a position where people could reengage with others, in this new world where that’s being dislocation but also location. Part of the pedagogic purpose - the purpose of life history - is to put back together again people’s individual trajectories with the possibilities of social engagement, because the danger of the postcolonial and post modern condition is individualization, is people alone and people are trying to find a singular way out of the box and what we’re really saying is that the only way out is to be social, to be collective, to be community based, but that has to be put together now in new conditions. The old solidarities of class and race are gone forever, so that colonial settlement is forever demolished. But in the postcolonial world the condition is really establishing community, social engagement, being social… are profoundly new, but the danger is that people will not find their way out of the individual box. So, what life history and the other pedagogies are trying to do is to put back the collective, the notion of social movement into the individuals’ world. RAIMUNDO: What do you mean is putting together fragmented pieces of this individual territory or individual subjectivities? IVOR: Well, I guess is both. But what you’re trying to do is out of the fragments and pieces of people subjectivity and trajectories there are common clusters and, at this point in history, it’s difficult to see those clusters because we live in the early phase of individualisation I guess. Globalization was going close to individualisation. So, seeing what the new forms of social engagement, the new forms of social clustering, the new forms of social alliances, the new forms of social pedagogy are, is 53

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inevitably difficult because we are only a few years into a major seismic shift in the human condition, and so although we are searching for the pieces and fragments for tracking of the new movements, at the moment it is very unclear what they are, except that we know that’s what we’re looking for: we’re looking for the social reengagement, we’re looking for social pedagogy. RAIMUNDO: Walter Benjamin writes about ‘the lived experience of shock’ as a characteristic of modern life. It is too present today in peoples’ lives since the struggles have moved from the institutions to the individuals. How the experiences of shock affect their professional identity? IVOR: A difficult one to answer shortly, but a good question. So we’re accepting that we’ve moved from one collective condition into an individualised world. We’re accepting this is a tremendous seismic shock. We’re still in the early phases of redefining what that means to teachers’ professional identity, but what it clearly means is increasing stress on people’s moral education, the moral character, the civic education. In fact, more and more teaching should be dedicated to putting the pieces of social life back together again in the new forms. I’m not wanting to go back to native community or like Putnam to go back to a world where social forms were clear and people knew their places. But I am wanting to find new forms of social bonding. And I think that is the search that teachers particularly are well placed to search for. I mean, I’ll give you an example of that. I was in Hong Kong recently. I was asked to talk to one of the ministry of education people there, and the question he had was: In this run-a-way world where Hong Kong is becoming this massive capitalist country as so with China, where new communities are being built overnight… and his question was: ‘In this new world, who will look after morality?’ That was his question, and my answer was: Actually if there is one professional group who could find the way to reinvent the moral order in this new world order of economics, it is teachers and educators. That is a place from where we can begin again the search for a new moral order, by which I mean how to re-educate people into their moral commitments to other people, into their social responsibilities, into their civic responsibilities and, particularly, their responsibilities to people around them. If it is one thing that teachers could achieve in this new world, it would be to readdress that old problem, that old Christian or Islamic problem of how do we look after the weak, not how do we look after the strong which is what all the discourses are about, but how do we once again address the problem of looking after the weak, because if we have a duty as teachers as indeed as people is to look after the weak and not the strong. Interview 5 at Ivor Goodson’s Apartment in Barcelona... IRENE: In the article that is published together with the interview you gave to Daniel Feldman in Argentina, you talk about dreams, pet projects and missions, as providing strategic guides in the business of making a life and, better, of living a purposeful and meaningful life. At the same time, you use Putnan, which says: ‘this generation it shaped by uncertainty, insecurity, and excess of collective success histories’. In our 54

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teaching experiences we encounter many students who, all they want, is to earn money, to find something to do that could position them as consumers… that’s a reality we face in our teaching. Can we still talk about dreams, about missions, about pet projects? IVOR: That’s the key question. I mean, what is being suggested behind all this, is that you have a stabilised kind of human being in a way that comes in the period after the age of enlightenment, and that sort of stable period - from about 1780 on made particular types of human beings who were borderline modernists, who believed in rationality, who believed as the enlightenment did: you could make rational plans and missions, projects, dreams, and set objectives both as a person and as a state, and those could be in some senses realised. What I think we’re seeing now, which these cohort findings begin to focus on and what your question points to, is that the age of enlightenment, the sense of human beingness is beginning to disassemble, to dissolve in the face of the new age of uncertainty or whatever we call this period that we’re living in. And what this means is absolutely critical. For example: I was talking just yesterday over dinner to a 25-year-old teacher and he was saying: ‘Look, we talk about ourselves as the last group, - that is cohort talking - same age as my son - we talk as the last group who remembers enlightened modernism and we don’t expect to have projects or dreams or missions in the way the previous generations talked about them or had them’. It’s still true to say that not everybody, even in the enlightenment period had dreams or missions - in a sense, it’s a privileged discourse, particularly among professional groups to talk that way. For many people, always throughout time, life has been about survival and struggling and suffering, so that point has to be made. But in the privileged discourses we’re talking about, among professional groups, those dreams did exist for previous generations. The current generations see the whole identity project in an entirely different way. And it’s the notion of dreams, or having dreams or not having dreams, the notion of having missions or not having missions, the notion of having a life project or not having a life project… this pick up a critical seismic made change in the nature of what it is to be a human being, and that’s why I wanted to focus on that. That’s why I think it’s so important because it shows a change in the way human beings are storying their lives and, if you say to me ‘well, not everybody stories their life’ - that may be true - but most human beings do. We’re storytelling animals and we normally want to tell a story and we use to tell it in terms of fairly cohesive dream. It might be the dream of romantic love and telling the story of a marriage or the story of a career, you know, there are cohesive story lines we could look into. Those don’t exist in the same way anymore. We face fragmentation and that’s what Putnan in a sense is pointing to, is what Richard Sennett is pointing to, and is what I am pointing to in this work on teachers. IRENE: Sorry to interrupt you, but, for example... you talked about a 25 years old student which has the same age of your son, and is also in the cohort group you are researching with. Is ‘generation’ a strong base for explaining this? IVOR: Well, that’s the question. What I think we have to realise is that - as we say in England - everything is up in the air, everything is unclear. What we do know is 55

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that the old patterns of storying a life are subject to disruption for the moment, the existential moment has changed. So everything is up in the air... Whether it will break down as a generational thing - as the 25-year-old is telling me - ‘once generations had clear dreams and pet projects and now they don’t’ - that’s still unclear to me. My sense would be that you might get something very different emerging which is not actually generational conflict but where certain groups in the new generation the 25 year olds - do find projects and missions which have some resonance with previous projects and missions. So, you would have some alliances across generations and other alliances the opposite way. Do you see what I mean? So, for example, you could argue that there will be a group of liberal 25-year-olds who will carve out some notion of living a life which is recognizable to previous generations - say those brought up in the 60’s. That group – trans-generational - will constitute one segment of society which still believes in liberal social democratic missions, so we say; and other groups, that actually link back to other groups that never did work on benevolent projects, even in the 60’s and 70’s, who were often anti-immigration or were living under dictatorships, or whatever. They may well link with the new forms in the current moment, so it could be that this disruption would create transgenerational alliances rather than just generational conflict as the cohort analysis seems to point to. What I’m saying is we don’t know the answer for this. We know this sort of global warming of human story lines is going on and we know that the old story lines are dissolving in certain ways. What we don’t know is what these new formations would be like. I think it would be arrogant to say it too early. My sense is: some people will create recognizable projects for themselves, and many won’t, is the probability, but I don’t see that disappearing entirely as a story line. But I do see it subject to very substantial challenge. IRENE: Recognition will also be changing… Different areas, different kinds of story lines or life history will have recognition. We do not know which ones will be, how trans-generational or trans-experiential groups will connect, how privileges will be ‘distributed’. IVOR: That’s right. I know what you mean. There is that, too. But I think that the most interesting question for anybody with a social change interest, is whether the old forms of privileging - namely what Bourdieu called people with cultural capital, who used to be the ones who achieved most educational success - whether those old forms of privilege can be translated into the new world. And this is why these junctures are both moments of cataclysmic uncertainty but also of dramatic possibility because if the old pattern of privilege by which rich people could essentially get cultural capital for education are subject to disruption, the question I’m wanting to study now is: are the new forms of what we might call capital emerging which will privilege different ways and potentially therefore interrupt the regular transmission of privilege - which has been a feature of the age of enlightenment, one has to admit. So, beyond this modernist social democratic credentials, has been a fairly regular passing on of privilege from the rich of one generation to the rich of the next; and what I’m trying to study there - we have talked about it in trains and planes in the last few weeks - is whether a form of capital which I’d call ‘narrative capital’ - in 56

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other words, the way people theorise, project, story their lives and their policies - will be a new form of capital which will inaugurate a new form of social reproduction. That’s what I’m looking for and that’s what I think it’s a very exciting and interesting line of inquiry, exciting and interesting, not just because it is scholarly potential for me, but because I think it has interesting potential for reworking social change modalities. And you come from a country where Lula is trying to interfere with historical patterns of privilege in a rather spasmodic way, but this is what we are saying here, as in instance - it would open up new disjuncture of the very interesting kind to explore, and that’s what I’ve been writing in that little room we have just been in. IRENE: We’ve been talking about these big changes, about information society, different kinds of transformations, restructurings, and the emergence of new patterns of privilege, of life histories or narratives. It connects with the issue of distinguishing public and private space. What are the kinds of distinctions or conceptions of private and public space we could work with and how do you see it in relation to this move and changes we do not know which ones they are? IVOR: This I think is the key question and it’s a question which in the past Habermas had talked a lot about, and it’s quite epic for the transformation of the public sphere which I find very, very helpful but, treated some time ago one has to reread the question you’re asking me now. My sense is that if what we’re saying here is right and narrative politics and narrative power and discourse power become ever more strong modalities of power and, who controls space, and who controls the private/ public domain, in a sense will have even more power in these new modalities; that’s why the argument between European social models, or Brazilian social models or Latin-American social models, and American models - by which I mean the U.S.A.are so important because - I’ll argue as Galbraith says - in the U.S.A. - you have public squalor and private wealth. Maybe you have a dismantling of the public sphere. Therefore, a loss of power for those who would deploy the discourses in a public way, so once you privatise discourse, for example, you can’t have petitions or make speeches in a mall in America, that’s been ruled by the supreme court. A shopping mall is a private space, you can’t discuss things or have petitions there without the permission of the owner; that means that in that situation the owner controls the discourse, controls the power. So, if we’re saying to move to narrative capital change its pattern to social reproduction the argument against that is that if space is stratified, according to wealth and privilege that reasserts power in a recognizable way. So, your question is not at all that the battle between the public and the private is so crucial. We know, sitting here in Spain, that balance is profoundly different, the balance between public wealth and public celebration of space. And models that we know well enough in the U.S. where that is not valued in the same way. So we know there are big issues here between different models of society, and so the battle between those different models of society is going to be played out around these battles of those different patterns of social transmission that we’re talking about, and this becomes very interesting. IRENE: Interesting also because it push us to think another way: the spaces of private and the spaces of public, together with the privileges… 57

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RAIMUNDO: In certain ways when the public becomes private and it is dangerous… IVOR: It is dangerous, and you can see it played out - we, the three of us studied education policies - you could see the way you marketise education, so that certain schools exist in the rich suburbs and other schools exist in the poor downtown areas, you’re stratifying space. And whatever happen into modalities of social progression that we’re talking about, once that space is stratified it’s very hard to break this old struggle to hold privileges. And so the stratification of space through markets is a crucial argument against some of the optimism of the disjunction that I’m talking about. RAIMUNDO: Because you privatise interests, ways of seeing, directing your view of the world and much of the things come together… IVOR: It’s a much more overt and clear pattern of stratifying consciousness, market stratify consciousness in the most overt and obvious way; before, you might say in the previous more social democratic period - you had a more mystified sense of stratification, it was still there but is was more covered, more in a sense hidden - it’s not to say it wasn’t there, because we know well enough how hard privileges always have been to disassemble - but now it’s blatant, there is no reason for privileged not to shout it’s power, and that’s the trial of this moment we’re living in, and that’s why is such a disturbing moment and almost a barbarian moment for people concerned with social change. RAIMUNDO: At the same time they can paradoxically offer you a sense of security... IVOR: Yes, you can. I mean, of the notion of the ‘consuming self ’, which is very strong particularly in the U.S. but increasingly in the world as this model is exported. It has a dubious power: particularly and paradoxically with the very groups that are most disempowered by it, this is the great paradox of markets and is always the paradox of power: those who have been subjugated, often embrace this subservience most rapidly and the notion of consumption, this enfranchises people in the most dramatic ways by the way that markets reproduce but is embraced more warmly often by those who are subjugated by the notions of consumption. It is disentangling that, that is a very tricky conundrum, and it’s clearly not an easy box to think your way out of it. And even if you found your way out of it, you’ve still got the problem of the stratification of consciousness that we’ve talked about. IRENE: On your research on public service professional, specifically teachers, you discuss the rights of the teachers, namely the rights to creatively develop professional purpose and projects. Are those rights and duties at the same time, or would you make some kind of difference between what would be the rights of the teachers and what would be the duties of the professional? IVOR: Well, that’s a good question. I was talking about that yesterday with the group that I was in. We talked about the list of competences that teachers now have to pass in Spain; and, this is duties, in a sense, legislated. More and more you see the list of competency tests for teachers in different countries getting longer and longer, 58

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and that’s other of the paradoxes we talked about a lot in the ‘Spencer Report’ from which all the lonely people emanate, and that is that - and it comes back to rights and duties and you’ll see where I’m going in a minute - the major push for many of the educational reforms was a sense that were some incompetent teachers in schools. Now, it’s an irrefutably truth that there were - and I’ll argue there always will be some incompetents teachers; there are incompetent lawyers, there are incompetent politicians, there are incompetent everybody’s. The interesting thing is that the reform aimed to, in a sense, driving out the incompetence by legislating competency tests; the paradox of this is that it had exactly the opposite effect in my view, which is that by legislating large numbers of highly technical competences for teachers, it made teaching into a much more directed, managed and technicised profession than it was before; as a result it did not actually get rid of the incompetence; what it did get rid of was the creative ‘vanguard’ of teachers, of the top of profession who said, ‘this was once a creative profession, where I could follow my own creative lines here and I could educate people creatively. With this new roster of tests and accountabilities and competence tests, I can’t do that and I don’t want to go there anymore’. So, the paradox was in seeking to drive out the incompetence, the models actually drive out highly competent first. And that’s a supreme paradox. IRENE: The opposite result. IVOR: Absolutely the opposite. IRENE: This idea guides me to another question. You wrote that: ‘one paradox at the heart of the new free market world order, is that whilst business is less and less regulated, the public sector becomes micro-managed at a level of minute mandate and detail.’ This can lead us to think that less regulation and control would be a way for better teaching and better schools. How the issue of regulation and control can be seen in relation to different professionals: the self serving, instrumental and minimalist and those with a dedicated sense of mission and vocation? IVOR: Yes, that is the paradox of regulation, isn’t it? That you might think the line of argument I’m taking is the sort of ‘go native’ theory that says: ‘Let’s go back to the time where teachers were autonomous professionals and could, in a sense, decide on the curriculum and other things’. I’m not actually saying that, I think the argument here is not about whether there should be regulation, not for my point of view, anyhow. For me the argument is about who does the regulating and what form of regulation is it. And at the moment much of the regulation - and it would be absurd if you came from Mars and I’d told you this - but most of the regulation of the teaching profession is being organised by politicians who know absolutely nothing about education and are doing it largely to impress the electors that they care about education. That’s an almost absurd situation that people who know absolutely nothing about education are the key drivers of regulation in a profession which, by any standards, is a very delicate, ecological profession to try and change. We are dealing with human sensitivities, human passions, and human skills, and to drive a political sledge hammer of regulation into this, strikes me as anybody coming from mars would say this is absolutely ridiculous. So, last, I would say it doesn’t have to be 59

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regulation, the argument of who does it and how, is the key one, and it seems very obvious to me that if there is to be a regulation, the profession, and specifically classroom teachers would need to play a key role in that. And it would have to think through those issues of self serving professional identity or the other dangers of professional control, and you could certainly do that by creating a balanced set of interest that did the regulation, obviously it needs to be political interest, it needs to be industrial interest, but there would need to be professional strong flavour of professional interest too in that. And at the moment that’s missing in most western countries. So, I think that would be the answer. IRENE: This kind of regulation and control has to take into account the teachers’ narratives and experiences, and also take into account the differences that there are among groups of teacher. Shouldn’t regulation and control begin in schools? What would be the embracing possibilities of state regulation policies? IVOR: I think the answer to your first question is ‘yes’: some of these could and should certainly be schools-based, and in some of the most flexible and successful economies, like for example Honk Kong, that’s increasingly the road they are going down: decentralizing most of these things back into the schools. And that’s very interesting that the successful and flexible Asian countries are willing to do that whilst western countries are less flexible and are not willing to do. But, having said that it seems to me quite clear that we need to think through this issue: whether it should be schools based and how it would be, and I think the answer to the question is that actually the political motives for this reforms are dancing to a different tune all together. What I think it represent is a different crises all together. They’re not responding to a crisis of education which they largely created. What they’re responding to is a crisis of social democratic politics which is: increasingly, national states have virtually no power in many of the areas where they once did have power. They don’t have any power over industrial policy anymore, they don’t have any power over movements of capital, and they don’t have any power over the major media in the country and so on… The pathetic bits of power they’ve got left, largely resided in the health and education sectors what they continue to control. And for this reason, to show in a sad way they still have some symbolic power, that then they macromanage education and health around the world. In a sense, it’s a terribly sad statement about diminishing power of national politics that we should have this micromanagement of something which they know very little about, but that is the reality. So, I think that, in a way, we’re analysing the problem in the wrong place - both of us - we’re saying that it would be a self regulated profession and so, but that’s not what is driving the policy, what’s driving the policy is another set of political interests all together and related in a sense to education but related to a crises of governments, a crisis of the power of the national state. IRENE: It also has to do with the crises of the nature of teaching, the crisis in the nature of the subject, and... IVOR: It’s back to that crises of the nature of human consciousness, that we began this interview with, it seems to me. This all features of the same seismic shift in the nature of human beings, and human governments. 60

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IRENE: Continuing in the same issue of the diminishing power of the national state but trying to better understanding your position, you look for an answer to Rifkin’s question - ‘whether civilization can survive with a greatly reduced government and culture sphere, and where only the commercial sphere is left as the primary mediator of human life’ in ‘the fields of culture, education and public service’. Can education and schools still be seen as an answer to Rifkin question? Are teachers discussing these issues of morality and purpose, patriotism and citizenship? How are they dealing with those issues? IVOR: If we accept that markets and business are being given unparalleled freedom and it’s probably what it’s happening in the world - if we do accept that education is being micromanaged in the most infinitesimal way, then we have two systems in operation and, in the middle of that, is the question which RAIMUNDO raised a minute ago, which is: what about individual consciousness in this? What is happening in the middle of this to the regulation of individual visions of the world? Because it is there that they... that’s why the latest book has politics of knowledge in its title. The key battle is for me not so much the battle around institutional power and business power, is the battle around the power of people to work through and story their own moral story lines and it’s in that area that I most worried about the word that you just used which is ‘regulation’, because I think what we are seeing is the creation of self regulating individuals in this new surveillance consumption society, and the way they’re self regulating themselves is not regulating into a more free and conscious way of acting morally, but in a much more self-regulated top-down way, in other words, they’re doing the regulation which was once done by the state for themselves now. IRENE: It is a kind of self oppression. IVOR: I recognise this is kind of self oppression. I recognise this is terribly depressing for you, all these paradoxes and crises and regulations. But, I mean, behind there is an optimistic view which says that... I think the sight of the individual battle which ultimately will reconnect with collective struggles, I have to say… because individual work on its own is never of use until it becomes social and collective but... IRENE: Talking about pessimistic and optimistic views... you work with the idea of ‘personality of change’. Could you discuss it a little bit more putting it in the context which you see it, first, ‘as a stumbling block to reforms’ and then ‘as a building block’ for such initiatives? RAIMUNDO: There is another issue. Capitalism wears different colours depending on the countries and on different segments of each society. So, how these different groups are seeing, reading or following these rules? IVOR: Yes. I think it comes down to the degree to which... you’re right that there are different colours in different countries, we’ve just said that. We could see that in different spaces and different countries as you said, but in those different arenas people can develop individual modes and consciousness in different ways. Is a new 61

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form of human being coming into place in the new consuming western infrastructures which in some senses is self regulated, by that act of consumption and ingestion of news created by others? It’s called the ‘knowledge society’ but as far as I can see the main feature of the knowledge society is the withholding of knowledge by those who have it from others; that’s not a ‘knowledge society’, that’s the opposite, it’s a nonsense society, so, there are various factors in the way that individuals could develop their moral story line and their consciousness, and one’s worry. It is the new form of human beings in post-enlightenment that will lead to self-regulating individuals who actually, as you say, self-oppress without doing so knowingly, of course… we never self oppress knowingly, I think that’s the issue. Are our souls being regulated without, in a sense, knowing it, through the new mode of consumption and stratification that is out there in the market? That’s the area of study which gets back to this issue of narrative capital and so on, and that’s the focus of so much of my work of the moment. Interview 6 IRENE: The ‘personality of change’ - could you clarify this idea of ‘personality of change’ stressing the fact that it can be seen as a building block to social reforms and not as a stumbling block for them? IVOR: Yeah. I mean, if we accept the optimistic argument that there are plenty of people in the world at the moment that are struggling to find new ways to be social and moral in this runaway world. If we accept that individual consciousness is still applied and not entirely saturated by the defining noises coming out from television and the market place… and if we accept what is an optimistic view that people are still making their own mind up about things, and are still contesting some of the visions given to them from above. I will still take that view - although in some ways you could argue this is a very ‘Orwellian’ situation - but if we take that view, then, the ‘personality of change’ helps people define their personal vision and story their lives and how they define their moral careers. This remains an epicentral venue for social change, and I still think that there’re a heck of a lot of people out there that are struggling to find answers to the questions that we’re posing here. Which is: how to live a moral life, how to live an ethical life under a social system which in many ways is unethical and immoral or amoral - if you want to be optimistic about it. But clearly markets and profit are not the slightest bit interested in morality, that’s not where they operate, morality is not of concern for them, their concern is making money and profit. So, who is to look after morality in this new world where profit is foremost, where profit is everything? And there has to be an individual and collective set of decisions and it has to be in that venue that we operate, hopefully, with our visions of the future. RAIMUNDO: Connecting that idea of the ‘personality of change’ and the interview with Feldman, The mediation is the message, you observed that that moment demanded a kind of strategic politics to confront educational battles that were ‘more manipulative and rather slippery’. What kind of strategic politics do you think that we need now, six years after that interview? 62

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IVOR: Well, I think the world has moved on in quite a dramatic way even in six years. David Harvey in his new book talks about moving from an era he describes as ‘extended reproduction’, where welfare states and social democracies were still being built and where profits could be made from them, to what he calls the period now which is now ‘accumulation by dispossession’, by which he means a sort of thing that has gone on in a variety of countries that are either wars like in Iraq or going through famine or going through collapse, where companies and others can come in and make a fortune from this act of dispossession. And you can see similar acts of dispossession going on just around the corner here in the El Raval area where, all the poor are being moved out of their apartments and it’s being replaced by massive hotels and massive apartment complexes for the rich; this is where money is made by dispossession. Now that clear moment has become even more clarified in the last six years. So, strategic politics have to think about how the sort of stratifying and educational moments that we have talked about earlier in the interview, resonate or confront this accumulating sense of dispossession as the main political strategy of the dominant groups of the moment. So, strategic politics has to firstly estimate what the strategy of the powerful is, and then it has to think through how it would find human and democratic ways to reinterpret or reflect or mediate those dominant moments of dispossession. And that is the strategic question of the moment: if dispossession is the main political strategy to make money at the moment, that tells you a lot about what politics is about, - since politics is always implicated in the economic system of the moment - and it goes back to our point of saying that if that’s really what the symbolic action of politicians in education is responding to. It’s no wonder that they’re not responding to any of our well thought of education, please, because that’s not where they are at all. So, a strategic politics has to be informed by the strategies of the politicians of the moment and the interest groups that are driving them. And if you saw politics as more and more being a ‘puppet show’, where the politicians are the puppets but the people operating the puppets are unseen inside the globe tent of the puppet... then, confronting that ‘puppet show’ of politics means that we have to put up a totally different moral vision to it. It’s of no use trying to contest strategically in the terms of the puppet show, you have to expose the puppet show for what it is and juxtapose a new moral order that you’re arguing for which is more moral, more human than what is being done in the name of politics of the moment. And that would not be difficult to do in many of the countries that we know - we can see how politics has become a debased art - which is being corrupted by the strategic politics and economics of the moment. And our task has always been to speak truth to power, but is even more the case now that our task is to lay out what the moral order looks like in this world of frenetic profit taking and making. And I think there will be more and more people willing to listen to that, by definition as more and more people get dispossessed by this new modality of making money. If we could target this specifically on what personality of change in education in education one of the dispossessed groups in this new world, in my view - for some of the reasons we have talked about at the break here, are the professional groups themselves, the professional groups themselves are been dispossessed, we know only too 63

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well what’s happening to universities: they’re losing their working conditions, they’re losing their tenure, they’re losing their money, they’re losing their intellectual mission. The same is happening to the teachers, the same is happening in the health services. Now, it’s one thing for power to attack the poor and historically dispossessed, that has happened throughout history. It is quite another thing for power to take on the professional classes and aim to dispossess them of their critical facilities and of their various intellectual pursuits. That I think is happening quite systematically in universities and schools now. And historically, when power has taken on the professional classes it has normally been defeated, but when power takes on the poor, it historically and normally wins. If it becomes what I’d call over reach, if over reaches in power becomes triumphalist as is happening globally to certain superpowers of the moment, they are over reaching. I think the same thing is happening domestically, as power over reaches tries to attack the professional groups to make sure it has the monopoly of policy and critique. Then I think you have an interesting context emerging in this moment of mediation where the professional groups mediate power which historically they have done by giving educational credentials in universities or schools. That act of mediation then becomes more problematic because professional groups themselves are dispossessed, disenfranchised and disillusioned. This becomes an interesting mediating moment for the sort of strategic politics which you asked me about. So, that’s the place where strategic politics can operate. IRENE: How the political strategy for confronting and reinterpreting public policies should change when thinking about different areas of knowledge? For us that work with art education, shouldn’t we probably be thinking in what has been called ‘radical capitalism’, which means to consider the symbolic value attached to activities and objects related to arts and cultural forms? I point to the fact, for example, that if you go now to a university, you will see enormous differences between the areas of economics, engineering, medicine… the conditions of work, space, equipments, etc... RAIMUNDO: Yes, that’s very clear... it’s a different system IVOR: I mean, the answer to that comes back to... it seems to me that art is a classic example of what I call the crisis of positionality in this book ‘Professional knowledge and professional lives’. I talk a lot about crisis of positionality. What I mean by that is what you describe for art has both a good news and bad news side. The good news is that art is more loosely coupled to the market place, more loosely coupled to profit and can therefore say things about emotions and human experiences and souls and the whole notion of morality in ways that something which is more tightly coupled like engineering cannot, that’s the good news. The bad news, and this is the crisis of positionality, is precisely because of these things it is going to be starved by the market place since it does not service them. So you are caught constantly in the strategic politics by this crisis of positionality. The more freedom you historically had to talk about matters of humanity and critique and human possibility - and it’s true of the social sciences generally as well as art the more historical possibilities you had the less future possibilities you’re likely to have, because you’re not implicated in resonating with the new profit making model of dispossession, but is currently rewarding people. So you are caught, your 64

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inner space - which historically has been good, where you can discuss things. The future of such spaces is likely to be that they will be strangled and dissolved since they don’t service the market, they don’t service profit by definition. So, you are caught endlessly in the crisis of positionality, the more possibility there is to talk about the things you want to talk about, the less likelihood there is for profit and accumulation and therefore, overtime those spaces one would predict are going to be closed down. While the other places you have talked about, those that are much more closely affiliated with systems of profit making like engineering, would be maximised in universities. We see it in every university, those applied areas which are close to profit making and business are being sponsored, often given named endowments by businesses, the social sciences, the arts are constantly being treated just as some unnecessary luxury. Now, the idea about the places where you talk about the future of the human race are unnecessary luxury, tells you a great deal about the terrifying narrowness of the world that we’re entering. The places that talk about the future of the human race should not be valued more than places that make little bits of practical profit. It’s a nonsense looked at over a long time, but that’s the moment we’re in, we’re in a moment where the world is being polluted at astonishing rate in the name of profit and it does seem we can’t stop this race into the apocalypse. And yet the places where normally historically the pendulum has swung and people say: ‘hang on a minute, this is ridiculous’, those sorts of critiques have historically come from universities and other places, free journalism and otherwise. Those spaces where critique has warned against too much triumphalism, too much narrow profit taking, those spaces have been closed down. So, the normal pendulum swing from moments of madness and profit taking to worlds of more restrained and socially conscious period - you can see that throughout history. That pendulum swing may not happen now because the normal repositories of the pendulum where thinking people start saying: ‘hang on a minute’, those have being taken away and that’s why this is, in some ways, an apocalyptic moment. I am sorry to constantly sound this way but I think we only going to look what is happening to the eco system to see, time is short and this is a very narrow profit taking moment and you’ve got to look at where countervailing forces are, and there always are countervailing forces and they are in the culture, in the arts, in the social sciences, precisely the places that are being emasculated at the moment. It’s a bit like the destruction of species which is going on in the natural world here: we are destroying those species which have traditionally thought long and hard about the future of the human race, and we are saying we don’t need you any more, we don’t need your clever thoughts, the only thing we need to think about is profit, and that will look after everything, free markets will solve everything… Well, they won’t… what they will do is destroy the ecosystem and ultimately the human species, and that’s something we’re thinking about and we’re paying people to think about it, instead of killing off the people that are thinking about it, which is the moment we are in at the moment. IRENE: I was thinking about connections between the importance of life histories, life narratives and the importance that art has in constructing life. I’m talking about cultural manifestations and not only objects but also practices, because it’s not what art could do to criticise or to emphasise some aspects of reality - good or bad, 65

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it doesn’t matter - but to help to build consciousness. Isn’t art as practice and as culture experience a strategic way for connecting personal and professional life and pet projects? Isn’t art a main instrument for cultural pedagogy? IVOR: That’s the view that I imagine you embodied in both of you working lives. The question is the future, is the one I mentioned with the crisis of positionality. That’s the vision which you have worked with rightly in art. The question is how sustainable is such a vision in a market place which is increasingly comodifying art. And again you can read it either way. For the moment it’s a possibility and it has to be fought for but you can see the general drift of the way it’s likely to be, dealt with, funded, and so on. If it doesn’t fit into that matrix of profit making which is the way the world is viewed at the moment, art is being, without any doubt, commoditised at a very rapid rate. IRENE: Which doesn’t take the richness or the peculiarity of experiencing, of some kind of aesthetic experience… IVOR: No, it does not take that into account… IRENE: It does not take that into account but it doesn’t eliminate its power… IVOR: No IRENE: I’m talking about the aesthetic experience as a powerful instrument for art professionals and teaching professionals to work with… IVOR: I take that point but, do you see that way of being as sustainable in the future in universities and in other places? What do you think of this? IRENE: Actually what I think is that we will have to live with schools and universities for a while, yet…I don’t see… Do you see another model coming? Do you see emerging spaces of possible state regulations and symbolic work different from schools and universities? IVOR: No, I think we will have to live with that for a while. But the question is: in living with it, can you continue to work in the way that you have worked? RAIMUNDO: In certain ways universities and schools... they are already been self-regulated according to this kind of interest, this kind of view, this kind of practice, this kind of directing… IVOR: And how is that self-regulation work in the cultural pedagogy of art that you hold so dear, then? IRENE: I’m strongly getting into the micro level of teaching in the classroom: one teacher in one classroom that has 45–50 kids. What are the values politically and strategically speaking, what would be the values and the importance of the aesthetic experience to connect people with their own lives, meanings, dispossessions…? IVOR: That seems that moment of freedom in that classroom being sustained out a time, doesn’t it?, what a lot of the work I’ve done shows is that the curriculum was essentially invented as a concept to penetrate the lives of the classroom, and the 66

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way that it has been progressively legislated into national curriculum where you do something in a particular hour, a particular day and is tested and you paid according to results of the test. That aims to penetrate that moment of freedom, that kind of cultural pedagogy that you’ve talked about. The argument is: Yes, I think we will live with universities and schools for a while but we’ll also live with progressive regulation of those classroom moments that used to be more freely coupled and that’s the difficulty with this crisis of positionality. We are in a position where there has historically been freedom of discussion and that has been increasingly taken away by the micro management we have talked about earlier in the interview. RAIMUNDO: You’re saying that those moments of license in the classroom, those moments are being crowded with requirements and they’re getting a kind of control… they are expiring… IVOR: I think art is luckier than some subjects because it’s not seen to be heavy duty... but we know that the curriculum is being... IRENE: We’re also thinking about the lack of freedom of teachers to... and the supposed space of freedom of the students to interpret and to get into the experience. And then the kind of experiences that art teachers could be able to offer maybe could lead to this interpretation… IVOR: All of those possibilities you rightly talk about and we rightly celebrate, are dependent on there not being micro management of what’s taught, that being tested and the teacher having to teach to the test which is actually set by others. So, our assumption that classrooms are places where we can deal in cultural pedagogy is dependent of another set of assumptions that there will not be micro management through testing of what the teacher tells the children and the children then have to regurgitate for the test and the teacher than will get rewarded for the results on that test. That’s a long chain of command which is increasingly being put in place through curriculum. So, the curriculum becomes, so to speak, the disciplinary device to make sure that the kind of cultural pedagogy you’ve talked about do not take place. That should tell us a lot about the moment that we live in because what we’re talking about there is a set of disciplinary devices being put in place to stop people freely discussing and talking about things. That’s their intent and that is frightening if you think about it more broadly, where we’ve said historically, it’s that thinking and speculating and imagining the future of the human race which is unsure of survival, and to stop that now, in the name of anything, is clearly to strengthen a major line of human survival over time. IRENE: Yeah, I can see what you mean. I’ll give you an example: in several schools where I was supervising teaching practices, they reduced the time of the break. It used to be around 25 minutes of break, after two or three classes and then they reduced it to 10 or 15. In other schools children have no break at all they stay three or four hours inside the classroom. The idea behind that is to regulate student’s time and chances of socializing away from teacher’s control. IVOR: I mean what we’re talking about, let’s be clear, the space is - in a young person’s life in this case, but in any person’s life - the space is where they can 67

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freely work through their views of the world and what they want from that world. The more that is penetrated by dictates and tests and various regulations, quite simply, the less time and space there is for that to happen. Now, one of the historical spaces that was quite significant for that sort of rehearsing of consciousness to go on, was the school and the university - what we, all three of us know is that there is less and less space and time and indeed resource encouragement for that kind of free reflection and imagination about human futures which has been the very key to human survival and improvement over time. Madly and absurdly governments around the western world at least, are seeking to close down the time and space allowed for such free reflection in the name of same crazy thing called accountability or transparency or testing or evaluation. But, the actual effect of it, whatever the rational, is to close down one of the great places where there was time and space to reflect, namely schools and universities. There aren’t many other spaces now where you can do that. Most of the public venues where you can do that are being closed - as we have said or privatised. So where… first, in what spaces could it happen in? And secondly, on what information could such discussions about human futures and imagined possibilities now take place since so much of the factual information is saturated by the very same agencies that are closing down the time and space in schools and universities. They are also controlling the factual information on which such discussions could take place. So, the control is becoming very close to totally if we think about knowledge and control. And if we think about the human race’s potential for reviving itself, rejuvenating itself which would be in these spaces… those spaces are becoming very, very endangered. So the notion of the reflective individual thinking about the future of society and then collectively thinking about it, that kind of animal is becoming as endangered as the Himalayan tiger. RAIMUNDO: you’re saying that the regulation is threatening the intimate space where dialogue between teacher and students could flow… IVOR: Yes RAIMUNDO: regulation is getting right there, is closing down those spaces... IVOR: Yes. That pedagogic moment between teacher and thought, or between student and student or teacher and teacher, that pedagogic moment - one of the great pedagogic moments where so much of the improvement of society has taken place, where so much thought about imagined possibilities has taken place, where so many inventions and creations have been fostered - that pedagogic moment is being closed and emasculated by the structures that are being put in place and that is a matter of enormous concern and yet very little debate is going on about it. People are largely thinking about how to create better tests or how to create better school improvement strategies and so on. So, they’re not thinking about why, in God’s name... IRENE: it’s an industry… IVOR: Yeah, it is an industry, a massive industry with text books attached and so on. There is very little thought about what is being lost by the destruction of the pedagogic moment. 68

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IRENE: Two interests about your career. I guess I’ll start from curriculum theory to the life history, because you have centred your main research interest there for over the last 25 years - can we say that? - And you say that ‘curriculum theory has repositioned as a set of marginal arguments about inclusion and exclusion’ the nature of schooling and distribution of schooling, our need for a theory of school distribution. Such arguments are connected to the idea of curriculum as a course of study, but I understand that a number of theorists have criticised this view. For Corazza, a Brazilian theorist, a post critical research in curriculum is a research of invention which motto is ‘that which one cannot know is that which one has to research’. Her basis is ‘that which you cannot know is that which is necessary to research’. What do you think of this view as an alternative view to curriculum research? IVOR: Yeah. I would embrace her view. But, I would… But I think, what thinking it through illuminates is the degree to which we can no longer think our way out of the box, with new ideas about what curriculum might be, because if she’s right, and I think she is - that we should be researching what we don’t know - imagine how that would fit in to the new testing and accountability regimes which now run our schools. It would be utterly impossible to deal with curriculum in that way. So, what you have with the new testing and accountability regimes is a kind of iron cage within which ideas, brilliant ideas like that, cannot live, they would be suffocated immediately. And that’s what I mean by the crisis of positionality again: here we have somebody articulating an exciting new position for curriculum to be, it could not live in the current iron cage of testing and accountability. Because you have to test what is known, what is already accepted? And a test cannot be constructed for that. RAIMUNDO: What has been regulated… IVOR: Yes, regulated and known. IRENE: But, we understand this personality of change, the kind of power, of strong power that people can have and collectively can develop some way, through this kind of research, through this kind of view. Can’t we get some different reasons to explain why changes and non-regulated changes do and do not work in different contexts? IVOR: Yes, we can. But we’ll have to do that individual pedagogy and collective pedagogic work in different spaces to those that we have historically done, that’s what we’re saying. Because of the new regimes of testing and control, we can no longer work through those ideas in classrooms or universities lecture halls which have been regulated in the new ways. So, we will have to find different spaces and different places and different times to do that work; places where, once again we will be free. In England when there was high regulation in a previous historical moment, certain people set up what we called the ‘dissenting academies’, and we have seen the same thing under communist regimes where underground movements would meet and some essays would be put out and publications would be put out by these underground meetings. We may be in the same moment now, given the penetration of the spaces that we once used for our cultural pedagogy. Well, we have to think about different spaces and places and times to do our work, and I think that’s the strategic 69

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moment that I´ve arrived up. It’s to think through what those different spaces and alliances and collectivities and places and times would be, since the ones that we have historically used have been so penetrated and emasculated by the testing regimes that have been put in place that we can’t no longer, in a sense, work fully within them. And that, as I understand it, is exactly the kind of conclusion you’re beginning to come to with regard to universities basis yourself. IRENE: You have been intensively doing life history research for at least 30 years… you look so young, how come? We were surprised by one of your observations made during the doctoral seminar. You mentioned that ‘people are too much the same’. We were struck with this reality of our ´sameness´. How can you discuss a little bit more about that, let’s see, when you say that only 20% of the teachers - the elite group in any profession - belong to what you call the creative and the motivated group, the ones that in fact would have some kind of voice or even influence in terms of doing the dialogue between micro strategic politics and public politics? IVOR: Well, I think those figures are obviously very crude and, in a way, unsustainable. But what I’m saying is most professions are made up by 3 groups: a small group of incompetents, a large group of highly competent professionals, and another group that thinks in the more profound and strategic way about the future of the profession and the future of the society. And there is always a kind of ‘Van Gogh’ in every professional group. I think that’s the same in teaching, whether it’s the 20% or whatever, it doesn’t really matter, but there is that group to think about it. And, for me, the crucial group is the middle group which is the sort of 80% of any profession which will, in a sense or in either way, be the creative group and among them those thinking about key issues they will go with that flow as they certainly did in many ways in the 60’s and 70’s. If there is a group that thinks much more negatively and narrowly about the profession and that group is in control they might go with that flow too; even though, we’re talking about highly competent professionals here. But they will take… they will take what is given to them. What I’m saying is, demographically, there were times when a more creative lead was given to these groups than is the case of the moment. What more we need to think through is what creative leadership could do to counteract some of the worse things coming from the iron cage of testing and accountability we have talked about. Again I think that... IRENE: Leadership? IVOR: Well, leadership but not in the sense of the way that leadership is normally peddled but rather in the way that we would talk about transformative leadership. And I think that would be there that I would put my money and I think there is potential for transformative leadership... both among teachers and among some of the head masters and head mistress as with principles in the schools. So, once I think that the current leadership discourse is pretty mundane; I think there are real possibilities for transformational leadership among the creative elements in the profession. IRENE: What is this transformative leadership? If you had to explain that... IVOR: In a few words... 70

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IRENE: No, if you had to characterise such a person… what kind of person is that? IVOR: I think is somebody who has a reasonable grasp of the society that we’re living in and the economic pressures that we are under, and can develop strategic politics to think their way through this, in the way that we have been trying to think it through this interview. Is precisely that sort of reflective, practicing person who thinks deeply about these human spaces and human dialogues that are necessary to think about the future society. Those people - if in positions of leadership - could transform teaching and indeed university work. Unfortunately it is normally the people who are running the testing and accountability regimes that are made the leaders. IRENE: …and have the ego so inflated that… IVOR: Exactly, exactly… And when you have a social system like the one of the moment the sort of people who become the leaders almost by definition just organising the existing system. But there is still plenty of good people out there that will increasingly start to come up with a counter-current. I’m absolutely sure of that. In spite of the ongoing pessimism of the interview, I’m deeply optimistic, actually, that there is a whole mass, silent majority of people who know that what is going on is the wrong direction and will be mobilised in due course. IRENE: They’re not happy… IVOR: The evidence is clear that people are not happy. I mean… there is… the more materially successful societies we get the less happy they are. So, I mean, we know we are on a loose in the direction we are going. We know that ecologically, with the ecosystem. But the question is: How long it would take and can it be done in time to mobilise the silent majority of well-intention moral people that are still out there? And that’s the source of optimism. IRENE: When reading your text (All the lonely people) it seems like you’re talking about a big percentage of professionals which would probably go with the flow, as you said. A small percentage from those would be the transgressive. I don’t know… Don’t you think that transgressive professionals could come out from any group? IVOR: Yeah, and I mean… We dealt with the paradox that unfortunately the sort of systems that are being put in place, that we are saying we don’t like are driving out those that might be creative and transformative. And that, as we keep saying, is a tragedy for the future of human civilization - to put it not too madly, but I think that’s the truth. Because those are the sources of rejuvenation in a society: people thinking creatively and reflectively about both, society but how schools function and universities… And when they stop driving them out by putting in parsimonious and the old thought out governmental structures of testing and accountability, then this sort of hopes we’re talking about within institution begin to wane which is why we began to talk, earlier in this, about possibly going to other places and spaces to mount this new moral crusade or whatever you want to call it - and I think that may be in the end where we go. 71

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IRENE: But we don’t even know… We don’t know what it will be in the end… IVOR: We don’t even know about it… but since we don’t know about them… that gives us some great possibility! Since we don’t know about them, that means other people don’t know about them and for the moment they can’t be regulated. RAIMUNDO: ‘Difference’ is one of the biggest ideas/concepts of contemporary social theory. It may sound like a simple question but, anyway… why and how should we treat or, in our case, teach everybody equally if we know we are not equal? IVOR: It’s a difficult one and of course we’re not equal and we’re profoundly different in many ways. I guess the line of difference that I most interested into, in a sense, go to the side of the question, but it links to the one I was just saying to IRENE: Is… I’m most interested in the differences in people’s moral careers, and how people adopt moral stances in the world often at quite a young age. I think the sort of moral stances that the younger generation is taking - there is a difference across this - there is a massive potential when you actually talk to younger people [my cohort three people]… The differences around visions of morality, ecology, ways of living are profoundly exciting to me, because they’re thinking quite deeply, despite of pessimism that we have talked about in terms of systems managements. They’re actually thinking outside those spaces and they’re finding different ways - and this is a different notion of difference to the one you intended - but they are finding different ways to think about the future and different ways to live their lives. In many ways they are beginning to pioneer the different spaces and places and times that we have talked throughout this interview. And I think the pioneer generation - to go back to the ‘Van Gogh generation’ - will be this young generation, who see quite clearly as they come in to the world and start… begin to focus on what’s going on. They can see very clearly some of the narrowness and stupidities of the current managerial system. I think is there that our hope lies and perhaps one of the connectivities we have to think about, is how to connect our thoughts about future with the thoughts of those people who have to live in that future. That’s the pedagogic moment and the undisclosed time and place and space that we need to think about most of all! So, it’s that difference around people’s moral values and moral futures that I’m most interested in. And that of course, links with patterns of inequality, patterns of gender, and patterns of race. All of these patterns of stratification create different moral visions and notions of what politics might be in the future. RAIMUNDO: Your explanation calls my attention to another question, related to things that fall so far apart. You talk about self-consciousness, purpose and issues. Then, you could get to a point that being moral could be synonymous with being human… IVOR: Yes, but what we’ve said earlier is that the nature of human beingness is subject to such change at the moment that being moral and being human - which we have historically thought to be a reasonable moment of equilibrium - even though we know in the past there have been barbarian moments where morality has been completely uncoupled from being human… take Nazi Germany or Bosnia, or 72

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whatever... But what we’re worried about now is that… that condition where that have been moments when morality and human beingness get from moment disengage that may become the disengagement of the future. So, to be human will be actually unlinked with the notion of being moral and it’s putting back together again the linkage that clear central focus of being human as being moral. It’s not being human and consuming and making a profit that matters, it’s being human and being moral, and putting those two things together under a system that is not set up to deal with issues of morality. That’s the conundrum of the moment. RAIMUNDO: But it could become a kind of a desire, a goal, an illusion… IVOR: I see what you mean, and I think it could be. RAIMUNDO: Because they are far apart… IVOR: Yes, they are very far apart at the moment, as you say. Things are becoming very loose and far apart. And I think that that long trajectory of human beings as moral creatures is reasserting itself. Is there strongly and young and that will be the place to regroup and reenergise the sort of politics that all three of us value. RAIMUNDO: I don’t like to talk in terms of conspiracy, but it looks like that, objectively, the system paradox would be to deconstruct this possibility to the young people? IVOR: The objective of the system would be to deconstruct? Deconstruct the link between morality and human being...? I don’t buy conspiracies, as you say. I think what we’ve got is a systemic web that has been put in place as a system there. It’s been run by people who are like most human beings - we do what we can… we don’t know fully what we’re doing and so - I would not impugn benign motives to the human beings behind the system. I would simply say that the system itself does not have as its stated objective any moral concern. It has as its stated objective cold clinical making of profit. And that leads us into all of the corners that we have talked about: polluting the globe, polluting people’s minds, polluting culture. Changing all of the things, all of the poles of expertise and resources which have so regenerated our culture at all the centuries. So, I don’t, for a minute, say people are any worse than they were centuries ago. But what I do say is that the system is narrower, more profit focused and less moral than it has been for a long time. Many of the checks and balances have been demolished. IRENE: I have one more question. It’s a common question in an interview but I like it. I like these common sense questions: what would be one question you would have liked to be asked? IVOR: Well, I guess, to be fair to my own comments about everybody else, you should ask me about my moral career… (laughs). IRENE: (laughs) But I have this last question: what is your pet project? IVOR: What is my pet project now? I guess my pet project is certainly both the personal which is political, which is... I hold very dear to my own family, my own 73

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class, my own tribe, my own mother, my own wife and my own son. They are very much the centre of my universe. But it’s more than that, it’s thinking about… It’s is thinking about much broader groups, particularly younger groups. I’m very, very keen on the main team…if that is the right word, and I don’t like it… of younger, younger people and I find great joy in that. Basically the joy has always being the same, it’s the joy of teaching and writing… really, passing things on and having them critique and challenged by younger groups. That is living in the pedagogic moment, that’s my mission, and I love that. IRENE: Living in the pedagogic moment… IVOR: Yeah. RAIMUNDO: I don’t have a question, I have a comment. I have enjoyed very much getting acquainted with you. As you know, we work in a university in Brazil. Sometimes we have the feeling that we think… we think we have the mission of teaching people, helping people to be critical, but this thing of being critical is getting so hard..., so inhuman that sometimes it looks like being critical is something in itself. This is one thing that called my attention and having the chance of getting acquainted with you, doing some things together and… gets down to a way of looking and seeing the world… but, most important, a way of living the world. IVOR: Yes, yes... RAIMUNDO: It has been a good experience for us and we want to thank you. IVOR: It goes both ways. I feel exactly the same about the time the three of us have chat together. It has been excellent...! That’s in a way what life is about…, isn’t it? Rich human experiences… But, basically, what life is about is having fun and that’s what we had.

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INTERVIEW WITH JERRY BRUNETTI

JERRY: Well, first off, Ivor, I am really pleased with this opportunity to discuss life history research with you. I am very interested in this methodology and have enjoyed reading what you and other researchers have had to say about it. So let’s chat a little about life history research. One of the things that strikes me is that it seems to be part of a recent emphasis in research on what one might call personal narration. There are a variety of terms used to describe the different forms it appears to take: for instance, narration, autobiography and biography, story, oral history, and even action research. So what is distinct about life history? How does it differ from these other forms? IVOR: I suppose there’s a difference according to each of those words, but if you take narration or story or even action research, each of those is concentrated on a sort of story of action, somebody’s story of action. And in a sense it’s that unchallenged story that a person gives you that is the epicentre of those methods. Of course oral history is not concerned with lives per se; it might be concerned with anything, a village life or anything, so that doesn’t have a life focus. But if you take the difference between story, narration, action research and life history, the critical difference is that you’re moving from story to history. By which I mean, you might narrate your story to me but to move that into the life history mode requires a range of other work to be done as well, by both the researcher and the teller. And that extra work is essentially trying to contextualise and fully understand the story that’s being told in its own terms. It’s not so much to check for its facticity, but it is to check for its position as a social phenomenon. The story itself is in a sense a story of a time and place. And that time and place therefore contextualises and frames the story in a particular way. The two people come to understand why the story is being told in that particular way and what’s being left out and what’s being focused on. A good deal of the available scripts of people’s storylines are in fact archetypical. There’s a view out there that everybody’s story is absolutely individual. In fact the story lines that you get come from about half a dozen possible storylines, by and large, and people build some personal flesh around it; but many of the storylines are quite predicable. There’s the romantic hero storyline, very popular among men; there’s the entrepreneurial storyline, etc. In other words, there are a number of fairly conventional scripts that are offered. There’s the scholarship boy and girl story á la Bill Clinton, up by the bootstraps, the American dream storyline. All of these are fairly socially produced available scripts that people then embroider a story upon. But there’s an interaction therefore between the societal possibilities and scripts and the way a person then puts some personal flesh on that. But to think of it as a story pulled out of the blue by an individual ignores the societal context. So what I’ve always said, 75

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and you know this, is you need a ‘story of action within a theory of social context’ and you have to put the two together. JERRY: And when you say “theory of social context,” that’s something more than just social context, isn’t it? IVOR: Yes it is. There are a number of things that context refers to. There’s the actual social context that you’re trying to understand in which the story is embedded in time. There’s the social context of the interview itself, which has its own dynamic. And then in a sense there’s a wider context that is the context of the whole methodological voice of the interview. So there are three different sorts of levels of contextualisation, all of which need to be understood. If you take the relationship between the personal story as told and the social context in which it’s embedded, that process means bringing in... I tend to call it triangulation, where you get historical documentation and other social documentation of say the school, or the nursing ward in the hospital or whatever, and you talk to other people about that time and place. So triangulating those three points, the personal story, the other documentation and the other stories, you begin to broaden out from what appears an individual idiosyncratic story into a wider understanding of why stories are told in particular ways at particular times. And so the problem with just story, and just narration, and just action research is that they tend to be a-historical. They tend to assume that a story comes on a kind of empty slate out of the blue, and that the opportunities for telling stories do not change over time. That it’s a timeless human phenomenon of storytelling. In fact it isn’t. As anybody studying teachers’ life stories over time will tell you, in Britain particularly, they move from stories of broadly autonomous professionals taking creative decisions about children’s futures into stories about technicians obeying other people’s orders. Now that isn’t because people have changed their stories; it’s that their cultural storylines have changed, so to speak. So there is a deep relationship between changing social possibilities for a profession or person and the way a story is then rendered and told. And to leave out that social production means that narrative and story methods are essentially politically quietist. And that’s why of course they’re so popular, particularly among Conservative politicians, since they say, “oh teachers can tell their stories.”, But what they don’t want to understand is that the teacher himself, or herself especially, is an historical agent that has been acted upon as well as being agentic. So the move to life history is, in a sense, an attempt to bring in a broader socio-political understanding of the world. I make no apology for that. JERRY: When you talk about theory - you, Ivor Goodson - you really are talking about a particular political and social view of the world, aren’t you? IVOR: Yes JERRY: A context, in other words, that you are interpreting from. IVOR: Yes I am. Although mine is a very... I would say I don’t have a doctrinaire view of the world, and I approach data deliberately with a view that any interpretation is possible. The agenda is not for me to create a series of puppet master situations 76

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where people speak in a voice that I’m politically sympathetic to. My genuine aspiration - I may not always succeed with it - is that I try to hear carefully what is being said. And if it disagrees with what might be a political predilection, that isn’t something that I would wish would interfere with the process and the dialectic. You might say that’s far too utopian, of course your politics….Of course it is, and of course it’s part of the dialectic; but I would hope that if I’m hearing other views as I normally am, I would be quite open to that. But if you say, do I have I politics? Do I have I a theoretical predilection? Of course I have - both. I actually think everybody does have. But the real issue is what you do with that political theory and predilection. If it drives you to select and interpret in particular predetermined ways, I would say that’s methodologically and politically indeed wrong. But explaining this and living it is not easy of course. JERRY: Life history seems to be particularly characterized by a collaborative effort between the researcher and the participant - whom some would call a ‘subject’ and others a different name; but it’s the person whose story it is. Now context is also extremely important in life history, and the way that is provided is an essential part of the life history approach. The thing I was wondering about, and I think I may have asked you about this before, was the way in which you incorporate context given that it seems to be coming from two different places: i.e., from the researcher and from the participant. The researcher looks around and says, “Well, these documents establish this,” and “He’s talking about this time period, and colleagues say this person was doing this at that time.” This is contextual evidence that is external to the participant’s story. But the participant engages in her or his own contextual moves, establishing the context for himself or herself. Aren’t you ultimately creating a collaborative history, in which the participant has to deal with the broader context and put it into perspective? IVOR: Yes you are. What I think you’re doing (which is why I don’t like the word subject) in the move to contextual understanding is exchanging contextual understandings here. When I use the word ‘challenge’, in a way it’s the wrong word; the word is really “exchanging different views of an emergent contextual understanding.” And of course teachers or nurses or any of the people that we’re talking to have their own contextual understandings to begin with. And of course so do I. So what we’re creating is a third voice: it’s the voice of our collaborative attempt to push the limits of both our understandings of context. So it’s not an attempt to replace the life history tellers’ understanding of the context with my contextual theory. That isn’t the point, and it wouldn’t work even if it were the point. The point is to sponsor an exchange of contextual and indeed theoretical understandings. One of the things I’m annoyed about is that often when a narration is made, the researcher then simply writes a theoretical footnote to that. Researchers do not have a theoretical monopoly on understanding the world. We all have vernacular theories. Ours tend to be privileged in the power game of the academy, but they’re not privileged in the sense of their contribution to understanding necessarily. So understanding, say, teachers’ vernacular theorising of their situation would add a great deal to the externalised theoretical understandings which researchers often bring to a 77

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situation, which is profoundly alien to them in many ways. So we are not talking about colonisation or replacement here, although all of those impulses are of course present in any human interaction. And there is a power differential here, whatever I might say. However, the aspiration is that this is an exchange of contextual and theoretical understandings of the world by two people who may be socially positioned differentially but are not differentially privileged in their understandings actually. JERRY: That’s very interesting. So in other words, you as a researcher would gather information about context to use in talking with the respondent so that thereby the two of you can create a joint understanding of the context in which this life history has occurred. IVOR: Yes. But there is this distinction that you and I have talked about a bit over a beer before, which is that there are a number of things going on in this ongoing grounded conversation. And I would call a life history interview essentially a grounded conversation. There are two if not many more themes at work in what we’ve just said there. One is the straight attempt to provide on-going research data from this ongoing conversation. By having this conversation we’re processing and filtering and creating more data, in this case maybe understanding of teachers’ lives. But alongside that theme of research, which will ultimately be placed before a collective audience and so on, there is the collaborative act of pedagogy between the two people. And that’s not me being the pedagogue and the life-history teller being the learner. It’s both teaching the other about their separate contextual understandings of the world. So it is a dialectical pedagogy that is also quite crucial. And this, I think, the second thing, is very underdeveloped part of what life history methods could at their best help with. Which is this pedagogic interchange between two sympathetic individuals trying to wrestle with understanding a professional life. I think we need to think a lot more about that pedagogic interchange because it’s going on alongside the research aspiration. This isn’t simply a drive to produce a document to publish. This is also an act of mutual pedagogy. JERRY: The mutual is interesting. IVOR: It’s crucial, and I think much of the stuff you read misunderstands that. It is trying to understand how the researcher will theorise and write up the life history teller’s account. Paradoxically that’s particularly the case in the most purist accounts, the narrative accounts which aim to celebrate the pure voice of the narrator but actually lead to the researcher presenting that account for the wider audience in what seems a purist way but actually in many ways does not embrace the kind of mutuality that I’m trying to engage with here. So there is a paradox there about purist narration. JERRY: I find this idea of mutual pedagogy fascinating. But before we pursue the concept further, I wonder if we might talk a little more about the power differential between researcher and respondent? This is something you have written about in your work; and many of the feminist researchers you discuss are very sensitive to the imposition of the researcher’s vision and needs onto the teacher respondents, who are often female. It seems to me that it’s a question of balance, somehow. On the one extreme you have the researchers controlling everything, collecting data from 78

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their subjects and analysing it in whatever way they choose according to their own theories, beliefs, etc... On the other extreme you have those kinds of narrations where the researcher holds the tape recorder, asks the initial question, and does nothing more - no analysis, no context setting, no theorizing. So what do you think is the appropriate balance of those two positions in good life history? IVOR: I think this is a very difficult thing. I think I’ve learned a great deal from feminist researchers such as Margaret Compt and Katherine Weiler and Gaby Weiler. They’ve taught me a lot about thinking through and beginning to acknowledge the difficulty of renegotiating power in these situations. It’s not something someone can lightly talk about or do; it is an intransigent reality in this work. But the point about it is this: it is highlighted for some reason in qualitative work, and I see that as the vindication of qualitative work paradoxically, because it highlights this crucial issue. What I think quantitative work and more conventional positivist work tends to do is cover up by its methodology these intransigent issues of power. And that for me is its great failing. The great virtue of most qualitative work is it puts front and centre that intransigent issue of power differentials. And it puts them straight on the table. It doesn’t thereby resolve them or suspend them, but it does thereby to some extent acknowledge them. Now that’s the first step, and it of course leads to a whole set of other questions that have been acknowledged. But in a sense, so what? Well I think acknowledgment is a better step than hiding. So acknowledgment gives us a beginning for dialogue, makes us think hopefully as one part of this ongoing conversation about what it is we’re doing and when it is we’re colonising and what bringing my contextual theory in actually does to the other’s theory. These are all crucial questions which I don’t think there’s any way of suspending or resolving. They simply are part of the intransigent nature of human interaction; most of it is stratified, hierarcherised and contextually and socially embedded etc…. But I do believe very profoundly that this sort of method forces both sides to confront it in ways that many of the other methods seek to cover up. And that is what I see as one of its enduring virtues, to be honest. The fact that we’re talking about it here. I think if we weren’t doing this survey we wouldn’t be. It is in itself very important. JERRY: So what would you say is the best life history research? Obviously if the method doesn’t recognise a power differential at all, this is not good; and if it simply records a story and takes it off and publishes it, that is not good either. So what is the best life history research? But maybe the question is put in the wrong terms. Best is after all a very judgemental sort of thing. IVOR: Yes it’s a difficult word in this context, because there are many kinds of best. And many kinds of lives, and many kinds of life histories. But I would say, one thing I would be looking for is a strong desire to listen rather than pose questions. I think my own preference is for less interventional questioning than is often the case. So I think the best interviews are where you create long periods of what I call ‘flow’ from the interviewee, rather than lots of questions from the life history researcher in this case. That is an aspiration I have; for me that would be a best type of interview. But I think really the best thing is when you sense in the interview 79

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a strong valuing of each other, a strong sense from both sides. Contributions are likely to be made not just at the level of practical understanding but of contextual understanding and theory on both sides. I think when that happens, I think it’s a kind of best practice for the kind of work I would like to be done. But if it doesn’t, I go back to it again; and that’s why I didn’t answer the question, because I don’t think you can answer it. It doesn’t suspend intransigent issues of power that are there at the heart of the enterprise. So there’s no best that will do that. And you can’t answer that one. JERRY: Yes. It seems also that perhaps the answer to this question depends on the type of life history research you are doing. If you are looking at practice, for instance, or looking at what you would call “thematic life histories,” where you’re concerned about a particular aspect of teachers’ lives, e.g. their reaction to imposed standardization, might there not be different ways of evaluating best in these cases? IVOR: Well there are. And I think there are different types of life history. And there are different stages in the life history. And at each of those intersections there’s a different process of interchange and power play that goes on. My notion, which I’ve written about, is that there are three major kinds of life history and the type of work we’re doing (teachers’ lives). One is what they call the “whole life history,” the full Monty, where we spend a lot of time trying to understand your whole life, and we locate your professional life and work in a sense within that whole life. So we get a sense of where your centre of gravity is: is it indeed in your teaching at all, or is that not where your centre of gravity is? Perhaps your private life is more important, and you just turn up at work and so on. So there’s the “whole life.” And then there’s the “thematic life history,” where we focus down on something such as the effect of standardisation on teachers. There, by definition, the balance is changing because the researcher is narrowing down the terrain on which the person can talk. There’s more power definition going in. And likewise with the third sort of “professional life history,” trying to understand what it is that makes a teacher’s life and work the way it is. So each of those different types has different balances vis-á-vis each side, and then there are different stages. So we might start with two interviews. In the first, you talk in a fairly free way as the life storyteller about your life. In the second I might come back with a set of more detailed questions from my side. In each situation the power differential changes and shifts. I think that’s ok. But this is to say that you’re quite right, the different sorts of life history have different sort of power spectrum built in, and so do the stages. And I think that’s right and proper that that balance changes. What is improper is if that balance isn’t fully understood and calibrated and worked through and talked about. JERRY: One of the authors who contributed to a book of yours was Kathleen Casey, a feminist researcher. She did a fine study of politically active women and why they left teaching, which I found very interesting. But one of the things that she said in explaining her approach was that interpretation should be left up to the participant. In other words, it should not be carried out by the researcher or even done collaboratively. I just wondered how you felt about that?

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IVOR: Well my emphasis here, at all levels, whether pedagogy, research, theory, or interpretation, is that this, at its best, ought to be a mutual process. So to leave interpretation solely to the participant, I think I’d see that as abdication. I think, just the same as total colonisation by the researcher or complete interpretation by the researcher would be wrong. All the while what I’m trying to express as an aspiration, rather than always a lived reality, is that this is a mutual process where we’re both engaged in an ongoing conversation; we both end up understanding a bit more; we both end up teaching each other a bit; we both interpret each other a bit as well as interpreting for ourselves. So I think to go either way … to say that the participant should be the sole interpreter is as nonsensical as the more conventional route where the researcher does all the interpreting. I think both of those are both frankly ludicrous. JERRY: Actually, I’m not sure if this is an accurate portrayal of what Casey actually does, though it’s what she said. IVOR: I don’t think she does that because I think actually she is a very good researcher. JERRY: A front runner. IVOR: As a piece of rhetoric I think it’d be incorrect. Her work, as you know, is in studying teachers’ lives. I like her work a lot. There may be a disjuncture there between what she’s actually saying and what she does. JERRY: Let me ask you what you see as the particular strengths of a life history approach, particularly as it is used with teachers, and what do you see as some of its weaknesses. You have written impressively about the particular strengths of the approach, but I don’t think you’ve discussed much about some of the drawbacks or weaknesses. I’m wondering if you would do both? IVOR: I think the strength is that it moves from the kind of pursuit of objective data to the pursuit of data about subjectivity and identity. And I think in these particular post-modern times, any method which has as its central mode of operation the attempt to understand subjectivity and people’s identity is massively important. Hence I think work that still clings on to the notion of a pursuit of objective fact in such a world is becoming progressively disvalued and out of date. So I think in that sense, life history along with other qualitative methods, ethnology and others, is positioned very well to explore some of the key questions of the day with regard to all sorts of social phenomena, but in this specific case with regard to teachers’ life and work. I feel that very strongly. I should, though, stress that I think life history is one part of a broad mosaic or front that is trying to understand subjectivity in new ways. I think the progressive turn to ethnography is equally important, and there are a variety of other methods that I would include in that. So I think that the turn to more sophisticated qualitative methods is exactly right for the times in which we live. The disadvantages of the turn away from objectivity are that they take us away from clean and clinical researcher facts, and they move us well into the field of the messy reality of human existence. And it is incredibly messy and it’s incredibly 81

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human, and those things in a world where status is still linked with scientism and positivism provide career and other problems for those people doing the [life history] work. I think these are not weaknesses of life history; these are weaknesses of a social world that disvalues human subjectivity and the messiness of human experiences, and wants simple trivial facts that mask and cover the social embeddedness of particular lives. So for me, what sound like weaknesses and will be presented as weaknesses in the endless status game of the academy are in fact its strengths. JERRY: I quite agree. As you pose them, the weaknesses are only in practicalities, given the world we live in and the way advancement and academic honours are distributed. I would probably add, however, that life history research is messy in terms of its being time consuming to do, and difficult - difficult to come up with clear decisions about what the data means; difficult knowing, “Ah, I’ve got it just right! This is it!” Maybe you don’t find this true, but I’m thinking that maybe such difficulties do exist with life history research. IVOR: Yes, both those things are true. They were first foreshadowed in the discussions in the Chicago School in the 30’s, that is that there was the perennial argument, the ‘old chestnut’ as we call it in England, that this is time consuming and messy. Well, life is. However, of course researchers live in a world where time is limited, the same way teachers do. And the same way as all practising human beings do. One can’t therefore just say: “OK, it’s messy reality, and life is complex; therefore a time consuming method is OK.” There is an issue there of time consumption and that life history interviews may or may not deliver the goods which the researcher themselves might necessarily require. I actually think that is grossly overestimated as a problem, but I sense that feeling a lot in the workshops I do on life history. Let me put the question back as I think it’s posed. “What about if I decide to do my PhD or my Master’s or research dissertation on life history; and I do 10 hours of interviews with people, and I put a lot of my time and energy into that, and all I get is a set of messy reality without any clear thematic emergence? And so here I am at the end of my research, and I’ve still got nothing that I can clearly write up in a coherent form. Wouldn’t it be better for me to do some rather trivialised objective operation that at least give me some facts I can write up?” That is what I think people are saying. I think that’s a bit like Eric Fromm’s view of freedom. It is fear of the inevitable messiness of any interview. But my sense of it is, if you chose reasonably carefully, and you do 5–10 hours of interviews, there is no shortage of emergent themes; and I would be amazed if you didn’t get a wonderful flow of data which you could write more than you need to do on. So I think that’s a wildly overestimated fear, the fear of having a mass of data and not knowing how to analyse it. But I really do fully understand the fear, particularly for a neophyte researcher. It’s a profound fear, but I think an unjustified one. Life history research does require, as all methods do, some rather sensitive mentoring and exploration of the method to settle those doubts. My own experience of the workshops, and as you know I’ve been doing them all over the world, is once neophyte researchers have done their first life history interview with somebody else (I often get them to interview each other), they realise quickly what flow of information they’ve got... goldmine on the table. Once they’ve 82

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got that, those little nuggets of gold, then that fear recedes. But it is a fear of the unknown. And I recognise it as a fear; but that’s what it is, a fear. It’s not a justifiable one. JERRY: You seem to have tremendous confidence that this sort of interview would yield rich data that the neophyte researcher could tie into theory and develop a perfectly coherent dissertation. IVOR: I think as Thomas and Znaniecki said all those years ago, it is the quintessential social scientific document. It is. On a commonsensical level, let’s forget all the hurrah about what is proper research and the rest, because that’s all overlaid by paradigms that have other purposes. And the other purposes are to take us away from a full understanding of otherness and humanity, I would say, being a little cynical about some social orders. I think, if you think about it commonsensically, if you suspend the way that scientific modes are privileged and positivism is privileged, and just think about social sciences trying to understand the human condition, you’d be on the right track. Would it not be just commonsensical, a fairly obvious thing, to suggest that if you’re trying to understand the human condition, you talk in a grounded way to other human beings, and you try and make that the centre of your enterprise, rather than using some off-the-wall method that doesn’t confront that? If the aspiration is do understand the human condition, why not talk to each other in detail? Doesn’t that sound commonsensical? JERRY: It certainly does, and of course that’s what novelists and poets and dramatists have been doing for years. IVOR: So why not social scientists? JERRY: Well I think you’ve provided some answers to that question. I wonder if we might go back to your beliefs about the peculiar advantages of life history research and the kind of teachers that I am particularly interested in, i.e., experienced teachers. Do you see life history research, especially the interviews, not only as a counter to externally imposed decision making, curriculum, and standards, but also as an approach that will pay off, be successful, in actually fighting this sort of standardization? In other words, isn’t the methodology more than just a “feel good” experience for beleaguered teachers; isn’t it, rather, the beginning of the nurturing of teacher power, as one might put it? IVOR: I think there’s a general question that you’re asking, and there’s a specific one embedded in there, which is “Will this turn the corner of standardisation?” I doubt if any counter culture could do the latter because I think the latter is driven by enormously powerful forces. I think most teacher culture understands that standardisation and an over-exaggerated sense of testing does nothing but harm to education, children and learning. I think that is close to a consensus among teachers. The amazing thing, however, is that it goes on in spite of that opposition, and that should tell us something here about where the power lies and what the relationship is between these imperatives and the attempt to sponsor students’ learning. I don’t think standardization is primarily about sponsoring student learning; I think it’s about something else altogether. 83

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On the more general question on what life history can do in terms of teacher culture generally, I think it is one part of an attempt to build a viable teacher counter culture which gives us commonsensicality as standardisation proceeds on. We have had projects going on looking at that from the teacher’s point of view, and interviewing teachers about their life and works. The data that comes out overpoweringly gives voice to teachers’ concerns about this issue. That I see just in this sense, as a massive vindication of this sort of work, because other kinds of methods do not allow such voices to emerge. And you have to ask why people who are concerned about these issues use those methods, and again we come back to all the edifices of the academy and so on. JERRY: So just the emergence of teacher’s voices coming forward now in a way that they haven’t before, you think is a positive thing? IVOR: Well I think one can overstate and sound rather “holier than thou” about this. And there was a time there when I did that, I believe. But I think this method does contribute to building a counter culture which values teachers’ understandings of their situation and seeks to build upon those and really put that at the centre of the thing, rather than administrators’ or politicians’ understanding of the situation, which seem to me to be driving the standardisation vehicle, in many ways, at the expense of teachers and students. I take a fairly strong view of a lot of it, and I don’t think its effects have been very benign, although I understand where it’s coming from. JERRY: I’m certainly inclined to agree, and as I see it become bigger and bigger and more imposing, I find it quite frightening. IVOR: Yes I think it is, and I think it’s quite frightening to teachers; and I mean, there’s plenty of evidence that it’s driven them out. I think it’s a complex one. If you were to ask me to analyse this specific phenomenon, I’d say that what you have in many professions is three sections of personnel. You have a pretty good creative elite inside the profession and a very large number of highly competent professionals that make up the centre of the profession. In all professions you have a small group of incompetents. I think standardisation has been driven by the attempt to eradicate the bottom level of incompetents. I think its actual effect has been to drive out the creative elite. I think that’s the great paradox of standardisation. When I said there I don’t think it’s benign and it is driven by other forces, I don’t mean to imply that it is driven by malignant intentions. I think often these reforms were well intentioned. The problem is they’ve had precisely the reverse effect to the one they wanted. They’ve driven out the creative and not the incompetents. JERRY: One thing that strikes me about many of the teacher life histories I’ve read is the wonderful job that the narrators and researchers do in capturing the unique characteristics and perspectives that make each teacher come alive as a person as well as a teacher. These accounts are often engaging and moving. But how do you move from a wonderfully sculpted portrayal of one or several teachers to being able to talk about teachers in general–or at least about many teachers? IVOR: It’s a difficult move, isn’t it, because I think as Bertaux says: The move from the individual to the generaliseable is actually a shift in power from the individual 84

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to the researcher since a lot of the generalising over and above life histories is the researcher’s act. And so there’s a tension, to say the least, between the individually rendered and the mutually constructed, fully rich, individual life history, which is for me an entity in itself, and thematic work and other generalising work. And what ideally one would want is to pay homage to both modalities, but have your individually rich life histories on which the edifice is built; and they are part of the case record. And the reader can then see what the interpretive act is when the generalisable themes are within the individually wrought life histories, and how they situate there, and how therefore generalisation works as a process. So part of it would be again, back to our previous conversation, to some extent to unpack the act of research, interpretation, generalisation for the reader to see more coherently what is going on. And in a sense to be able to come to some recognition, and also evaluation, some judgement about how well that act has been done. Because the convention is to obscure that completely and present it as distilled truth, rendered by the researcher. So part of this is about a more democratically accountable form of research which cannot create testimonies over and above what, in this case, teachers have said, without at least paying due obescience to what they have said. And if you make an interpretation, it has to be grounded in data that has been generated face to face with others. So I see this working at many levels, but part of it is to (again to sound a little holier than thou) … it’s about creating a democratic citizenry that’s fully informed. And when social science is done, there are accountabilities built in within the process so that a generalisation can be seen to be done. Nonetheless there is still a tension between each individually wrought account which pays due honour to each individual life, and any generalising there. But that tension is endemic in social science and so forth. All one can hope for is that there are overt mechanisms within it, and I think there can be here if you follow that notion of individual life histories being presented as a kind of... case record and then the generalising and thematising and the other issues being set up are as an account that draws and sits alongside that. JERRY: I really resonate to that because for me one of the big flaws with many of the sociological studies that I read is that there is a disjunction between the data that is presented and the interpretations that are made. It is often the case that because the researcher did not present enough data - perhaps because the editor wanted to shorten the article, or something - you read it and say: “Thank you. But how do I know that you’re making proper use of the data?” I think what I’ve always wanted to do was to see for myself. And what you’re saying is if the researcher does his/her thing as a researcher in deference to his/her university position or in service to a funding agency or whatever, that’s okay providing the researcher does not violate the democratic sort of participation, the collaboration between her/him and the teacher? And this means showing the data that was mutually constructed, and then very carefully showing how he/she drew the interpretations from that data. IVOR: There are two things I would say about that. One is it foreshadows the debate we must have about the accumulation of large amounts of data. And we’ll go to that in a minute. The second one, which is most important to me, is I think what comes out 85

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as we talk is part of my life history, i.e., that I have been trained as and still practice as primarily a historian. What that means in this specific sense here is that I have a strong sense of evidence being gathered and presented before conclusions can be drawn. That’s something you’re taught very early as a historian. To be able to make any sort of statement, you should be able to draw on a number of sources to substantiate that, and you need to present that evidence, albeit in a footnote or appendix; but if you’re going to make a large generalisable claim, it must be sourced back to a range of sources before you make it. I think that that has been drilled into me early. JERRY: As a historian? Not as an anthropologist, nor a sociologist? IVOR: No, as a historian. I think sometimes I take that for granted and don’t spell it out enough for those people who then go into this mode. I think at root it is chosen and called life history because at one level it is history, which therefore is a systematic presentation of evidence before themes, generalisations and conclusions are drawn. Now to move on to the second point: If you do large numbers of interviews, as we did in the Spencer Project, you do get a large accumulation of evidence. And you do draw generalisations from it. Now in the old days we would’ve said, “You can’t present all that evidence. It’s just not humanly possible; it’s such a large archive that it’s not possible to show the evidence in the interpretation at all.” I don’t there’s any excuse for that now in the sense that with programmes like Ethnography and other programmes, you could present these life history records in full for those who would wish to scrutinise them, even if it’s a really massive project. The smaller project where you’re doing ten life histories and you’re drawing some generalisations, I see no reason on earth why the full thing can’t be presented in a way that people could see it and that there are so many life history records that we refer to and we source for our generalisations. But even in a bigger project where there’s a bigger accumulation of evidence and a bigger analytical interpretive act, I still think given programmes like Ethnography and so on, you can provide the full record of the evidence for those who want to go back and see the interpretation. And for those who don’t, of course, they can just read the summary in the way that evidence is normally presented in many of our accounts. I don’t think there’s any excuse now for not providing a fair bit of evidence of what it is, and what the crucial statements are on which we’re basing the generalisation. JERRY: What does Ethnography do? IVOR: Ethnography basically is a programme that allows you to collect all your sources and put them in a form that you can then reference and source and refer to in your account. JERRY: Can you do it online? IVOR: Yes you do. So you might give a number F2310, and that takes you back to that particular interview source and you should show what paragraph. So someone can go back to it and find the rationale behind a generalisation. If you want to, and it looks as if this is a generalisation that you want to know more about, or it seems 86

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pretentious to you, you can check right back to the sources. It’s like good history or even good journalism should be. It should be properly sourced. And I think we can move more and more towards that now. It’s one of the great bonuses that the new technology allows us, and it really cut off the argument against the accumulation of evidence that can’t be presented. For me that’s one of its great potentials, the democratic accountability it allows for us to interrogate research in systematic ways, us the citizens. JERRY: And the questioning of the interpretation is open not only to the academy, to people who want to check, but to the teachers themselves who were originally involved. You seem to be saying, then, that you have an additional responsibility to the teachers to show them your interpretations based on the collective transcriptions before publishing, before going abroad with it? IVOR: Definitely. JERRY: So it’s a further step: You’re not just getting this portrait clear; you’re getting the whole context clear, drawing from everybody who was involved in the portrait? IVOR: It is, and that must be part of the process. And it links back to views of democratic valuation that were floated a lot in the 70’s and have since been... But they’re very important notions of how this process should be interrogated by others. Of course, as always, there are strong forces within the academy that would wish to keep things obscure. We all want to keep our judgements beyond judgement if we can, and that is a human desire. But I think there are strong reasons, particularly in the field of education, why the academy and the other elements of the profession should be in harmony on this. Otherwise you’re into ivory towers, which have led to the kind of practical fundamentalist backlash that is there at the moment where the teachers basically start to say, and rightly: “Look, you’ve made a set of judgements that are right out here in leftfield. I can’t even interrogate them; I can’t even understand them, so to hell with your research,” and it becomes irrelevant. There are strong reasons in every school of Ed, I would say, why the two should get back into a strong dialogue. Because apart, both groups, if we want to polarise it, the teachers and the academy, are infinitely weakened by not speaking to each other properly. I remember C. Rightnail saying about many of the discourses that people speak past each other. That I think has been the fate of people, academic researchers of schools of Ed speaking to teachers, and vice versa. They’ve spoken past each other. The result may have enormously weakened both groups. In the recent period this division has been used to utilitarianise and practicalise teacher education, both weakening the academy and actually also weakening the teaching profession. So this debate (you’ve read the latest book about Professional Knowledge) is more important that just about life history or democratic… This is a debate really about the future of applied fields, and applied professions, and what the status of the professional knowledge is. And if the two groups don’t find ways of talking to each other, making research accountable, making it speak to teachers and backwards and forwards between teachers and researchers, I think the enterprise is doomed; and I actually 87

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think that in the short term rather than in the long term, schools of Ed will start to wither on the vine. They will not be funded because they’re not producing research which is both relevant, accountable and listened to. And therefore why should they be allowed to continue. And teachers themselves will be imperilled by that too, because this is where professional knowledge is often filtered. JERRY: You speak and have written in a very persuasive way about the important role of the academy, of schools of education in particular, to provide the kind of theory and knowledge that teachers can use, providing there’s a connection and dialogue between the academy and the teachers. IVOR: Going back to common sense is always the best guide, rather than academic sense. Common sense says that if you don’t listen to the people you’re talking to and you don’t make that a major part of the evidence that you want, then you’re likely to come up with a series of simplifications which a) they won’t listen to and b) won’t resonate with their reality. Common sense says that, so why don’t we do more of it? Would that be the common sense question? And the answer is, the academy like any sect wants to keep its secrets to itself, doesn’t want to be accountable. That’s a strong part of all of us. JERRY: As you point out too, the professors of education are in a particularly difficult situation because they have to stay up with the academy to keep up with the reward system. IVOR: I’ve always said they’re stuck with the Devil’s Bargain. They are in the devil’s bargain and I’m enormously sympathetic with that dilemma and the effects of that dilemma on the teachers. It sounds as if the solution is at hand: here, Goodson has spoken! It’s not as simple as that. We’re searching for a range of different modalities of which life history is one, which allow systemic re-engagement to occur before the failure of engagement is used by others to dissolve both power centres. So you dissolve teacher power and school of Ed power. I think both those agendas are both under way, so I would say common sense with systemic re-engagement fast. JERRY: Another thing you’ve written about was the development of school-centred research in the best sense of the term. I’m talking about your former colleague, Lawrence Stenhouse at East Anglia University and the unique educational research centre he set up there, in which research projects were based on what was going on in the schools and not on applying some external theories or imposing external projects. Theory was to emerge from the school-centred research. Do you see life history as an element of that? IVOR: There’s a long answer to this question, which is that the original diagnosis in the 70’s that Laurence Stenhouse expostulated was that foundational theory had become estranged from the schools and therefore theory should move back into the schools and be applied to the schools’ problems. That is both right and wrong. It is right in terms of its diagnosis. The danger with it and where it is wrong is that it implied the evacuation of foundational theory and the presented theory within the schools. If you think about this in the political sense that made research within the 88

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schools extremely easy to cannibalise by powerful forces who might not want there to be profound theory about the schools. So the great danger of action research and work that moves entirely into the practical domain is that they domesticate both the teacher and the researcher by evacuating the big theoretical picture for the sake of particular understandings. And I think therefore the paradox of that work, many of whose values I share, is that they’ve led, for all the wrong reasons; so the teacher as researcher becomes the researcher as teacher, and the terrain that they inhabit becomes very narrow. And as we know it’s a terrain that can then be remodelled by political forces that make the teacher the technician, but in doing so make the researcher a technician too, because the two things are linked into the school reality. You have to have, in other words, a power base elsewhere to speak to these issues. If you evacuate that power base as that kind of modality did, you are in deep trouble. And that’s the sad story of that whole mode. JERRY: I imagine it wasn’t conceptualised that way at the start. I imagine it was conceptualised as a way to link the problems found in the schools with the theory that the academy provides, and through that wonderful synergy to be able to support teachers. IVOR: It was. And at its time, the 70’s, it was moving in the right direction. But you see it was based on an assumption that people in schools of Ed would still be trained in disciplinary procedures; that if you have a historian or a philosopher or a psychologist going into a school, there is a theory moving into the school ready to then mix with the school reality. Now unfortunately, what happened is people went native, and the disciplinary bases were meanwhile liquidated. But they were liquidated in the history of Ed, psychology of Ed, philosophy of Ed, being rapidly reduced and soon almost gone. So by moving into the terrain to try and get applied research, researchers unfortunately evacuated their theoretical bases, which were then closed; so then there was no-where to go. So generationally what has happened is, as a result unfortunately of this, much of the original theoretical base has been demolished. And it was an assumption that was quite legitimate to make in the 70’s that that would be retained, and that therefore we could go into schools and carry these messages forward. But the practical fundamentalists, as I call them, managed to colonise the whole debate. And in Britain it’s gone further than anywhere: they have utilitarianised the debate and have pretty well emasculated much of the theoretical homeland. That’s a profound dilemma which I hope other places will avoid like the plague. JERRY: Now the conceptualisation comes from the people with political power. IVOR: Indeed, there’s nowhere else it can come from. So what they’ve done in the name of practical fundamentalism is demolish academic critique. Which of course is quite acceptable to certain political forces in this society. But again, over time, as Ziggy Baumann says, you get rid of critique in a society and you’re in long-term trouble, because if you get rid of critique, you’re actually getting rid of the reflexive element in the society. So I think it might be smart for politicians in the short run to kill critique, but it’s damn silly in the long run. I mean they killed the scientific 89

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critique of BSE, and they killed all the independent research on it. The result was BSE, Mad Cow Disease, went everywhere because they got rid of the independent researchers who were critiquing some of the things going on. Now that’s one extreme example of what can happen when you get rid of it. You can get contagions of social and other forms coming in which have not been anticipated because the critique was killed off too early. So that’s again an issue of democratic accountability and critique being built into a vigorous democracy, not got rid of. JERRY: Let’s move to a question that you seem to have provided a nice segway to: Do you believe that life history research as it is conducted in the schools - its methodology and theory building - has the potential for rebuilding bridges between the schools and the academy? I am talking about teacher-focused, life history research that is theoretically solid and can thus, presumably, be honoured in the academy. IVOR: What we’re looking for, if I can summarise it in terms of the times in which we live, is we’re looking for terms of re-engagement between the academy and teachers in the school. So what I was certainly looking for was a starting point which from the beginning honoured and valued the teachers’ world. By starting there you at least redress some of the issues of power, since if you start in the teacher’s world, by definition, the teacher knows more about it than you do. So you’re in a place of re-engagement, which allows at least some sense that you’re working with the grain of the vernacular reality of the teacher’s world. And if you’re looking for a way to re-engage with teachers who have lost interest in research, it seemed to me a smart strategy just in those terms - to work with the world as it is. But I actually think in a more profound sense that it’s the right starting place if you want to get this engagement going, and if you want theory and practice to mutually enhance each other. I think the theory/practice divide has proved too large, and I think engagement had broken down in too many places. We need vigorous places to inhabit where reengagement can take place, and I think the studies of the teacher’s life and work are one very good place to start. Not the only place, it’s not a total answer, but it’s one very good place for vigorous re-engagement between theory and practice to happen on both sides. JERRY: And how do you envision this unfolding? Assume that we have life history studies in the schools proceeding nicely; how do you visualise the re-establishment of the connection to the university? IVOR: Well if it begins to create a good flow of data, which both informs a vigorous teacher counterculture, but also begins to provide interesting insights towards policy, which is currently failing. It will also re-engage again with policy analysis and with the way that education is currently being administered. So I think there are a number of ways that it will re-invigorate. My own reading of the situation is that many people who have re-structured education realise that the process is faltering, realise that they’ve lost teachers’ hearts and minds. I think people are beginning to realise that. You can see that in the delivery of education in England, the beginnings of a reaction against testing; some of the unions are against it. The government has to deliver it to get re-elected. It knows it’s not being delivered in the way it would’ve liked. 90

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The targets are not all being met, and the targets themselves are often counterproductive. There’s a beginning of a movement against simplistic target meeting. All of that is there. So I think there is a beginning of awareness that some kind of academic research on this might once again be desirable. So this time it is moving both ways. It’s moving back to the teachers, but it’s also moving back into the policy domain. And I think life history has a lot to say at both levels. Studies of how teachers’ sense of their life mission is being eroded by a standardised view of the world, an audit culture, is a profoundly and critically important insight. It’s not my insight; it’s an insight that comes from every life history you ever collect, which is: “I went into teaching for this; this is how I see my life. I was dedicated to it. I have a sense of caring vocationalism. I’m a creative teacher.” All of this is challenged by this trivialised audit culture that’s being put in place. And it’s not just teachers who are saying that; it’s nurses, it’s academics, it’s many of the classes of people who try and deliver a caring society. So I think this is an issue of enormous concern, and one that life history has a lot to say about. Studies of people’s life and work and why they went into it, and what motivates them. What could be more crucial to understanding the human condition than that? I can’t think of anything. JERRY: If people would just realize that. It sounds like your feeling is that the connection, the bridge, will be re-established primarily through policy, nurtured of course by the insights offered by life history. But the principal thing that researchers from the academy will be called upon to deal with will be the failed policies... IVOR: No, I don’t feel that actually. I think that’s one possible spin off. I think for me, I am most animated by the re-engagement between teachers and external researchers. I think that’s the re-engagement that is desperately needed for both parties. If there’s a policy spin off, and there might be, that would be a very beneficial side effect. For me the central action is re-engagement between the teachers that deliver the system and actually make kids’ lives better when they work well, and the researchers ought to be enhancing that. JERRY: Yes, seeking to understand that. And you’d think that maybe the beginnings, the glimmerings of change that are occurring now might be such as to draw researchers back into this work? IVOR: I think it might. I’m always hopeful, Jerry. JERRY: Yeah, we are - the two of us [laughter]... JERRY: One of the things we have talked about is how the teacher’s story evolves over time, and how the teacher constantly renews the story, adding things, subtracting things, adjusting details, changing emphases. Now although this story that the teacher lives is constantly changing, it has a pretty stable trajectory in most case. When you interview a teacher, you get a pretty good sense of this trajectory. But the thing I was wondering about is a phenomenon that I have observed: i.e., within that stable trajectory, where you find teachers’ overall satisfaction or dissatisfaction with teaching, their commitment to students, to particular goals and curricula and institutional 91

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functioning, you also find day-by-day, even hour-by-hour, changes. These are like oscillations within the larger wave, if you will. I remember a case where I began interviewing a teacher on one day. On the next day when I continued the interview, the teacher had had a difficult day and was feeling discouraged; and this was reflected in his responses, which were less optimistic than those he had provided on the previous day - a point that he acknowledged. When I went back to re-interview the same person for a third time - I had lost several of his response - I am relatively certain that some of the answers he gave were different from the ones he had originally offered. So my question - at last!–is this: in a life history trajectory, even with several interviews, isn’t there some likelihood that you will catch a person at a particular point in his or her life and get a less accurate representation of that person’s story? I can recall Pat Sykes’ commenting about a teacher she had interviewed: on the next day he approached her and said, “You didn’t turn that, in did you? I just got a promotion and learned that my wife is going to have our first baby. I guess these events change the way I see my career now.” You see what I mean? So if you’re trying to get a stable picture of the life history, how do these short-term changes play into that? IVOR: I don’t think you are trying to get a stable picture. We were talking about balances before, weren’t we, between power and ……But here there’s a balance between continuity and discontinuity, because in any life story that’s a constantly changing balance. So I’m not trying to get a stable continuous story. I’m interested in it in a different way. I’m interested in if the person presents themselves in a stable continuous way, or whether they present themselves in a discontinuous, less linear unitary way. Behind this is a debate about the nature of self, and identity - an ongoing debate at the moment that says that under modernism we tended to create unitary stories about essentialist selves, which were primarily linear, and now under post-modernity we’re creating much more flexible stories about several selves, multiple selves which fragment, move and discontinue and so on. And that is a prime example of what I was saying earlier, that the very nature of stories depend on the times in which we live. So under the enlightenment there was a sign of sense of a rational self that was internal, embodied, essentialist, and we could tell a story about ‘it’. That’s much less clear now to people who are creating their stories, so the embrace of multiplicity, diversity, discontinuity is itself a sign of beginning to engage in a rather more interesting way with the nature of subjectivity and identity. So I’m very interested actually in what I call “interrupting subjectivity,” by which I mean I’m very interested when the coherent, essentialist self breaks down in interviews and people start to embrace, give voice to, other possible selves/stories. An example of this - we’re sitting in an old people’s home and I’m talking to an old lady of 82, who happens to be the last person alive who remembers the first day of the school I was studying in 1916. And she’s living in this old folks home holding hands with a man who’s about 92, and he turned out to be her boyfriend when she was at the school I was talking about. Both of them have been married, lost their partners, and they’ve been put together in the old folk’s home. So she’s telling me about the school and she’s saying, “this school was a wonderful school; the headmaster was the most marvellous man; the children were just absolutely marvellous; 92

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it was a golden time, a golden school.” And I’m turning the tape over and I say to her, “Oh, Brenda, this just sounds just too good to be true.” “Ah school,” she says, “terrible places; you’re tired all the time the kids always play you up; nothing goes right.” I put the tape back in and she says, “Beale School was a wonderful school...” Now what she’s telling me, it seems to me, is the mainstream dominant version of what schools are about, which we’ve been programmed to believe - that they’re good places, happy places where we learn. And then what keeps breaking in, if you give permission by which I mean interrupt the subjectivity, is that there’s a whole other version of schools. On a bad day, on a Friday afternoon, they’re the shittiest places on earth: the kids play you up; nobody learns a damned thing; you’re tired; the world is an irritable. Terrible, hostile place. And of course school is both. School is on a good, sunny, nice day a lovely place. On a Friday afternoon in mid-winter it’s a terrible place. That’s life. So stories which try to present a neat, coherent, tidy, rationalist, modernist view of the world are a symptom of the time, an aspiration. But they’re to be looked at under a rather critical gaze, I feel. When the discontinuities come in, those are to be worked with because they’re working towards the lesser reality of life. So what I’m saying, to summarise, is stories are implicated in the historical visions of self with an identity at a particular time. That’s what I mean in a broad sense by social context being part of understanding a story. In the present time, what I would have said is that one is at pains to understand continuity and discontinuity, stability and instability, unitariness and multiplicity - all of those things - and that whole spectrum is part of the life historian’s work, to play with that and to understand why at certain times unitary stories might be told, and other times not. That is the process of understanding the story telling instinct of human beings, because stories do work for us: they construct particular types of selves at particular times. That’s what I mean by you’ve got to understand the story as a phenomenon in itself, not as a facticity, not as an objective reality, but as an expression of an ongoing identity project - an ongoing battle for versions of subjectivity. That’s what it’s about, and that’s the task of the two people working together to understand the ongoing storied nature of existence. JERRY: And then as an interviewer, you’re not reluctant to bring up these discontinuities - not in a nasty way… IVOR: Timing is everything because what you want to give full rein or chance to is for the person to play out before you this search for coherence or stability, or willingness to embrace de-stabilising facts and multiplicities. You want them to work around that with you, before you begin to push and pull at particular bits, and try and follow up and engage with and discuss with, and exchange on these issues. I stress it’s very important that that whole play is allowed full rein before one comes in with… interpretive mechanisms. JERRY: Yeah, the third response they give, you don’t say, “You’ve just contradicted your first response.” IVOR: No you certainly don’t. You don’t say, “This seems a very stable/unstable account” or “I distrust this golden vision of school.” As I said there, you might, in 93

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the middle when the tapes run for 35–40 minutes, say, “Hey this sounds really rather uninterruptedly wonderful”; and then you’re giving permission for the other stories to emerge. I call it somewhere, there’s a dominant story and a dissident story. The dominant story is what’s drummed into us. And many things are programmed into us by society. And broadly one story is “schooldays are happy days.” That’s the story. They’re places where we educate, where children learn, with reasonable social discipline. Now it happens that none of these things are uniformly true. But that’s the dominant programmed story line. And then you’ve got to give permission for the dissident storyline to come up. And I think that’s a very key skill and moment in an interview when you seize an opportunity, or offer permission, for the dissident stories to emerge. And it is a question at one level of permission. How many times would I like sixpence for the times an interviewee has asked me, “Am I giving you what you want?” And the answer is actually, no, I want more; I don’t want you to give me what I want because I know already what you think I want. You think I want what society thinks you should be giving me. Actually I don’t want that; I want the full multiplicity of your experience here. I want you to reflect on the dominant stories you’re giving me. They may be true, they may not be true; that’s not really the point, but it’s how you feel about them. But I also want you to interject and develop these dissident and idiosyncratic and personal thoughts that come in as you give me what might be a well-rehearsed story. It’s moving behind rehearsal, behind social scripts, towards the personal flesh, the personal interpretations of the world, of subjectivity. That’s really where the interview has got to be, absolutely attentive. And there are key critical incidents in every interview, I’d say, where two or three possibilities are there. Like when a railway goes in one direction and another, you move onto another track. And if you miss those opportunities, you’re left often with a rather barren unitary account, but if you can see that moment, and it’s hard to see, then you can move onto a much richer tapestry about what the person tells you. This is not just a researcher skill; this is a willingness, a felicity, dexterity on the part of the teller as well. I don’t want to say this is just a research skill; that’s probably less than half the critical thing, because what you’re asking for is for somebody to dig deep and give you access to a range of diversity, which is quite difficult for all of us to embrace. We’re all uneasy with multiple selves and multiplicities; we prefer a rather well rehearsed unitary account. It’s more comfortable and we’re happy within ourselves, feel at ease with it. Once you start saying, “God dammit, I’m different from day to day,” that’s much more... JERRY: A little more threatening. IVOR: Yeah, it is, but in a way it seems that’s closer to what subjectivity is like. I think subjectivity is like a committee: it goes one way one day, and one day another. And there are all sorts of things that affect the committee decision as to what the self will be that day. And we need to know about that process of ongoing identity negotiation, because that’s really critical if we take the view that the person the teacher is, is the sort of teacher that person is. It’s the personality of the teacher, the personhood of the teacher that’s so crucial in understanding the teacher. 94

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JERRY: Now that reminds me of one of the teachers I re-interviewed - I think I’ve talked about her before. This was seven years after the original interview. As we were talking, she explained how difficult life was as an English teacher with all of the incessant demands on her time, and how she simply couldn’t keep going like this. I pointed out, “You know, here’s what you said seven years ago”... and it was the much the same thing: i.e., “I agreed to be interviewed because I really want to explain how difficult it is for English teachers, and I simply can’t go on like this. It places too much of a burden on me and my family.” Seven years later, and she’s still teaching. And she said, “Oops, it shows how I haven’t grown in all these years.” And I said “Oh, yes you have; you’re much more aware now.” Which she was. IVOR: I remember that piece particularly. I linked that with the other talk that you gave at the university where you gave this really fine piece of an interview where the person’s saying, “Teaching is my life! I can’t imagine doing anything else, ever; it’s what I do, it’s what I’ve done, it’s what I’ll always do.” At the end you said this guy had now retired. And I found myself thinking, “How could somebody with such a story retire?!” It goes back to what we were saying earlier; we are sold a rather essentialist view of self: this is what we are, this is what we do, and we do it forever; and teaching is our life and work and therefore us. Then at some point we have to embrace the fact that it isn’t, because we’ve retired or something’s moved on or we’ve become ill or something’s changed in our lives. JERRY: Or you become aware of other lives, or you become relieved of the necessity of projecting that image. IVOR: And that’s why, to go back to where we were, the sponsorship of the multiple visions of self, the dissident visions of self, the vision of self that society has not sold us, if you will. Because they’ve sold us the vision that to be a teacher is good, and indeed it is, and that’s sufficient in itself, which maybe it isn’t. Therefore in terms of personal and professional development, life history is enormously important because it begins to provide a diverse portfolio of selves that you can move between. Most people who live long (I was reading a book about long lived lives recently) often say, “I realised I was moving on to another life”; and what they actually mean is they were moving from one socialised, essentialist self into another one altogether. And when they’re inside the essentialist self, “teaching is my life,” it’s impossible to imagine that there could be another life and self. I think therefore that life history, by in a sense working at the fringes at this to present more diverse accounts, makes personal professional development so much more meaningful and rich than the normal professional development is, which aims to keep you locked in the occupational self. So I think the potential for life history for personal and professional development is colossally underused, and its potential for creating more happiness is enormously great. The indexes on happiness are very depressing if you look at them. People are becoming less happy, and I think this is not apart from this discussion about essentialist selves and socialized-into-one job selves. JERRY: That’s fascinating - the idea of life history being particularly potent for introducing teachers to other possible aspects of themselves. So they would increase 95

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their flexibility, their ability to move in directions that would help sustain their continued growth and life. IVOR: It would actually, paradoxically, sustain and revivify them as occupational selves in teaching. This is the great paradox. As I stated it, it looked like this was an avenue to become something else altogether. This is a way out of teaching. But in a way I don’t mean that at all. If you were talking to a teacher in their 20s or 30s and you begin to play with the fact that you’re going to go through a cycle in life, there’ll be lots of different types of teaching you’ll do in the nature of growing through life. You’ll be a different teacher at 50 to the one you were at 25; you’ll have different interests, different energies, different senses of gravity; by definition you yourself will have changed. And if we assume the self is the teacher and the teacher is the self, if the self changes the teacher changes. So knowing that, knowing that we will move through different accounts of self, different identity projects, our professional development is enhanced. It beggars belief for me that professional development has gone on in ignorance of the selves as teachers, in ignorance of their identity projects, in ignorance of their life missions. Nobody ever asked them. But how can you possibly have professional development without personal development, answer me that? Is professional development some sort of technical quick fix, a technical add-on? No, it’s epic-central to the self. So professional development should be linked to personal development, and life history has a good deal to say, I would argue, in that domain. So its potential... personal development is enormous and underused I would say. JERRY: Let me turn to something else that you dealt with before: i.e., the potential for the life history experience to raise teachers’ awareness of what their values are, what their practice is, and how the two connect. An awareness, too, of how they relate to other people in the same enterprise and how they relate to kids. I think that a growing awareness of these things in itself empowers teachers because it puts them in a better position to make decisions about “what next?” They have, in fact, a better chance to adopt a new teacher life of their own in place of the externally imposed one that they have perhaps been living under. IVOR: Absolutely true, and well stated. I think that’s right. What we’re saying there is that by embracing different visions one can actually begin to talk about different ways of being a teacher. So that the teacher becomes a flexible teacher who responds differently to events and is not locked in that dreadful pedagogic lockjaw where you always do the same lesson, perform in the same way - which is a prescription for professional death. JERRY: And when you embrace diversity, if you will, you’ll embrace the opportunities that “Next year I’m going to teach this course differently, because I’ve learned what I could about teaching it this way.” IVOR: And that would … I mean reflexivity enhances professional development; that’s really what we’re saying. Understanding the options, the options game, that there is more than one essentialist self is a route to a rich life, and particularly here a 96

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route to a rich professional life, and finally a route to rich teaching in the classroom. From the critical point, the student’s point of view, this is really what it’s all about. JERRY: Let’s take a look at something and speculate a bit. Suppose you’re the lord of education funds; and you’re a wise person who knows the very high value that the life history process has for teachers in terms of personal and professional development. How might you articulate that for a particular school or local educational authority? You have the money that you need. How would you do this? What scheme of life-history-embedded professional development would you implement? IVOR: Yes, scheme is a tough word. It’s very unlikely, I think, that I’ll ever be lord of education. JERRY: [Laughter] You never know, in one of your other lives! IVOR: However, I have done a fair bit of this, either in individual one-on-one professional development clinics with teachers, or in, more often actually, collective workshops with teachers. And it’s often been… professional development... I’ve done it in various countries. Scandinavia is particularly imaginative about this, but I’ve done it in many countries. I think I would have this as part of the in-service and professional development courses that are on offer to teachers. I actually think that if this was one of the ways it was offered - a one-on-one mutual pedagogy clinic, or collective workshops where teachers begin to talk and share with each other their aspirations and dreams and life histories - I think both of those would be very rich ways of raising the consciousness and reflexivity of teachers and raising their awareness to other options and to professional richness. I have no doubt about that at all if it were implemented more generally, say in North America. And I think it would enormously enhance people’s professional lives but also student learning. So I would have a scheme where they were one on one, life history and professional life and work clinics where people work together in mutual pedagogy, and I would have collective workshops where teachers were encouraged to share their visions with others. JERRY: So life history provides a framework that would facilitate teachers’ being able to participate in this kind of professional development? IVOR: Oh, precisely. I think that having arrived at some point there you could bore that down to more specific professional school policies, so you could do that on a school basis. Having said that, one is aware that there are issues, a number of ethical and procedural issues here. For example, teachers often are likely to like their anonymity; they might like to be anonymous in this. So there would be all sorts of issues, you know. If it’s a one-on-one clinic, would it be entirely in the hands of the teacher what was done with that knowledge? And I think there are solid grounds that it should be. Likewise with collective workshops, there’s always a sense that teachers might be uneasy with that; and there is some sense that they are right in this. But I have to say that I did a life history session with 15 principals recently, and I was told I would never get principals to share their life history because they’ve got too much professional authority invested. Actually they were one of the easiest 97

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groups to get to write their life history; they shared them, and they had one of the best summer schools they’ve ever had as a result. So I think you can do this in a whole range of areas. Leadership is another area I would say it would enhance things enormously, but it’s about locking people into their passions and purposes and life’s meaning. You see people lose that, if you just think of professional development as a flat technical process where you keep upskilling them in a technical way. That’s not going to excite anybody, but locking it into their professional passions and purposes, I mean just the language implies that it’s going to be more exciting. It’s going to revive people’s sense of life and self. JERRY: You know, you reminded me of something that I’ve got to go back and check. But I think at one of the high schools that I did for my studies this year, one form of professional development that the school offers is teachers’ meeting one-onone on or in small groups with each other; and this is sanctioned as a form of professional development in that school. IVOR: I think that’s a great way to sponsor collegiality because if you think about it, contrary to the notion that this is the teachers’ exposing themselves in an area they don’t want to be exposed, I think it’s a much better area of mutuality and exposure than people’s subject and technical and classroom competence, where they really feel vulnerable and rightly; we all do. And they feel competitive. Whereas in this zone, it’s a different game altogether, much more likely to illicit a more compassionate, collective, caring response from everybody, I would think. Not always, not everywhere, not at all times, but in general I would say that that is true. JERRY: Let me go back to the other part of the life history process, i.e., to the other person whom we’ve identified as the researcher. And if you permit me, I’d like to re-identify that person as a teacher education researcher - i.e., as a person who’s involved in the pre-service and in-service education of teachers. Let’s talk about mutual pedagogy or the professional development of this person, the teacher educator. How do you see that happening? IVOR: I guess I’ve implicitly moved here into thinking of teacher educators in the latter part of this interview. Where I’m talking there about professional development and these workshops and these one-on-one clinics, I’ve been thinking more teacher educator activity with teachers than I have researchers. First part of the interview I was thinking about external life history researchers. This work might be done by teacher educators - probably would be some of it– but some of it would be done just as doctoral work or whatever. Here I’m thinking more of professional development as a necessary theme which teacher educators deliver. So I think the teacher educator would be an extremely sensitive part of this mutual dialogue. I think also, though, that what you say is perfectly true, that some of this, if its school based, is best done among teachers themselves with actually just an outrider support from a teacher educator or researcher, or somebody who’s a teacher educator/researcher. You kind of set up the context; you introduce the situation; then in a sense sit back and let the teachers answer their own collegial responses to this. I’d go for that outrider role 98

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I think very often. And I think that would make for a very successful professional development milieu. JERRY: Of course this does not provide as much professional development for the teacher educator, who is more of a facilitator and a structural engineer, if you will, and a support person. The teacher educator would not get the sort of feedback and insight that he/she would if the dialogue with teachers creating this life is life history. IVOR: Well it depends where the teacher educator is in the process. But if they’re present and involved and have access to the data, I think they would be having access to much richer data than they would if it were more conventional subject knowledge workshop or something. So the potential, just looked at through a rather narrow teacher educator gaze there, is great for rich insights and data. JERRY: But that’s the researcher again. Let’s look at the teacher educator as a teacher. Suppose that you have a system set up at a school so that your have several teacher educators there helping to implement these life history processes. And suppose that the teacher educator joins as a partner with a teacher and shares his or her story with that teacher. Wouldn’t this help to reduce some of the barriers between teachers and the university? You have this teacher educator saying, “Well, you know, I had a hell of a time in school when I was going through,” or “I really love teaching, but that damned university has me doing x, y, and z, and frankly I don’t know what to do about it.” Don’t you think that would begin to crack some of the barriers between those lofty teacher educators from the university and the classroom practitioner? IVOR: Oh yes, that’s precisely the point. All I was saying there was I think that perhaps the key way of doing it would be the one-on-one of collective workshops where teacher adjudicators would be key personnel. However I would want to say that there should also be solely teacher-based one-on-one clinic and workshop, because that is collegiality per se. That was a point I was making, but generally I’d say it a rich area for the teacher educator to do teacher education. Yes absolutely. So you could pose the question differently to me, which is to say, “Yes, you’ve been talking there, Ivor, mostly about in-service professional development, but in terms of preservice teacher education there’s a rich role here as well. So once begin to see…..” JERRY: This is the increased understanding of the teacher educator you’re talking about? IVOR: No, because there’s also the rich understanding that the would-be teachers are going to get about the diverse roles they can encompass and where their life mission has come from, why they want to be teachers. So reflexivity is built in and worked with from the beginning of the teacher education process. So on both sides the teacher educator and the would-be, pre-service teacher are... JERRY: How would that happen with the pre-service teachers? That’s a difficult thing for a teacher educator to deliver, since the real way it’s delivered is through peer dialogue, isn’t it? 99

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IVOR: Yes. JERRY: Is it that they would be paired off with each other or paired off with teachers, or... IVOR: To be honest I think it’s happening quite a lot now in pre-service courses. There are a lot of pre-service courses which ask the trainee teacher to keep journals, involve them in reflective sessions, sometimes involve them in straight life history work and certainly narrative work. So I think it really is beginning to happen on a pre-service level. My own sense of it - and I may be biased because I’m a true believer in life history - is that a lot of the things that we’re talking about here are happening in exciting pockets already; and what you and I are feeling for and hoping for, I think, is that this gets generalised more across the board, as these rich and exciting pockets begin to spread. So I don’t think we’re talking about a sort of utopia that’s two steps away, that might happen in some world where somebody else funded education. I think it’s already happening. JERRY: It’s an evolving phenomenon. IVOR: I think so, I think it’s an emergent phenomenon that will actually grow in strength for many of the reasons that we’ve gone over in this interview. JERRY: I share your enthusiasm, though certainly not your experience, with life history and its potential for teachers. And one of the major reasons for my enthusiasm is the respect that it holds for teachers, the acknowledgment it gives to teachers that their insights, their voice, their lives are significant and indeed essential for good education. So I like the fact that the process in itself emphasises that. And I think you’ve made some wonderful contributions to that whole show. IVOR: I think that’s a fair statement, not my contribution, but the statement of the process - that that process of its essence recognises and respects the centrality of the teacher’s life and work. Without that respect or recognition, I don’t see how educational advance is possible, nor how student learning can be advanced over time. I simply cannot conceive, although there are plenty of regimes in the world at the moment, an educational regime that will lead to genuine improvement of learning without acknowledgment of the central role of the teacher. That’s not to say all teachers are perfect, nor that there can’t be improvements; it is to say that without recognising the central value of the teacher’s life and work nothing can move forward. JERRY: I think this is a wonderful place to end this interview.

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INTERVIEW WITH JOSÉ PACHECO 9th November 2007, Braga, Portugal

JOSÉ: Your last book is about learning curriculum and life politics. What can you say about this book? IVOR: There is a series of books called The World Library of Educationists so the first books were Elliot Eisner, who I think you know, and Howard Gardner followed by several other European people, so we have a good coverage of American and European top educationists. And the idea was to put a sort of top ten educational people into their collected works and I was asked to do that, to select my top twenty articles written over the last period of my life, so I decided to create a collection which looked at the three main things I am interested in, one is curriculum I have been working on that for thirty years, the second is my continuing interest in children’s learning, so there are a numb of articles in there about what the work on curriculum tells you about learning and then the third section which is the life politics in the title, so... JOSÉ: Curriculum, learning children and life politics, the three main ideas of your work… IVOR: Right. And life politics is looking at these things you and I have been talking about, the life and work of people and how that relates to what they do in their practise, so the teacher’s life works with their educational practise and their lives. JOSÉ: Are you now publishing a new book? What is the title of the book? IVOR: The title is Investigating the Teachers’ Life and Work and now will be published simultaneously in about six languages and maybe in Portuguese, we don’t know yet about that. JOSÉ: Is it related to your research project? IVOR: I have working on three different projects as the professional knowledge project which, maybe I should say that they are about studies in seven European countries, how teachers knowledge…. and… also the knowledge of others professional groups… how their professional knowledge relates to their lives and work, what they want to do in their lives. JOSÉ: You wrote a book about professional knowledge, professional lives, what is the proposal or of this book? 101

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IVOR: The proposal is that to understand… teachers knowledge and how teachers respond to government reforms… and this is a time of big government reforms everywhere in the world… to understand how teachers respond to reform, we have to understand their lives and work, by which I mean, what is their main idea of their lives, why did they want to teach, what is their life mission, what is their sense of vocation what sort of teachers are they… JOSÉ: The 1980’s and the 1990’s were a time of government curriculum reforms? IVOR: It was an important thing and you have to realise that of all of the reforms in the world, one of the first countries to try to reform teacher education and the curriculum was Great Britain, they were very must, you know, leading this reform, some of the reform I don’t like but… JOSÉ: With Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan… IVOR: Yes, but once you have… you have to understudy in economical terms… once you have what is called ‘Global Deregulation’… JOSÉ: But the curriculum reform in the 80’s and the 90’s have two different directions, in Portugal a direction to decentralise reform based in the curriculum autonomy and in the United States, in the United Kingdom, the direction is to the national curriculum. Do you agree? IVOR: Yes, that is right. It is a very interesting difference and I think it relates…and of course you have… had a movement related to the ‘Nation at Risk’ publication in America to try to get a more nationally organised curriculum in America so in both countries there is a centralising attempt, in other European countries, as you rightly said, is true… Scandinavia as well as Portugal… there is decentralising, however I would say that is because Britain and the United States came early to the new economic reforms and I think what is happening in other countries is they are slowly catching up with that moment, so the moment in Portugal now is the moment where there is more central activity, wouldn’t you say? JOSÉ: Reading your books, we identify some influential names, for example Bernstein and Stenhouse. IVOR: Yes, they are two major influences for me. Lawrence Stenhouse was a big influence for me, I knew him, when I went back to England it was to take out a similar professorship in the University of East Anglia. JOSÉ: Has Stenhouse died? IVOR: He died at in 1982 and he was 56… but we were at the University of East Anglia which is where I returned to… JOSÉ: Is Stenhouse a known author in the United States? IVOR: No. One of the things that always surprises me is that so far no English education people are known in America. I don’t think they get known in America… I don’t understand why…and Stenhouse was not known at all, and a lot of other 102

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English, and there is very good English education, they are not known in America… I never understood why… JOSÉ: Is it important to understand Stenhouse for curriculum studies? IVOR: I think it is because he invented the idea of the teacher as researcher and…which then became action researcher and other things… but the crucial idea was the idea that the teacher should also be a researcher of her or his practice and that is an important idea with some dangerous elements but it is an important idea. JOSÉ: And Basil Bernstein? IVOR: I studied Bernstein when I was at the London Institute in 1969… A Was he your supervisor? IVOR: He was, he was one of my tutors when I was learning to be a teacher and he was very influence. I had done a PhD in History and had become a history lecturer influential in the university and in 1968 I decided to stop being a university lecturer to train to became a school teacher… 1968 was a very interesting year… so I moved from university teaching to school teaching… JOSÉ: Have you taught five years at the secondary school level? IVOR: I did, I went to a very interesting secondary school in England… JOSÉ: Was it a good experience? IVOR: It was a very good experience, it was probably the most interesting five years of my life and I am very glad that I changed the university to school and…but it was a very radical state public school doing very exciting things, it was called Countesthorpe, it was in the middle of England in Leicester, it was mostly teaching working class children. JOSÉ: Do you think Basil Bernstein and Michael Young have played an important role in the curriculum studies? IVOR: Very important, yes. I mean the ideas of the social construction of curriculum, two ideas - the social construction of the curriculum and how that social construction relates to the social groups in society? Does it favour some social groups over others? These seem to me to still be the big questions for a curriculum and those are questions which are less looked at now than they should be, but they’re still the big questions in the curriculum studies. And Bernstein put that question firmly on the table. JOSÉ: Can you describe your personal teaching career according to the Curriculum thoughts? IVOR: Yes, I suppose… I mean, the thing to understand about them is that I was trained in History. So really… JOSÉ: History? Was it your first option? 103

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IVOR: Yes. That was my degree. So, always I see things historically first, so when I came to look at the school curriculum, it was natural for me to use historical schools of thought to understand it and linking that History with the sociology of Bernstein was, I think, a very important marriage of methods because the History gets you into the serious data. It means it´s not totally theory led, so there is a theory but you test that theory against the data all of the time and that’s something I’m very, very enthusiastic about. Always let the data tell the story, and surprise you… JOSÉ: Was your work influenced by sociology and by phenomenology? IVOR: It’s much influenced by existentialism. I’m very keen on understanding lifestyles and life experience, but not so much in a phenomenological way, more in an existential way. And there is a difference there. JOSÉ: Was Paulo Freire important for you? IVOR: Very, very. Freire influenced me greatly. The book The Pedagogy of the Oppressed was very important in making me think about these big questions of how curriculum relates to oppression. And I still thinking of this big question of the book… curriculum studies is the relationship between curriculum and social oppression. JOSÉ: With the notions of a Conscientização… IVOR: Very good… JOSÉ: Conscientização… IVOR: And the whole idea of work on life history is to link it with that Freire idea of pedagogy to get people to talk about their own consciousness. JOSÉ: I found a great influence of Paulo Freire’s ideas in American curriculum studies. Do you agree with these analyses? IVOR: Yes, I think that’s true and, which in a way is surprising, because normally America doesn’t take ideas from outside. But in this case, I think they took …some of the people have taken Freire’s ideas. I wouldn’t say he was massively influential, to be honest, but he is influential. JOSÉ: In the book about Professional Knowledge, Professional Lives, you reject the panacea of more practical study of educations, to extend the theoretical and contextual study of educations. IVOR: I should make this clear, what I’m saying. I’m against what I call practical fundamentalism, by which I mean the belief that all of education, all of educational study, should be about understanding practice. I do absolutely agree that practice is a crucial area of study and that we have to honour and respect practice. I absolutely believe that. What I do not believe is that our study and education should only be about practice. I think you have to retain a space for theory and foundation roles. Without that, the teacher’s knowledge becomes just practical and teacher professionalism loses its claim to status and prestige. So it would be a great loss for teachers if all they were seen as was just practicing people. They also need to be seen as public intellectuals. 104

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JOSÉ: And the curriculum is knowledge. IVOR: Yes, it is. JOSÉ: When we talk about knowledge we must remember the question: What knowledge is of most worth to schools? IVOR: What is the best kind of knowledge for teachers is what you and I were talking about last night, which is whether knowledge gives teachers cognitive maps of power and context, as well as practical knowledge of how to practice. You have to put the two things together. You need, to use Stenhouse’s words, you need ‘a story of action within a theory of context.’ And teachers must never be only seen as ‘stories of action’; they also have to be given theories of context to understand, for example, why what it is to be a teacher is being changed by governments at the moment. Once the teacher was an autonomous and decentralized profession. Now, he or she is becoming a compliant technician doing what the government tells them. And that’s a very… big contextual change. JOSÉ: Sociologist, like Michael Apple and others put the other question - whose is this knowledge? Is it a social question? IVOR: These are social questions and, of course, it’s true - whose knowledge is it? Knowledge is always penetrated by power. I mean, I’m much influenced by Foucault, and I’m much influenced by Bourdieu, Pierre Bourdieu, the French sociologist. Both of them, in very sophisticated ways, put the question of whose knowledge is this and what kind of knowledge. And I would say the French Sociology have had, through Foucault and Bordieu, is very influential for me. JOSÉ: Are you Marxist or post-Marxist ? IVOR: No…I’m not. I am much influenced, as everybody should be, by such readings. But I go back to what I said earlier - what I am is somebody who studies the empirical data, and only then draws conclusions. I do not approach data thinking I have the complete answer. That’s the difference between me and certain types of Marxism, also certain types of Positivism, certain types of Scientism. It’s that I don’t approach knowledge thinking I know the theoretical answer before I see it. And I’m often very surprised, therefore, by what I find. Sometimes the answer looks quite Marxist; sometimes it doesn’t look Marxist at all. JOSÉ: The Marxism is necessary to understand the curriculum but is not the final theory, no? IVOR: Absolutely right! It’s a very important tool, but it’s not the only tool. And it’s not the final answer. The final answer always is what the data is telling you and you can’t know the final answer before you ask the question. That’s the critical difference here. So, yes - Marxism is very important, so are other things, but it’s not… it is not an answer that precedes the question. JOSÉ: Now the state of the curriculum field is intersected by the Post-structuralism. What do you think about this? 105

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IVOR: I’m quite interested in some of the post-structural work. Um…and I’m quite into…for me, going back to what I just said about the data - I’m always most interested in studying the middle ground, as I call it in the book Studying Curriculum, between structure and agency. So I’m interested in looking at - I always think structure is important and I always think agency is important but I’m interested in where it is that structure and agency gets mediated. For example, the curriculum is where structure and agency negotiate. School subjects are where things get negotiated, school classrooms are. I want to look at that negotiation because what I say to you is: the negotiation can go in many directions. I don’t believe it is structurally determined. Structure sets parameters, but action can always act back. So you never know, until you study it, what the relationship between structure and agency is. Yeah? JOSÉ: And the cultural studies have now a strong influence on curricular studies? Do you agree? IVOR: Yes and… and rightly. Um… I think some of the…and as you know, some of the curriculum scholars have left curriculum to go into cultural studies - Henry Giroux, Maclaren… JOSÉ: And Michael Apple IVOR: Have left the field. Um… I think that’s regrettable. I would have preferred to bring cultural studies into the curriculum field and into education. JOSÉ: For some authors the curriculum cultural studies are a subset of curriculum studies. What do you think? IVOR: As I said to you, I think as far as curriculum studies goes, I would have brought cultural studies into it. But I also would say cultural studies have a series of issues that it needs to look at in its own right. So, I don’t… I think it’s… both are true. You can bring cultural studies into curriculum studies, but that’s not the total of cultural studies. It has other things it’s interested in and should be. So I think they’re two free-standing areas, but it’s a pity when people leave curriculum completely to go into cultural studies. I would prefer to move between the two fields. JOSÉ: Between the two fields… IVOR: Yes JOSÉ: And did you undertake History and Geography, Biology, Rural Studies, European Studies, Computer Education and other school subjects why your interest studying these questions? IVOR: To me, that’s the most obvious point about curriculum. But it doesn’t seem obvious to other people. Which is… what… what amazed me when I started to do curriculum studies was people had not looked at the actual curriculum of school subjects in an analytical way. Why had people not studied the History and Sociology of school subjects before? Is my question. I still don’t know the answer, because that is what is happening in schools, in school subjects. They are the crucial vehicle 106

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of curriculum. Why nobody understood the History, I don’t still know. So that’s what I tried to do when I came into the field in the 1970’s was to start a set of enquiries and to launch a series of books on the History of School Subjects and…it seems to me that that…that study is still going on around the world. You look in Portugal, you look in Brazil, you look in China - people are now studying the History and Sociology of school subjects, so I’m pleased by that. It seems to me that that should have been done much earlier and I’m surprised it wasn’t. But now it is being done. JOSÉ: Is the history of the Curriculum the history of the disciplines? IVOR: Yes, partly it is. I mean, there’s a relationship between the disciplines and school subjects. Again they get mediated… JOSÉ: What are the new directions for the study of life and work of teaching now? IVOR: I think the new directions are to try and put together a lot of the original work on the social construction of curriculum and to show how that influenced the life and work of teachers. And to look at both ends of that chain, to look at the social construction of schooling and curriculum on the one hand, and show how that socially constructs the life and work of teachers. And I think it’s very important to look at the life and work of teachers because, at the moment of great reform, you have to understand how those reforms either collide with or harmonise with teachers’ life and work dreams. JOSÉ: The curriculum is open to intersections of the different levels or different politics. How do you explain the relation between macro-politics and micro-politics? IVOR: Well, I think that’s a key question. In the European project we’ve studied at the moment. But I go back to what I said to you. I’m interested in the middle ground. I’m interested in how a macro-movement to restructure schools across the world interacts with the local levels… JOSÉ: The national and the supranational levels? IVOR: All of those happen, but they happen always in local situations. And what you have to understand is what I call the process of refraction1: how a world movement to change curriculum actually gets redirected as it moves toward the micromoment. And that’s what we should be studying - that process of refraction where the macro world movement works its way into the micro and gets redirected, reculturalised, changed, in the process of negotiation. It doesn’t just happen - somebody says, “We will restructure curriculum” and it gets restructured. That restructuring itself gets restructured in the process of moving from macro to micro and back again. JOSÉ: And what about the place of micro-politics, is it the classroom or is also the school? IVOR: There I would say, and also the teacher’s mind and body. You see, I think the crucial agency here is not even the school or the classroom. The crucial agency, still, is the individual teacher. That’s where the macro can be redirected and changed. 107

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So, one’s interest is still in the individual teacher and the collective body of teachers as agents who can change things. And this they clearly can - if you look at how Portuguese teachers have responded to restructuring and compare them with English teachers. The Portuguese are much less… they’re much more loosely coupled and decoupled. JOSÉ: How do you observe now the effects of globalization in the school practice and in the teacher practice? IVOR: It’s the same answer to the one I just gave, which is it is variable. Sometimes, the globalised intentions, you can see the professional teacher being reframed that way. Sometimes they resist. Sometimes they decouple. And you don’t know until you’ve studied the individual teacher’s classroom what is happening viz á viz globalization. It may be working out, it may not be. That’s why this journey from the macro-globalised to the micro-local is a perilous journey and you have to study that journey before you know how the teacher and the practice is acting. You don’t know till you’ve studied it. JOSÉ: And the globalization makes more equals the schools. IVOR: Well, it’s the same answer again. Maybe yes, maybe no. I would say globalization gets redirected… hum… according to the national and local and classroom context. Sometimes it makes similarities. Sometimes it increases differences. We don’t know till we’ve studied it. JOSÉ: And can you say that there is a European curriculum in the elementary and secondary schools? IVOR: To some degree yes and to some degree no. Again, there are European similarities and there are, as we know, big European differences. So, yes, maybe sometimes… and no, maybe sometimes. Again, we have to study it, but there is… there are some similarities and some big differences. JOSÉ: And the similarities of the English and Portuguese schools are about the subjects of disciplines? IVOR: I think the subjects are similar, aren’t they? JOSÉ: The Maths, the Science are always into the schools. IVOR: I think the whole notion of school subjects is it’s a world movement. So those things are the same. They might be taught differently, but they are the same. But within that, there is still variety in the classroom. So, the variety in the degree to which teachers have to teach to a detailed curriculum or have control over the curriculum. These are the big differences, so there are school subjects. But what goes on underneath may be very different according to how much freedom the teacher has as a professional. JOSÉ: And does the globalization work with a national curriculum, an external evaluation? 108

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IVOR: It does. And the whole idea there is to bring everything into one scheme. But that’s not working very well when you look across Europe. I mean, there are vast differences between Northern European states and Southern European states. In the Southern states there’s much less central control even though you may feel there is in Portugal - there’s much less than England and Europe. JOSÉ: António Flávio studied Brazilian schools and he argues there is the hybridism. Is it impossible to import models from other countries? IVOR: It is. I mean, António Flávio’s work is very important…very important to me, very important to Brazil. And his notion of hybridism says, in a way, what I’ve been saying, which is that there’s so much variety. You cannot impose an external world movement on a country or a context because the context changes it. And he has fully understood that and studied that. JOSÉ: Is the Bologna Process an indicator of this curriculum standardization? IVOR: Well, it’s an indication of the intention to standardize. It’s not… it’s not evidence of the successful implementation of standardization. The intention is there, the implementation is still variable. JOSÉ: How do you observe the Bologna process in higher education? IVOR: Well, I think what’s very surprising for me in England, is the degree to which the English who have traditionally been, shall we say freedom loving, have accepted standardization, have accepted targets, tests and tables - the three ‘T’s’…. I’m astonished by the last 20 years in England and how… how easily it has been to standardise education. And how curriculum scholars, for example, have not been involved in any kind of contest around that. I mean, some of the most important work on the social construction of curriculum came out of England but none of the lessons of that work have been used since the National Curriculum was pronounced. It is a sad and sorry story what has happened in Britain and how, in a sense, the standardization movement has not been as contested as it has in other countries. JOSÉ: The Bologna process is to the universities. Do you believe in a Bologna process to elementary and secondary schools? IVOR: No, I don’t. I am not a great fan of standardization whether it’s in higher education, where I say there has been acceptance of the research assessment exercise, acceptance of the sort of targets thing. I don’t think it’s a process which will be… which should go further in the United Kingdom. I think we have more than enough harmonization at school level and, in fact, more than enough at higher education level where Bologna started. And so, I don’t think it helps the British situation. JOSÉ: Because of the Bologna process, the first step is the standardization of the degrees. And, I guess, the second step it will be the standardization of the subjects. IVOR: Yes. Yeah, I mean, what you’re seeing in the Bologna process, if you like, is what in England, what has happened already in the schools. They’re taking it so…it’s interesting for curriculum scholars to reflect on this, which is, it’s the old 109

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story of people being controlled by the curriculum and here the curriculum being used to standardise people’s identity and prospects. So we’re back where we started, in understanding the intentions behind the social construction of curriculum. And Bologna is, in some ways, a similar process: it’s using the academic disciplines to discipline the population, not to standardise them. So, I think it’s the same lesson as we’ve already learnt in schools, which the school subject work which I was involved in helped to show… JOSÉ: Because of some politicians of Union Europeans are talking about European History to elementary and secondary schools. IVOR: That’s right, I mean, the strange thing for me is I was heavily involved in the late 1970’s in defining European curriculum models. I saw Europe as an important vehicle for social justice, and I still do but I should… I don’t think it should be too hooked on standardization or teaching European content. It should be more concerned to underwrite the freedom of professional groups to teach. So, I think it should… it’s going down a wrong road in terms of seeking standardization. Having said that, I understand why Bologna would want some degree of similarities across the European countries. I understand that. We live in a practical world - labour has to be… there has to be mobility between countries. And for there to be mobility, there has to be some degree of standardization. So I’m not wholly opposed but I just want to get some balance in the equation with Bologna. JOSÉ: Has the globalization some effects on the curriculum theory? IVOR: Well, we have to say… we have to take a step back and say what has happened to curriculum theory in the last 10 or 20 years. My own sense of it is that if you go back to curriculum theory in the 1970’s and 1980’s, it was asking big questions - not just about what… it was asking big questions not just about how things were being delivered in the schools. But it was also asking about what was being delivered in the schools. Now it is more concerned with delivery. So one curriculum question we need would be: how to make sure the national curriculum is implemented? And what is the national curriculum? I would have wanted the question to be: why the national curriculum? What kind of knowledge is the national curriculum privileging and prioritizing? And those questions have not been asked in the last 10 or 15 years. So it shows the curriculum theory has moved away from understanding social context and understanding social construction. And for me, that’s one of the sadnesses of what has happened to curriculum theory globally. It has moved away from its main social mission into delivery. JOSÉ: Is the globalization on curriculum theory a special return to Ralph Tyler ideas? IVOR: Yes, it is. Yeah, it is. It’s back to scientific management and, for me, that’s a huge step backwards. And curriculum theory is not helped there… JOSÉ: In your books you acknowledge the necessity to relocate the public educations in our proposals. Is public education a good question to our work today? IVOR: Yes, it is. For me, the question always has to be related to the public. I mean, I wrote a paper recently called ‘The Educational Researcher as Public Intellectual’ 110

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and I think that’s what… researchers in curriculum should be - they should be public intellectuals concerned with public education, committed to the public, not committed to private delivery or privatization or marketisation. That’s the wrong route in my view. JOSÉ: Do you work in curriculum studies with the relation between public and private? IVOR: I’m much concerned with the balance between public and private. My concern has always been to defend public education against attacks and to make sure that public education remains the vehicle for equal opportunities for all children, not just people who can buy it, not just the rich and powerful. And that’s what markets do - they respect the rich and powerful at the expense of the poor. That’s not what I believe in. JOSÉ: Can you talk about research methodology? About qualitative research, what do you think about this? Qualitative research is it crucial to your study? IVOR: It is. I mean, qualitative research always brings up the questions that I talked about: of social construction and social context. It always asks the question - who is being privileged and prioritised here? Which people are being marginalised? Which people have a voice? Which people have power? Which people are being respected? And quantitative work doesn’t ask any of those questions; it simply looks at numbers and deliveries. There’s… there’s a place for that, but it’s not asking the big social questions. Qualitative research, when properly done, asks the big social questions, which is why it’s sometimes unpopular. JOSÉ: Is the study of curriculum formal and informal? IVOR: Yes, very much. And the informal, of course, is… is extremely important especially in… in the new world in which we’re going. We have to study the informal, what… what is called the hidden curriculum. That needs to be a source of study. And that’s often neglected still. JOSÉ: Because you reject the curriculum theory as a prescription and you defend the curriculum as a social construction, according to your book published in Portugal. Any comment? IVOR: I’m more concerned with the social construction than the prescription. To just look at the prescription is merely to accept that power over curriculum is designated by governments and administrators. I will never accept that… should be equally shared and it should be used to try and generate equality and social justice, and prescriptions don’t do that. JOSÉ: In the studying the curriculum, you are a social constructionist? IVOR: Yes, absolutely. Socialist constructionist in both those senses. I believe that empirically, curriculum is a social construction. I think we proved that beyond any doubt. What that means is that curriculum prioritises certain powerful groups over other groups. But I also think, if you understand this is a social construction, you 111

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then understand it can be constructed in other ways. And so, there’s nothing prescriptive and given and final about curriculum. Curriculum is tentative, hopeful, and possible; it’s not prescriptive. And that’s the crucial message to get through to people is it’s something to be struggled over, something to be contested, something to be socially constructed. JOSÉ: Bill Pinar writes about the particular social theory. Is there a particular social theory in your mind? IVOR: I think there are competing social theories about curriculum. Um… I don’t… as I said to you, I don’t call for one particular social theory because I think both data is variable and so is the way that practice plays out. It is variable. So you have to… you have to have in your repertoire a range of social theories in any explanation of practice, in any of the inspirational practice. JOSÉ: Bill Pinar is a well known contemporary educational thinker. What do you think about him? IVOR: He’s very good. I’ve liked him for a long time, and his original direction of the re-conceptualization, as I called it, was a pivotal moment in curriculum studies in the 1970s, too. In a way, the notion of the re-conceptualization is very similar to what I’ve just said about social construction. It talks about the hope and possibility… Re-conceptualization basically says all things are possible. So, I respected that reconceptualist moment for a long time and I’ve, of course, known Bill for many years. JOSÉ: What was the conceptual distinction for you? IVOR: For me, re-conceptualization was what I’ve said, which was that…there are many social possibilities embedded in curriculum. What we must never do is accept that the prescriptions which are there are the only way forward, because prescriptions are always penetrated by power. And the role of re-conceptualization, the role of curriculum studies, is to resist easy prescriptions. JOSÉ: Is it a paradigmatic shift in the curricular field? IVOR: Yes, it is. And an important shift. IVOR: A shift from prescriptions to understanding. IVOR: Absolutely! And that’s the critical shift which curriculum has to go back to. Curriculum studies has been lured into the area of prescription and delivery. It needs to get out of the area of prescription and delivery and go back to conceptualizing and contextualizing and linking back to theory. That is the moment when curriculum studies becomes hopeful again. JOSÉ: But the re-conceptualization was an American movement? IVOR: It was. JOSÉ: Not a European movement? IVOR: No, and that’s what’s interesting about the re-conceptualization. It was, of course, at a time coming after Lyndon Johnson’s election…it was a time of social 112

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inclusive hope in America. That hope seems to me to be less…less present in the Bush régime in America. I think, America at the moment would be a good candidate for régime change, to be honest. But, I came back to Europe because I still feel that many of the social theories I talked to you about… re-conceptualization, a good American example, but there are also important European examples: I’ve mentioned Foucault, I’ve mentioned Bernstein, I’ve mentioned Bordieu. So, putting together American re-conceptualization and European social thought seems to me the right combination for curriculum studies now. JOSÉ: Nevertheless, the history of curriculum studies it is not the history of American studies. Can you comment? IVOR: No, it is not, no. And it’s not solely, of course, European studies. It’s the marriage of all of the curriculum studies in the world. It’s not just Europe, it’s not just Anglo-American, and it’s not just European and American. There’s much to be learnt from Africa and Asia… and China. JOSÉ: How do you see in this moment the movement founded by Bill Pinar to the internationalization of curriculum studies? IVOR: It’s interesting. I mean, that… that’s one of the things that Bill Pinar is extremely good at - is finding in the moment lines of possibility… line of enquiry. So, to have identified internationalization as both a theme for study and a theme for progress seems to me to be very strategically and politically astute. He’s very good at that. It’s back to what I’ve said. It’s putting the contest back on the table. JOSÉ: And what do you think about the method of currere? IVOR: I like it. I’ve used it in much that I’ve written. I’ve written a paper called ‘Chariots of Fire’ which uses that whole notion. That’s in a book called The Making of Curriculum. So, there’s been an exchange between the re-conceptualised, the reconceptualist and… and the European theorists since the 1970’s. And, of course, that is… JOSÉ: For you, the method of currere is it an autobiography method? IVOR: It is. JOSÉ: And you deeply work the autobiography, no? IVOR: Yes, I do. I mean, what I do is always put together the autobiographical and the personal with the political and the social. I think the two must always coexist, so to go back to that phrase “a story of action within a theory of context” puts together the particular and the personal, then the autobiographical with the social, the political and the historical. That’s the combination I always want; not one, not the other - both. JOSÉ: Because for Bill Pinar for the first step of the method is the past, the regressive step. What do you think about the importance of the history in the currere method? IVOR: I agree with that. 113

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JOSÉ: The re-conceptualization has two waves - the political and the personal. Is it a simple division? IVOR: It is a division. I think it’s a regrettable division in terms of curriculum studies. My own view is that, as I say, we need a synthesis that puts back together again the personal and the political. It’s obvious to me, as feminists have said for some time, that the personal is political and the political is personal. Um… to have that division, has to be bad for the field. So, my own view is always - and I think that’s what I’ve stood for in curriculum studies - is to put together the personal and the political at every point in study. JOSÉ: And, what is the place of the personal on the curriculum studies? IVOR: Well, the place of the personal is very important. I mean, and Bill Pinar is absolutely right about that. And I guess the place of the person is becoming more important in an individualizing society where enormous flexibility and diversity happens at the individual level. So, the individual is an important site for contestation but I never want to lose the collective vision, I never want to lose the notion of the social. So, I always put the two things together. JOSÉ: And not to lose the context of the personal… IVOR: No, never. That would be a fatal mistake. JOSÉ: Do you accept the personal as the curriculum subject? IVOR: I accept the personal as one subject, but I also embrace the social. And so I always think that the future for curriculum studies has to be putting that together again. JOSÉ: And in Pinar’s storying book Curriculum Towards the New Identities, you have a chapter about storing the self: the life politics and study of a teacher’s life and work. Is it the life story and the history of life or the relation between personal and political? IVOR: The distinction that puts that together again, which is that the life story, in my terms, is the individual story that a person tells. The life history sets that personal story in the historical context. So, for me, the critical distinction in all of the work I’m now doing is the embrace of the life history method, which puts together the personal and the social. I never want to get drawn into just individual stories, individual narrations. They are important, but they’re also crucial ways to understand the social and political. JOSÉ: And you make the bridge between the two waves of the re-conceptualization, the personal and the political, no? IVOR: Yes, I do. Yeah…that synthesis is very important to me and I… I say again, very important for the curriculum field to understand that we do the same…that those two things at the same time. It’s like ‘Humpty Dumpty’ - when you fall off the wall and it breaks apart, it’s very difficult to put Humpty Dumpty together. You don’t know the story of Humpty Dumpty, who fell off a wall and broke into two parts, three parts? You have to put Humpty Dumpty together again in curriculum. 114

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JOSÉ: For you is it important to acknowledge these two sides of curriculum studies? IVOR: And to study them at the same time, synthetically, not in a divisive way, not separately. Synthetically, not separately. JOSÉ: More two questions, the usual questions to a curriculum theorist. What is the state of curriculum studies field today? IVOR: As I think I’ve said to you - I mean, we’ve talked about some of the difficulties. One of the difficulties is the division between the personal and the political… JOSÉ: Yes. Is a theoretical division. IVOR: That’s a serious question that needs to be addressed. The other question is the embrace of the prescriptive, the fact that curriculum studies is being drawn into only understanding delivery and not understanding what it is that’s being delivered. So, it needs to go back to that moment where it studies the very curriculum which is being delivered, not just its delivery. So, two problems: the personal and political need to be put together again and the temptation to just get involved in prescription and delivery must always be resisted. JOSÉ: And the last questions. If we make a synthesis of your career, we find you as a secondary teacher. Where? IVOR: In the Midlands of England, in the centre of England. JOSÉ: During five years… IVOR: Five years, yes. JOSÉ: And after? IVOR: I went to the University of Sussex to study where those school subjects that I was teaching had come from. So, I was looking then at what it was that I’d been asked to teach. Where (it had come from.) JOSÉ: For a long time? IVOR: So, I was at the University of Sussex, then… first of all, studying where school subjects came from to do the PhD. And then, running a European research unit, which studied European curriculum and then, in 1986… I decided to move to Canada because England was… JOSÉ: To Vancouver? IVOR: No, to Ontario. To London, Ontario, where I stayed for 10 years and ran, again, a research unit and then I moved back to the University that Lawrence Stenhouse came from, the University of East Anglia, at the same time as working in the Graduate School in the University of Rochester in New York State. So, for a long time, I was working half the year in America, half the year in England. And then, finally, I’ve come back to Europe totally and it’s very nice to be back. 115

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JOSÉ: And when did you go to Brighton University? IVOR: I moved to Brighton in 2004. And I’m feeling… I’m happy to be there because it’s… it’s where we… where we first got married and we moved back to the home that we got married in 35 years ago. So, we… we have come home. NOTES 1

I. F.Goodson. (2010) Times of educational change: towards an understanding of patterns of historical and cultural refraction, Journal of Educational Policy, Vol. 25(6), pp. 767–775.

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DEVELOPING LIFE AND WORK HISTORIES OF TEACHERS Lecture and Conversation at Tokyo Gakugei University, 11 January 2010

Thank you very much. It’s lovely to be back in Japan. I was first here nearly 20 years ago, and I have spent a lot of time working and understanding Japanese events. One of the reasons it’s been easy is that so many Japanese students have come to spend time with me in England, or when I was working in America. Ken was with me for 2 years in England and managed to produce a baby while he was there. And Hiro came from Hiroshima and Professor Tanaka, so I have very close links with Japan and I value them enormously. What I want to do today is organize the talk into 3 sessions and 3 sections, and I won’t be referring in detail actually to the paper I have given out because I wanted you to have a paper with a lot of information in it as data, but it seems to me it would be a little silly to just repeat that in my talk. So, I want to make 3 kinds of responses to the importance of life history. So there are 3 sections, in the first section I want to look at the argument for doing life history, and I want to locate it in the kind of changes that are going on within the field of education generally because it’s one thing to do life history, but it’s important to understand its political and social and ideological significance. In the second section I’ll look a little bit about some of the methods of life history, how it’s done and what the crucial distinction is between life story and life history, between what we call in England and America narratives, what you would call life stories. And the distinction between those teacher stories and teacher life histories. And I’ll certainly leave time, and I would expect time to answer specific questions on life history methods and how to do it. I know that’s one of the areas of interest, and it’s an area that’s best dealt with answering specific questions for people. So, in the question and answer session I’ll certainly be happy to go through some of the techniques with you. In the last section, if I have got time, I am going to deal with a really huge project I have been directing in seven countries in Europe, where we have been using life history work to understand all of the educational reforms that are going on in these seven countries. And if I can go through some of it with you I think you can see how life history work puts the teacher’s point of view forward in analyzing the kind of reforms which governments tend to come up with, without necessarily considering too much what teachers think. So let’s go to section one, what the relevance of life history is to the general field of education, because there are great similarities actually in most countries as 117

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to what’s happened in the field of educational study in the last 20 or 30 years. One of the mistakes we all make is to think that each country is distinctive and unique. Many of things that are going on in education are part of what John Meye calls a ‘world movement’. And it’s important in each nation state to understand the world movement aspects, so as you can understand the distinctive responses in your own country. If we go back a few years, 10 years, 20 years, educational study was made up of a number of foundational disciplines. So you would study in detail history of education, sociology of education, philosophy of education. And there would be some time set aside for practical things, but by large the theory and the message of teacher education was embedded within these foundational disciplines of history of education, sociology of education and philosophy of education. This is where we come to a crucial dilemma which is if you’re a classroom teacher there has always been a considerable amount of uncertainty about the value of theory. When I was a school teacher I didn’t believe too much in theoretical research, and was very uncertain about whether theory was valuable to my classroom practice. So what we’ve seen in the last 20 years is a reaction against educational theory in favor of teacher’s practical knowledge. This move towards practical knowledge is becoming quite strong in Japan. I have just come back from Hiroshima where there is a whole new initiative there to introduce a new educational doctorate, and a new set of programs. And most of it is based around the notion of a practicum and the notion of theory and more deep understandings of education seem to me to be in a sense being minimized. So once we make this move into the practical knowledge domain which many classroom teachers would favor, there are two dilemmas that I want to talk to you about. The first dilemma turns on the whole idea of teaching being a profession. It seems very important, in my view, that teaching continues to be seen as a full-bodied profession because from that the whole pattern of status and resources and salaries and working conditions turns, so we have to think very hard when we mess around with the knowledge base of educational study, because it might imperil the claim to be a professional group. And in all western societies there is a unanimous view as to what constitutes a profession. If you look at medicine or law or the major professions, they all have within them a codified theoretical body of knowledge, a body of expertise which, to be honest, moves beyond the practical. So if you start evacuating that knowledge base in favor of practical embrace, you deeply imperil the claim to be a profession. And there’s a second dilemma, if we go right down the road of practical knowledge. The second dilemma is, practical knowledge is one kind of knowledge, but it doesn’t connect with the big picture of how teacher’s life and work is changing. So if the only knowledge teachers have is their practical knowledge they are foregoing the chance to have large political and social and ideological understandings of how their work is being restructured. I will give you a concrete example of that which is, I was working in Canada in 1990 and I was invited to do a very large project on teacher’s stories by the government, and I was very excited to do that. Until I met at the Ministry of Education 118

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who explained to me that from now on teacher education in Ontario would be entirely based on teachers’ stories. So I asked him is this the case that teachers will be educated in their stories and if so who will have all the political, financial and social knowledge about teaching. And he gave me this answer, he said, the teachers will be educated in practical knowledge and stories. The leaders of the schools and the heads of the schools boards and the politicians will be educated in the political, ideological and resource implications of teaching. So there would be a clear division here where teachers have their stories, and the leaders and the politicians had the old theoretical big picture. So this was a moment of great difficulty for me because I am highly convinced of the need to hear the teacher’s voice, to have the teacher represented. But here is somebody telling me actually at the very moment that we are going to listen to teacher’s stories, we are also in a sense going to disempower them by the very act of listening only to their stories. It’s a paradox of the most difficult kind and it needs to be grasped, because once you go down that road it’s very hard to get back what is lost. So far I am being negative in worrying about developments but let’s be more positive now and think, in a sense, what’s the answer to the dilemma. What I am looking for and have been looking for all my professional life is a form of research and theory, which takes seriously the teacher’s life and work, listens carefully to the teacher’s voice, and helps the teacher develop a professional sense of themselves, and helps them develop the notion of teaching as a profession. So we have moved away from a situation where the old theories of history of education and so on have moved to the side, we have moved into a situation where practical knowledge is being embraced. Where, to some extent, teacher’s stories are being listened to, but we have two dilemmas. One is we risk losing professional status, and secondly the teacher risks losing any chance of understanding the big picture of political constructions and ideological manipulation. I hope you can see that the answer potentially to that question of how to involve an understanding of the teacher’s world with a set of professional discourses, the answer to that is proper fully fledged life history work which helps everybody understand the teacher’s life and work. Let’s think a bit more about how life history puts theory and historical understanding back into the mix, if we can look at the chart. So at the top we have just Teacher’s Story

Other Testimonies

Documentary Sources

Figure 1. Life history as triangulation in I. F. Goodson, (2008). 119

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got the story that the teacher tells. So that is practical knowledge without all of the historical and theoretical and ideological conditioning within it. That’s just the story we understand at the beginning. The question we’re left with is, as we listen attentively to teacher’s stories, and we make the teacher’s voice the center of the operation, how can we broaden that understanding so that in the process of telling the story the teacher also comes to understand all of the political and social and ideological pressures that exist on their work, because that is proper teacher education. So the crucial distinction to understand is between the initial teacher life story that you start the process with, and turning that into a full teacher life history, that’s the distinction that we have to try and understand that. This is called a process of triangulation, as you can see it’s a triangle. Triangulation starts with the teacher’s story but it then involves a range of other testimonies from other teachers, other data, and it provides all of the documentary and historical evidence that’s out there about the school the teacher is in, the reforms of the time, all of the political pressures on the teacher, so you’re putting politics and theory back into the mix. So, the life story is at the top of this. The whole triangulated package, when we’ve listened to other testimonies, we have done our historical and documentary work that whole triangulated package is what I mean by the life history. Now, let’s think a little bit about how we do life history work. This is the process that one would go through if I were doing life history work with an individual teacher, shall we say. In the first interview with you I wouldn’t be asking many questions at all, I would probably simply start with sitting down with a cup of tea or a beer and basically saying, okay, tell me your life story, tell me your life story in teaching. But having done that first interview with you it’s your story, so the teacher is in control of the data flow. What this does incidentally is change the normal relationship between an academic researcher and a teacher. Why does it change that relationship because normally the academic researcher comes in to the classroom or comes to meet the teacher and asks a series of essentially research-oriented questions. So in this situation the researcher is, from the beginning, in complete charge of what data is accepted and looked for. With the life story you are listening, and the person in charge of the data flow, at the beginning, is the teacher. This reverses the normal pattern of research knowledge. So only by very carefully and silently listening to the teacher, can the research begin. And what’s surprising when you do it, and certainly is true of me is how difficult as a researcher it is to be silent, to not be in total control, and to listen. I mean one of the most common complaints from researchers of life history is – isn’t it exhausting listening to people, which is of course why we find listening so difficult, it’s very tiring, especially if you are doing lots of interviews. However, it’s the only way to start serious life history work. Where the life history research becomes really interesting is as the stages develop, so you have listened carefully to the teacher’s story of their professional life. And what I do then is I transcribe, I write down the interview and I pass the interview back to the teacher and we meet again. Actually often when you give transcripts back to teachers their first instinct is to mark the transcript, and I have had them 120

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back where they actually give me a grade for the interview. But once you’ve got that transcript, it’s the crucial starting point for a serious set of collaboration where you’re actually asking a lot of serious questions; why did you tell the story this way, why is your vision of teaching like this, why is the school like that at this time and why did it change? As the subsequent interviews go on and you analyze the transcript and you move into a series of questions on both sides, the teacher asking questions back, you’re asking questions, you really begin to find an understanding, a historical and theoretical understanding of the teacher’s life world. So at the end of the process what you should have is an understanding of a life story within its historical context and within its political context so that the teacher’s understanding of their story is greater than it was at the beginning of the process, when your understanding of their story is similarly greater than it was at the beginning of the process. So to put it simply, at the end of the process the teacher has taught the researcher a great deal about their world, and the researcher has also taught the teacher about certain aspects of their world. So it’s a, what I call, fair trade where both people’s understanding has increased. It’s very different from the traditional model of research, where the teacher stays where they are and the researcher introduces and increases their understanding. I know I have run out of time, I am only just beginning to get to my third section, but let me talk a bit about the third section which is a project I have been working on for the last five years. This is a large project run by the European Union, which is the union which governs the 27 countries of Europe, and it’s a study of teacher education in 7 countries. I am the British representative at the European Commission with regard to teacher education. And the most interesting thing in case you think this kind of research sounds rather radical, it won’t happen, is that that the European Commission is absolutely convinced of the importance of life history work. I will tell you why they are interested and why the American government has been funding life history work. It’s because they are spending vast amounts of money trying to restructure educational systems and the teachers are not responding in the way they expect. And the only way that they can get some sense of why all the reforms are failing and why all the money is being wasted is to finally study and listen to the teacher’s responses to those reforms. And what you’ll see here is that on the far side of what I call work life narratives which are basically life histories. And on this side are the various new policies that came up in the seven countries. The seven countries incidentally are Finland, Sweden, England, Ireland, Greece, Portugal and Spain. Now the most neoliberal country, the country that’s taken the reforms and pretty well complied with it, is actually my own country England, they’ve been the most compliant and the most accepting of the new accountability, testing, targets regime that most governments are trying to insist on at the moment. So the top integration where the professionals basically accept the reform without protest is the English model. The pattern of resistance, you see here, is particularly true of three countries in the South; that’s Greece, Spain and Portugal. If you think about it, these are three 121

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countries which had long periods of dictatorship, and there is a deep distrust of government initiatives, particularly among professional groups.

Figure 2. Published in I. F Goodson and S. Lindblad (2010). 122

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So what happens in those countries is a huge battle between the teacher unions and the teachers on one side, and the government and the people trying to restructure education on the other. And the battle goes on and on and on, and really the only victims are the children and the teachers in the school. The most sophisticated example is Finland which is at the bottom. What the Finnish do is the government pronounces a series of policies, the teacher unions and the teachers don’t contest this. They simply ignore them, and they don’t take any interest at all in the government reforms, the government goes on pronouncing what’s going on and the teachers go on teaching in the way they always have. I think you can see though here how work life narratives and narratives of teacher’s life and work can show, in a very interpretive way, how government initiatives either succeed or fail and why. And show the sheer virtue of life history work, in trying to examine and elucidate and generally elaborate how these things happen in the real world. I must not stop now but I want to say one thing which is that this model here is the model of accountability, and targets, and reforms which seem to me to be currently coming your way in Japan. So this model is the model, as I understand it, that a lot of school boards and governments here in Japan are going for. The Finnish model is entirely different where you have loose coupling, and the teachers are trusted as professionals to do what they have always done. Now, interestingly, there is a chance to evaluate which of these two policies generates the best educational standards because in Europe there is a system called PISA. PISA is a set of league tables showing what are the highest standards, exam results, and everything in the school. Now this model, the English model, the model being followed by Japan, came bottom in the list of achievements of standards. Absolutely bottom. This model, the opposite of what you’re doing which is where you trust your professionals, came top. And I will leave you to think about that, thank you. DISCUSSION

UESUGI: Thank you very much. My name is Uesugi from Tokyo Gakugei University. You have mentioned that in the 1990s in the State of Ontario in Canada, the government declared that teacher education will only be based on life history, so I would like to ask for the background against which such an idea emerged from this Ministry of Education in the government in those days. What is the background against that idea? I think that there were local as well as global elements that could be in the background picture. IVOR GOODSON: Yeah, you are right. There are a lot of local elements there, in the sense that the Ontario Institute had a group of researchers; who had been pushing personal practical knowledge. The important point is that that fits with the kind of restructuring that was going on, so the paradox was they were using teachers’ stories to actually silence teacher power and that’s what I wanted to concentrate on, it really made me concentrate actually. UESUGI: In those days again in the back of this progressive government, I would say that the teachers union was in a force in the back of this government, is that the case? 123

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IVOR GOODSON: No, I mean the period of the NDP government was 1992 to 1995. I am talking about the period before when there was a Liberal government, but in one sense you are right which is that teacher unions traditionally had been very opposed to academic research, and were very much in favor of practical knowledge and it’s only later that they realized the embracive practical knowledge destroys their claim to be a profession. ASANO: My name is Ueno [Asano] from Bunkyo University. Thank you very much for your lecture. I was able to understand the life history method through your lecture and the takeaway from the message that you gave us, Professor Goodson, is that if you look at educational reform and social change through life history work then you will be able to elucidate the complexities of such education and social change. So, you will be able to visualize what really happened through that history of work. Now let me give you a concrete example of Japan, since National Curriculum was revised in 1998 and the comprehensive education was therefore introduced, there were teachers, groups of teachers who were committed to such a revision and there were also other groups of teachers who were opposed and were not compliant with such a reform and how this attitude was presented in the school setting, it was different from one school to another. I think this is a major feature about the educational reform understands the teachers’ state in Japan. There would people who will be resistant to such a reform and there will be people who will be compliant to such a reform. And in the case of Japan, sometimes teachers try to accommodate such reform and try to reinterpret what the reform meant to them by conveniently interpreting for their own benefit. So this and how they accommodated with this reform change from one school to another because teachers interact with each other, they consult with each other to decide what kind of a stance that it would take vis-à-vis this reform. And of course there is the national picture of educational reform, but there is that school context, a local context. Of course, it’s that eventually they will be linked with each other but there is the local context which is quite separate from the national context. So there is micro politics underway in each of these schools, but how do you look at this micro politics at school level? IVOR GOODSON: Yeah, that’s a very sophisticated question. It’s a good one. I mean I talk about refraction in the latest book which is how each policy gets redirected at the different contextual levels; the national level, classroom level, or the individual level. The thought about life history is that it allows you to understand the varieties that you talk about; I can’t think of any other method that would. But there is something I call the paradox of performativity which is by large in countries which really push the reforms, like the ones that you talk about in England where there is a massive national curriculum, payment by results in exams, accountability, testing, and targets. In those countries, there is not much room for creative teachers to resist. So in those countries where the reform is pushed hard; the UK, the USA, places like that, there isn’t the kind of variety that your question implies. The paradox of deperformativity is the more that you create these performative targets the more that performance goes down. 124

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Just to finish, I did a study of award winning teachers in America, the teachers that were the best teachers on the vote of the students, the local board, everybody; without exception in the state I looked at, the most creative teachers, the award winners, left school early and retired when the reforms came in. One last thing, the paradox of performativity is the performance targets which try to drive out the bottom level incompetent teachers – that was the point of the performance target, ended up driving out the creative top teachers and the incompetent bottom stayed there. Result: Performance drops. TANAKA: Yes, I have had the pleasure of listening to you speak when you came to Japan in 1993. My name is Tanaka from Tsukuba University. My area of specialty is curriculum, but since your talk was about life history I have a number of questions. Now in Japan, research on life courses are underway in full force in Japan, how is this different from life history? Could I have your comment? That is my first question, and my second question is about the difference in the knowledge base from one school to another; that is elementary, junior high school, and even university teachers. So, what is going to be the difference between these different types of schools in terms of knowledge base? IVOR GOODSON: Yeah, good questions. I mean the first one is very relevant, in the sense that of course it’s possible and it needs to be done that life history does look at cohorts. One of the things you find when you look at cohorts is that the generational perspectives of teachers are very different, so if you interviewed teachers in the 1960s and 70s the kind of stories they would tell you about their teaching are radically different in ideological form to the stories that the later generations tell you. And what you can see from the life history is that one group of teachers talk about teaching as if they are professionals in control of their life. Thirty years later, they talk about it as compliant technicians so that you begin through cohort life history work which you can put together to see that generational shift in how teaching is being constructive. I mean perhaps the saddest thing of all is the work we did in America talking to teachers across the generations and I mean when you talk to people in the 60s and 70s they didn’t see any distinction between their life from work, they would say things like teaching is my life. It expresses my passion, the kind of things that Ken was saying that teaching for them, in that period, expressed all of the moral values they had for their society. If you fast forward to the millennium around 2000, the dominant way that the younger teachers, and there were some very significant exceptions which comes back to your point earlier, but the dominant way they talked about teaching was as, look it’s just a job, I do what I am told, I turn up, I teach the national curriculum, I go home to my real life. That’s the saddest way that you can see this change in reform, it’s switching off the moral purpose that people brought to teaching which is the center of the passion, the center why you energize young people and you make things good and to switch that off in the name of these ridiculous reform seems to me the most absurd aspect of the reform and when you do life history work it just hits you deafeningly that they are turning it into a mundane job of technical compliance. 125

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They asked a very good point about the knowledge base. I mean it comes back to the question your colleague at the back asked which is there are substantial differentiations according to knowledge. Different subject provide different opportunities to express moral purpose and they provide different opportunities for the government to structure the teaching. The national curriculum is looser in some subjects than others and as you rightly say it’s looser at primary level than it is at secondary level and visions of professionalism are similarly different within those both subjects and levels. So, that brings in some of the variety you were talking about earlier that there are significant differences and significant differences of choice for teachers as to where they position themselves in the educational system. TSUKADA: My name is Tsukada from [Sugiyama Jogakuen University,] Nagoya. I have been conducting life history work for the past 15 years and my work is based on your work, Professor Goodson, and you are about the only scholar in the UK that I wanted to meet all along, so I am very happy and I would like to thank the organizer for giving me this opportunity to meet you Professor Goodson. Now, I have a simple question and a comment. First of all, yes, it is true that listening to life stories could be tiring at times, but it would have been better if you would just say that this is also encouraging and enjoyable, and I have a question about doing this life stories work. Having listened to life stories and putting that into a thesis, I am oftentimes confronted with a dilemma. When you are not able to elucidate history and the social context through the work that you have done, should we go beyond that to try to reflect your interpretation of social and historical implication in the work because when I do so I could stand to be criticized by researchers of life stories because if you read too much into that life story, to try to incorporate your interpretation of the social implications then that is overstepping the bounds of life history work. So, what is your thought about this? So, how do you deal with a situation when you are not able to really get the full picture through the life history work? IVOR GOODSON: Yeah, that’s a good question. I don’t have a clear procedural answer. I mean what I do know is there is a profound danger among us as its researches that if we can’t get all we want in the life story then we’ll bring out an interpretation in. For me that’s the point of maximum danger because the whole point of this for me is not to do that, not to colonize the teacher and there’s no point in doing life history, you’ve got all the other methodologies do that all the time, you know you could use surveys quantitative set; all of those appropriate the teacher. So my point would be if you can’t get that elucidation then you can’t get it, don’t fall back on to a set of interpretations that are standing out there in the data. It’s a clear dividing line and I think it’s pretty clear at which point you are going over the line. I don’t know whether you agree with me but I feel I know when I am over-interpreting and I do it all the time, but I know that that’s the point where I am not doing proper life history. I mean the great value of having the transcript of the interview to look at is you can see yourself doing this. I mean I have various phrases that I bring out all the time 126

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which are, so what you seem to be saying, I will say, which is putting my little theory into their mouth which they then confirm. So, I am aware when I go through the transcript I can see myself doing what we do as researches. We think we’ve got some little theory here that we want to prove and it’s very tempting to then say, so what do you seem to be saying fits exactly with what I want you to say and, therefore, I’ve proved it. I mean the last comment, what I think is important to understand is that life history is a kind of counterculture that the dominant model is one of science and positivism which essentially defines that the researcher job is to define what the teacher is feeling and thinking and put that down as research. The counterculture tries to act against that scientising, positivising, dominant paradigm of research, and assert the humanity of research. It wants to turn education into a critical humanity instead of an applied science; I mean that’s the serious point. It’s a counterculture. KASHIMA: My name is Kashima from Wisconsin University. Thank you very much for a very interesting lecture. Now this, my question has to do with the earlier question raised by somebody else which is the difference between life history and life story. My impression is that this research method of the work on life story tends to emphasize the constructionism and there is the interaction between the interviewer and the interviewee and the interaction between the two is emphasized. In addition who the interviewer is, whether it’s female or it’s a male, what is the ethnic background of the interviewer, social status, economic status, that I believe is emphasized. Is there a difference in the level of emphasis of who the interviewer is between life story and life history, is my first question? And my second question goes back to the triangulation diagram that you’ve showed with the life story at the top and complemented by other types of data such as documentary and other types of data. Now, my idea is to combine life story with the other things such as ethnography. I wonder if these can be used in a complementary fashion, for example, what does not come out clearly from life story work alone could be supplemented by other types of work, including ethnography. That is something that I am considering doing, but what is your approach and what is your thought and is this a general thing that is being done? IVOR GOODSON: Yeah, two good questions. I mean the first one, of course, you are quite right that the attempt to create an equal collaboration is nonetheless overlaid by issues of power and I don’t think there is any research method that completely suspends issues of power, so issues of masculine power versus feminine power, issues of professorial status versus teacher status. These are always difficult agendas to work through and the only way we can work against – I mean if it’s a genuine counterculture then it has to work against some of the hierarchies of the society and I know that’s as difficult in Japan as it is in Britain, but I think the only way we can ever go across hierarchies is in a faceto-face relationship where you build up a trusting relationship which actually says, in very simple terms, I think I value you as much as you value me. Human beings are pretty sensitive to that. They can normally work out if they are being listened to, if you enjoy listing to them as you said, if it has very clear chemical 127

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reaction from people which says this person is valuing me equally and if you do that in your life then some of the issues of power can be suspended and some of them quite frankly can’t. There are limits to our capacity to work against the stratification of society. As to your second point, a very interesting one and I agree with it. I think there are many ways to supplement a life history. In the research, I only gave you 5 minutes. The work life narratives were part of it. The other part of it was condensed as in a graphic observation and I do think that you are absolutely right and it comes back partly to answer some of your questions. If you can’t elucidate the historical setting in the life history interview, ethnography and observation, say at the school, can offer some other information you can take back in. So you go back to my triangle, the other testimonies and the other visions could well include ethnographic studies. So, I absolutely agree with you on that. I know many studies which try to combine life history’s ethnography and I think that’s really a future way to go, yeah. KAWAMURA: My name is Kawamura from Shiga University. Thank you very much for a very interesting lecture. I have a question about the nature of the present having a bearing on what transpired in the past. One major feature about the life history work is that you are talking about from a temporaneous perspective or perspective of the present. When you talk about that what transpired in the past, where you stand currently may have a bearing of how one perceives what happened in the past. Let’s say this is a teacher, who does not aspire to be a manager, a managerial position in the future, this person wants to spend more time with his family. This person, having such an outlook at the present, may have some critical view on the educational reform that has taken place in the past. Conversely speaking, if a teacher is aspiring to be in a managerial position in the future, may have a positive view of the educational reform of the past. So where you stand today, your circumstances of today may have an impact on how you view events of the past, is this something a researcher should be mindful about? IVOR GOODSON: Well, the point what you are talking about is that people have subjectivity. At any point in time we have a subjective interpretation of what we see and if we went around the room, everybody would be seeing what’s happening differently because that’s in the nature of subjectivity and subjectivity is contemporaneous. The point about life history work is of all the methodologies we can think of, ethnography included, I think it offers the best promise for understanding the subjectivity of the person at the moment. In other words, it’s trying to give you a methodology which gets you out of the objectivity trap. What science believes about education is that you can create a set of objective facts about education and then manipulate it. You cannot do that with human beings because they have this messy thing called subjectivity which, of course, is affected by the things that you are talking about and I would say if you are going to find a method at all which would explore the kind of subjective variations you talk about, life history is that method. W. I. Thomas, the great life historian, once said if people believe something to be 128

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true it is true in their consequence and that’s the case, if you actually believe something and if you are subject to be experienced, even if it’s not factual it will be true in its consequence. NAKAMURA: My name is Nakamura. I am an undergraduate student at the Tokyo Gakugei University. Thank you very much for taking my question. My question is not directly linked to life history; my question is about the education budget. I understand that including the United Kingdom and other countries are increasing their public spending on education while in Japan there has been no increase in educational budgets. While Japan is promoting educational reform, based on neo-liberalism, why is it the case that Japan is not increasing its educational spending, what is the difference between Japan and the western countries in terms of public spending on education. What do you think lies in the background behind this disparity in the level of spending on education? What is your view on that? IVOR GOODSON: Well, I don’t think it’s going down in Japan but it’s going down in England and it’s going down everywhere. I mean the agenda of neo-liberalism, we could argue about but it’s certainly not to improve public education, it’s not to improve people’s understanding of the world and you could argue that its main agenda is to set education up so as it can be privatized and run by corporations, I suspect that’s the neoliberal agenda. So unfortunately budgets are going down everywhere and all the seven countries I talked about, except Finland, the budget is going down, so when you go with a neoliberal agenda the apparent consequence is that education gets starved off money and you have to ask why that is if they are trying to build what they call a knowledge society, I mean a more absurd definition of what’s going on, if you want a knowledge society you certainly don’t cut money for education. So, I am sorry it’s happening in Japan but it’s happening in England and it’s happening across Europe and it’s certainly happening in America. In California, they have just cut the State budget for education by a draconian level and in Portugal they have just cut it 30% and they cut it 30% year before, a 60% in 2 years for university budgets, that’s pretty big. So unfortunately the bad news is it’s happening in Japan and it’s also happening everywhere else, but I wonder why we support neoliberalism in the face of this, but we apparently do. END REFERENCE Goodson, I. F. (2008). Investigating the teacher’s life and work. Rotterdam Boston and Taipei: Sense. Goodson, I. F., & Lindblad, S. (Eds.). (2010). Professional knowledge and educational restructuring in Europe. Rotterdam Boston and Taipei: Sense.

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Books Goodson, I. F., & Gill, S. (2011). Narrative pedagogy. New York: Peter Lang. Goodson, I. F., & Lindblad, S. (Eds.). (2010). Professional knowledge and educational restructuring in Europe. Rotterdam Boston and Taipei: Sense. Goodson, I. F. (2010). Through the schoolhouse door. Rotterdam Boston and Taipei: Sense Publishers. Goodson, I. F., Biesta, G., Tedder, M., & Adair, N. (2010). Narrative learning. London and New York: Routledge. Goodson, I. F. (2008). As políticas de currículo e de escolarização. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Editora Vozes. Goodson, I. F. (2008). Investigating the teacher’s life and work. Rotterdam Boston and Taipei: Sense. Goodson, I. F. (2007). Politicas do conhecimento: Vida e trabalho docente entre saberes e instituições (Organizaçâo e tradução: Raimundo Martins e Irene Tourinho). Brazil: Coleção Desenrêdos. Goodson, I. F. (2007). Professional knowledge, professional lives. Beijing: Beijing Normal University Press. Goodson, I. F. (2007). Professionel viden. Professionelt liv: Studier af uddannelse og forandring. Denmark: Frydenlund. Goodson, I. F., Ball, S., & Maguire, S. (Eds.). (2007). Education, globalisation and new times an English Heritage series. London and New York: Routledge. Goodson, I. F., & Sikes, P. (2006). Life history in educational settings. Japan: P. Koyoshuto. Goodson, I. F. (2005). Learning, curriculum and life politics: The selected works of Ivor F. Goodson. Abingdon: Taylor and Francis. Goodson, I. F. (2003). Väd är professionell kunskap? Förändrade värdingar av lärares yrkesroll. Sweden: Studentlitteratur. Goodson, I. F. (2003). Life history and professional development: Stories of teachers’ life and work (U. Numan, Ed.). Lund: Studentlitteratur. Goodson, I. F. (2003). Professional knowledge, professional lives: Studies in education and change. Open Maidenhead and Philidelphia: University Press. Goodson, I. F. (2003). Estudio del curriculum: Casos y métodos. Buenos Aires: Amorrortu Editores. Goodson, I. F. (2002). Cyber spaces/social spaces: Culture clash in computerized classrooms (M. Knobel, C. Lankshear, & M. Mangan, Eds.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Goodson, I. F. (2001). Life histories of teachers: Understanding life and work. Japan: Koyo Shobo. Goodson, I. F. (2001). The birth of environmental education. P.R. China East China: Normal University Press. Goodson, I. F. (2001). Currículo em mudança: Estudos na construção social do currículo. Portugal: Porto Editora. Goodson, I. F., & Sikes, P. Life history research in educational settings: Learning from lives. Buckingham and Philadelphia: Open University Press. Goodson, I. F. (2001). Currículo: Teoria e história (4th ed.). Petrópolis, Brazil: Editora Vozes. Goodson, I. F. (2001). Opetussuunnitelman tekeminen: Esseitä opetussuunnitelman ja oppiaineen sosiaalisesta rakentumisesta. Finland: Joensuu University Press. Goodson, I. F., Biddle, B. J., & Good, T. L. (Eds.). (2000). La enseñanza y los profesores, III, La reforma de la enseñanza en un mundo en transformación. Barcelona: Ediciones Paidós Ibérica. Goodson, I. F. (2000). Livshistorier – kilde til forståelse av utdanning. Bergen, Norway Fagbokforlaget. Goodson, I. F. (2000). El Cambio en el currículum. Spain: Ediciones Octaedro. Goodson, I. F. (1999). Currículo: Teoria e história (3rd ed.). Spain: Editora Vozes: Petrópolis. Goodson, I. F., Anstead, C., & Mangan, J. M. (1998). Subject knowledge: Readings for the study of school subjects. London and Washington DC: Falmer Press. Goodson, I. F. (1998). Currículo: Teoria e história (2nd ed.). Petrópolis, Brazil: Editora Vozes.

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PUBLICATIONS BY IVOR F GOODSON – A SUMMARY Goodson, I. F., Biddle, B., & Good, T. (Eds.). (1998). An international handbook of teachers and teaching (Vol. 1). Kluwer. Goodson, I. F., Biddle, B., & Good, T. (Eds.). (1998). An international handbook of teachers and teaching (Vol. 2). Kluwer. Goodson, I. F. (1997). A construçâo social do currículo. Lisboa, Portugal: EDUCA. Goodson, I. F. (1997). The changing curriculum: Studies in social construction. New York: Peter Lang. Goodson, I. F., & Marsh, C. (1996). Studying school subjects: A guide. London and Washington, DC: Falmer Press. Goodson, I. F. (1996). Att stärka lärarnas röster: Sex essäer om lärarforskning och lärar-forskarsamarbete. Stockholm: HLS Förlag. Goodson, I. F., & Hargreaves, A. (Eds.). (1996). Teachers’ professional lives. London, New York and Philadelphia: Falmer Press. Goodson, I. F. (1995). The making of curriculum: Collected essays (2nd ed.). London, New York and Philadelphia: Falmer. Goodson, I. F. (1995). Currículo: Teoria e história (1st ed.). Petrópolis, Brazil: Editora Vozes. Goodson, I. F. (1995). Historia del currículum: La construcción social de las disciplinas escolares. Barcelona, Spain: Ediciones Pomares-Corredor. Goodson, I. F. (1994). Studying curriculum: Cases and methods. Open University Press, Buckingham/ Teachers College Press/in Australia by George Allen & Unwin. Goodson, I. F., & Coulter, R. P. (Eds.). (1993). Rethinking vocationalism: Whose work/life is it? Our Schools/Our Toronto: Selves Education Foundation. Goodson, I. F., & Anstead, C. (1993). Through the schoolhouse door: Working papers. Toronto: Garamond. Goodson, I. F. (1993). School subjects and curriculum change (3rd ed.). London, New York and Philadelphia: Falmer. Goodson, I. F. (Ed.). (1992). Studying teachers’ lives. London and New York: Routledge. Goodson, I. F., & Walker, R. (1991). Biography, identity and schooling. London, New York and Philadelphia: Falmer. Goodson, I. F., & Medway, P. (Eds.). (1990). Bringing English to order. London, New York and Philadelphia: Falmer. Goodson, I. F., & Ball, S. (Eds.). (1989). Teachers’ lives and careers. London, New York and Philadelphia: Falmer/Open University, Open University Set Book Edition. Goodson, I. F., Milburn, G., & Clark, R. (Eds.). (1989). Reinterpreting curriculum research: Images and arguments. London, New York and Philadelphia: Althouse Press and Falmer. Goodson, I. F. (1988). The making of curriculum: Collected essays. London, New York and Philadelphia: Falmer. Goodson, I. F. (Ed.). (1988). International perspectives in curriculum history (new paperback ed.). London and New York: Routledge. Goodson, I. F. (1987). School subjects and curriculum change (Extended and Rev. ed.). London, New York and Philadelphia: Falmer. Goodson, I. F. (Ed.). (1987). International perspectives in curriculum history. London, Sydney and Dover, New Hampshire: Croom Helm. Goodson, I. F., & Ball, S. (Eds.). (1985). Teachers lives and careers. London, New York and Philadelphia: Falmer. Goodson, I. F. (Ed.). (1985). Social histories of the secondary curriculum: Subjects for study. London, New York and Philadelphia Falmer. Goodson, I. F., & McGivney, V. (1985). European dimensions and the secondary school curriculum. London, New York and Philadelphia: Falmer. Goodson, I. F., & Ball, S. (Eds.). (1984). Defining the curriculum: Histories and ethnographies. London, New York and Philadelphia Falmer. Goodson, I. F. (1983). School subjects and curriculum change. London, Sydney and Dover, New Hampshire: Croom Helm.

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Monographs Goodson, I. F., Biesta, G. J. J., Tedder, M., & Adair, N. (Eds.). (2008). Learning from life: The role of narrative. Learning Lives summative working paper. The Learning Lives project, University of Stirling. Goodson, I. F., Müller, J., Hernández, F., Sancho, J., Creus, A., Muntadas, M., et al. (2006). European schoolteachers’ work and life under restructuring: Professional experiences, knowledge and expertise it changing context for the ProfKnow Consortium. Goodson, I. (2006). The rise of the life narrative. Teacher Education Quarterly, 33(4), 7–21. The notion of narrative learning as employed in this book was first developed by I. F. Goodson in a paper ‘Narrative capital, narrative learning’ written for a course at the University of Barcelona (Mimeo). Goodson, I. F., & Norrie, C. (Eds.). (2005). A literature review of welfare state restructuring in education and health care in European contexts: Implications for the teaching and nursing professions and their professional knowledge for the ProfKnow Consortium. Goodson, I. F., & Mangan, M. (Eds.). (1992). History, context, and qualitative methods in the study of education (Vol. 3, p. 279). RUCCUS Occasional Papers. University of Western Ontario. Goodson, I. F., & Mangan, M. (Eds.). (1991). Qualitative studies in educational research: Methodologies in transition (Vol. 1, p. 334). RUCCUS Occasional Papers. University of Western Ontario. Goodson, I. F., & Mangan, M. (Eds.). (1991). Computers, classrooms, and culture: Studies in the use of computers for classroom learning (Vol. 2, p. 315). RUCCUS Occasional Papers. University of Western Ontario. Goodson, I. F. (1989). Sredyn’s curriculum. Occasional Paper No. 44. Faculty of Education, University of Alberta. Goodson, I. F., Oonk, H., & Scurati, C. (1984). Curriculum models on European education. Netherlands: CEVNO Alkmaar.

Journal Articles Goodson, I. F. (2010). Times of educational change: Towards an understanding of patterns of historical and cultural refraction. Journal of Educational Policy, 25(6), 767–775. Goodson, I. F., Muller, J., Norrie, C., & Hernandez, F. (2010, May). Restructuring teachers’ work-lives and knowledge in England and Spain. Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 40(3), 265–277. Goodson, I. F. (2009, November). Developing life and work histories of teachers. Journal of Applied Research in Education, 13, 1–13. Goodson, I. F., & Deakin Crick, R. (2009). Curriculum as narration: Tales from the children of the colonised. In Curriculum Journal. London and New York: Taylor and Francis. Goodson, I. F. (2009). Les Enseignants de demain: Perspective Anglo-Saxonne sur la restructuration des vies professionnelles et des connaissances des enseignants du primaire, by Ivor Goodson et Caroline Norrie in Des Ensiegnants pour demain, Education et Societes, edited by Patrick Rayou, n 23(1), 153–168. Goodson, I. F., & Pik Lin Choi, J. (2008, Spring). Life history and collective memory as methodological strategies: Studying teacher professionalism. Teacher Education Quarterly, 35(2), 5–28. Goodson, I. F. (2007, maio/agosto). Questionando as reformas educativas: A contribuição dos estudos, biográficos na educação (Dossiê Temático: Em Multiplicidades nomeia-se currículo, organizado por Antonio Carlos Amorim), Pro Posições, 8, No 2(53), p. 17–38. Goodson, I. F. (2007, maio/agosto). Currículo, narrativa e o futuro social. Revista Brasileira de Educação, 12(35). Goodson, I. F. (2007, March). All the lonely people: The struggle for private meaning and public purpose in education. Critical Studies in Education, 48(1), 131–148. Goodson, I. F. (2006). The reformer knows best, destroying the teacher’s vocation. Forum, 48(3), 253–259.

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PUBLICATIONS BY IVOR F GOODSON – A SUMMARY Goodson, I. F., & Hargreaves, A. (2006, Fall). The rise of the life narrative. Teacher Education Quarterly, 33(4), 7–21. Goodson, I. F., & Hargreaves, A. (2006). Educational change over time? The sustainability and nonsustainability of three decades of secondary school change and continuity. Educational Administration Quarterly, 42, 39–41. Goodson, I. F., Moore, S., & Hargreaves, A. (2006). Teacher nostalgia and the sustainability of reform: The generation and degeneration of teachers’ missions, memory, and meaning. Educational Administration Quarterly, 42(1), 42–61. Goodson, I. F. (2005). The exclusive pursuit of social inclusion. Forum, 47(2), 145–150. Goodson, I. F. (2004, Maart). Onderwijsvernieuwers vergeten de leerkracht. didaktief, Jaargang, 34(3). Goodson, I. F. (2003, September-December). Hacia un desarrollo de las historias personales y profesionales de los docentes. Revista Mexicana de Investigacion Educativa, VIII(19). Goodson, I. F., & Numan, U. (2002, August/November). Teacher’s life worlds, agency and policy contexts. Teachers and Teaching: Theory and Practice, 8(3/4), 269–277. Goodson, I. F. (2002, December). La personalidad de las reformas. Cuadernos de Pedagogía, No. 319, 34–37. Goodson, I. F. (2002, September). De la historia al futuro: Nuevas cadenas de cambio Entrevista a Ivor Goodson. Revista Páginas de la Escuela de Ciencias de la Educación U.N.C., 2(2) y3, 9–17, Córdoba. Goodson, I. F. (2002). Un curriculum para una sociedad democrática y plural Entrevista con…Ivor Goodson. KIKIRIKI-62/63, 25–30, September 2001/February. Goodson, I. F. (2001). Med livet som innsats (faktor), Bedre Skole: Norsk Lærerlags Tidsskrift for Pedagogisk Debatt. Oslo. No. 1, 49–51. Goodson, I. F., & Foote, M. (2001, January). Testing times: A school case study with M. Foote. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 9(2). http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v9n2.html Goodson, I. F. (2001). Social histories of educational change. Journal of Educational Change, 2(1), 45–63. Goodson, I. F. (2001). The story of life history: Origins of the life history method in sociology. IDENTITY: An International Journal of Theory and Research, 1(2), 129–142. Goodson, I. F. (2000, Fall-Winter). The crisis of curriculum change. Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education, 4(2), 109–123. Goodson, I. F. (2000, December). La mediación es el mensaje. La revista del IICE, IX(17), 53–61. Goodson, I. F. (2000). Developing chains of change. Resources in Education, ERIC, Issue RIEDEC00, I.D: 442 718. Goodson, I. F. (2000, October). Recuperar el poder docente. Cuadernos de Pedagogía, No. 295, 44–49, Barcelona. Goodson, I. F. (2000, January). The principled professional. Prospects, UNESCO, Geneva. Goodson, I. F. (2000). Life histories and professional practice. Curriculum and Teaching, 16(1). Goodson, I. F. (1999, December). Professionalism i reformtider. Pedagogiska Magasinet, No. 4, 6–12. Goodson, I. F., & Baraldi, V. (1999). Entrevista, Ivor Goodson with V. Baraldi. Revista El Cardo, UNER. Goodson, I. F., & Adlandscik, R. (1999). Møte med Ivor F. Norsk PEDAGOGISK ttidsskrift, 82(2), 96–102. Goodson, I. F. (1999). The educational researcher as a public intellectual. British Educational Research Journal, 25(3). Goodson, I. F. (1998). Preparing for post-modernity: Storying the self. Educational Practice and Theory, 20(1), 25–31. Goodson, I. F., & Fliesser, C. (1998, February). Exchanging gifts: Collaboration and location. Resources in Education. Goodson, I. F., & Anstead, C. (1998, January). Heroic principals and structures of opportunity: Conjoncture at a vocational high school. International Journal of Leadership in Education, 1(1), 61–73. Goodson, I. F. (1997, Spring). Action research and the reflective project of self. Taboo, The Journal of Culture and Education. Goodson, I. F., Cookson, P., Jr., & Persell, C. (1997). Distinction and destiny. Discourse, 18(2). Goodson, I. F. (1997, Spring). Trendy theory and teacher professionalism. Cambridge Journal.

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PUBLICATIONS BY IVOR F GOODSON – A SUMMARY Goodson, I. F. (1997). Representing teachers. Teaching and Teacher Education: An International Journal of Research and Studies, 13(1). Goodson, I. F. (1996, Fall). Towards an alternative pedagogy. Taboo, International Journal of Culture and Education. Goodson, I. F., & Mangan, J. M. (1996). New prospects/new perspectives: A reply to Wilson and Holmes. Interchange, 27(1), 71–77. Goodson., & Mangan, J. M. (1996). Exploring alternative perspectives in educational research. Interchange, 27(1), 41–59. Goodson, I. F., Sikes, P., & Troyna, B. (1996, Spring). Talking lives: A conversation about life. Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education, 1, 35–54. Goodson, I. F., & Mangan, J. M. (1996). Computer literacy as ideology. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 17(1). Goodson, I. F. (1996). Curriculum contests: Environmental studies versus geography. Environmental Education Research, 2(1), 71–88. Goodson, I. F. (1995). Storying the self: Life politics and the study of the teacher’s life and work. Resources in Education, ERIC, Issue RIEJAN96, I.D: 386 454. Goodson, I. F., & Mangan, J. M. (1995). Developing a collaborative research strategy with teachers for the study of classroom computing. Journal of Information Technology for Teacher Education, 4(3), 269–286. Goodson, I. F., & Mangan, J. M. (1995, December). Subject cultures and the introduction of classroom computers. British Educational Research Journal, 21(5), 587–612. Goodson, I. F. (1994). The story so far: Personal knowledge and the political. Resources in Education, ERIC Issue RIEMAR95, I.D.: ED 376 160. Goodson, I. F., & Mangan, J. M. (1995). Developing a collaborative research strategy with teachers for the study of classroom computing. Journal of Information Technology for Teacher Education, 4(3), 269–287. Goodson, I. F., & Fliesser, C. (1995). Negotiating fair trade: Towards collaborative relationships between researchers and teachers in college settings. Peabody Journal of Education, 70(3), 5–17. Goodson, I. F., & Anstead, C. (1995, Fall). Schooldays are the happiest days of your life. Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education, 11, 39–52. Goodson, I. F., & Anstead, C. (1995). The historical study of the curriculum. Curriculum and Teaching, 10(2), 33–44. Goodson, I. F. (1995). The story so far: Personal knowledge and the political. The International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 8(1), 89–98. Goodson, I. F. (1995). Education as a practical matter. Cambridge Journal of Education, 25(20), 137–148. Goodson, I. F. (1995). A genesis and genealogy of British curriculum studies. Curriculum and Teaching, 9(1), 14–25. Goodson, I. F. (1994). From personal to political: Developing sociologies of curriculum. The Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 10(3), 9–31. Goodson, I. F. (1994). Qualitative research in Canadian teacher education: Developments in the eye of a vacuum. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 7(3), 227–237. Goodson, I. F. (1994). Studying the teacher’s life and work. Teaching and Teacher Education, 10(1), 29–37. Goodson, I. F., & Fliesser, C. (1994). Exchanging gifts: Collaborative research and theories of context. Analytic Teaching, 15(2). Goodson, I. F., & Cole, A. (1994, Winter). Exploring the teacher’s professional knowledge. Teacher Education Quarterly, 21(1), 85–106. Goodson, I. F. (1993). The Devil’s bargain. Education Policy Analysis Archives (Electronic Journal), 1(3). Goodson, I. F. (1993). Forms of knowledge and teacher education. In P. Gilroy & M. Smith (Ed.), International analyses of teacher education, Jet Papers 1. Abingdon, Oxfordshire: Carfax. Goodson, I. F., & Anstead, C. (1993). Structure and mediation: Glimpses of everyday life at the London technical and commercial high school, 1920–1940. American Journal of Education, 102(1), 55–79. 135

PUBLICATIONS BY IVOR F GOODSON – A SUMMARY Goodson, I. F. (1993). On explaining curriculum change with C. Anstead. The Curriculum Journal, 4(3), 403–420. Goodson, I. F., & Anstead, C. (1993). Subject status and curriculum change: Commercial education in London, Ontario, 1920–1940. Paedagogica Historica, XXIX(2), 459–481. Goodson, I. F. (1993). John Willinsky’s The triumph of literature/the fate of literacy: English in the secondary school curriculum. Historical Studies in Education, 5(1), 165–166. Goodson, I. F., & Mangan, J. M. (1993). Computers in schools as symbolic and ideological action: The genealogy of the ICON. The Curriculum Journal, 3(3), 261–276. Goodson, I. F. (1992, June). School subjects: Patterns of stability. Education Research and Perspectives, 19(1), 52–64. Goodson, I. F. (1992). Investigating schooling: From the personal to the programmatic. New Education, 14(1), 21–30. Goodson, I. F. (1992). School subjects: The context of cultural inventions. Curriculum & Teaching, 7(2), 47–58. Goodson, I. F. (1992, January). On curriculum form. Sociology of Education, 65(1), 66–75. Goodson, I. F. (1991). Nations at risk and national curriculum. Handbook of the American Politics of Education Association, 219–232. Goodson, I. F. (1991). Vocational education and school reform with I. Dowbiggin. History of Education Review, 20(1), 39–60. Goodson, I. F. (1991). School subjects: Patterns of change. Curriculum and Teaching, 3–11. Goodson, I. F. (1991, August). La construccion del curriculum: Posibilidades y ambitos de investigacion de la historia del curriculum. Revista de Educacion on Curriculum History, I(295), 7–37. Goodson, I. F., Apple, M., & Meyer, J. (1991, January). Sociology of curriculum. Sociology of Education Special Issue, p. 63. Goodson, I. F. (1991). Sponsoring the teacher’s voice. Cambridge Journal of Education, 21(1), 35–45. Goodson, I. F. (1990, December). Zur sozialgeschichte der schulfacher. Bildung und Erziehung, 379–389. Goodson, I. F. (1990). Nations at risk. Journal of Education Policy, Politics of Education Association Yearbook, 219–232. Goodson, I. F. (1990, July/August). Studying curriculum: Towards a social constructionist prospective. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 299–312. Goodson, I. F. (1990). Subjects for study: Research agenda. Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, 5(3), 260–268. Goodson, I. F. (1990). Laronplansforskning: Mot ett socialt konstruktivistiskt perspektiv. Forskning om utbildning, 1, 4–18. Goodson, I. F. (1990). Curriculum history: Knowledge and professionalization. Curriculum and Teaching, 5(1 & 2), 3–13. Goodson, I. F. (1990, Fall). A social history of subjects. Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 34(2), 111–121. Goodson, I. F. (1989, December). Docile bodies: Commonalities in the history of psychiatry and schooling. Qualitative Studies in Education, 298–307. Goodson, I. F. (1989, July). Curriculum reform and curriculum theory: A case of historical amnesia. Cambridge Journal of Education, 131–141. Goodson, I. F. (1987). On understanding curriculum: The alienation of curriculum theory. Curriculum Perspectives, 7(2), 41–47. Goodson, I. F. (1987). Tomkins’ common countenance: A review. History of Education, 17. Goodson, I. F. (1986). Geoff Whitty’s sociology and school knowledge: A review. Journal of Education Policy, 1(2), 204–205. Goodson, I. F. (1986, August). Stuart’s first year. New Era. Goodson, I. F. (1985). Towards a history of curriculum. History of Education Society Bulletin, 35, 47–53. Goodson, I. F. (1983, Autumn). Subjects for study: Aspects of a social history of curriculum. Journal of Curriculum Studies.

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PUBLICATIONS BY IVOR F GOODSON – A SUMMARY Goodson, I. F. (1982, Summer). European cooperation in education: Historical background and contemporary experience. European Journal of Teacher Education. Goodson, I. F. (1981, Summer). Becoming an academic subject. British Journal of Sociology of Education. Goodson, I. F. (1980–1981). Life histories and the study of schooling. Interchange, 11(4). Goodson, I. F. (1983, November). New curriculum development and the autonomy of the student. Transcript. Goodson, I. F. (1975, November). The teacher’s curriculum and the new reformation. Journal of Curriculum Studies. Goodson, I. F. (1975, May). The A.E.B. world history project: One schools experience. Teaching History. Goodson, I. F. (1973, November). The role of history in an urban study. Teaching History, 1973. Goodson, I. F. (1973, May). Developing Contexts for Autonomous Learning. Forum, 1973.

Chapters in Encyclopedia Goodson, I. F. (2002). Curriculum history. In D. Levinson, P. Cookson, & A. Sadovnik (Eds.), Education and sociology: An encylopedia (pp. 133–150). London and New York: Falmer. Goodson, I. F., & Foote, M. (2001). Testing times: A school case study. In Schooling and standards in the U.S.: An encyclopedia. Goodson, I. F. (1990, Fall). Social history of school subjects. In International encyclopedia of education (Supplementary Vol. 2, pp. 543–547). Pergamon Press.

Chapters in Books Goodson, I. F. (2009). Listening to professional life stories: Some cross-professional perspectives. In H. Plauborg & S. Rolls (Eds.), Teachers’ career trajectories and work lives (Vol. 3, pp. 203–210). Dordrecht, Heidelber, London and New York: Springer. Goodson, I. F. (2009). Personal history and curriculum study. In E. Short & L. Waks (Eds.), Leaders in curriculum studies: Intellectual self-portraits (pp. 91–104). Rotterdam, Boston and Tapei: Sense. Goodson, I. F. (2009). L’interrogation des réformes éducatives: La contribution des etudes biographiques en education. In J.-L. Derouet & M.-C. Derrout-Bresson (Eds.), Repenser la justice dan la domaine de l’éducation et de la formation (pp. 311–330). Berlin, Bruxelles, Frankfurt am Main, New York, Oxford, Wein: Peter Lang. Goodson, I. F. (2008). Procesos sociohistóricos de cambio curricular. In A. Benacot & C. Braslavsky (Eds.), El conocimiento escolar en una perspectica histórica y comparativ: Cambios de currículos en la educatión. Primaria y Secudaria’ in Perspecticas en Educatión. Goodson, I. F. (2008). Schooling, curriculum, narrative and the social future. In C. Sugrue (Ed.), The future of educational change: International perspectives (pp. 123–135). Routledge: Abingdon. Goodson, I. F. (2008). The pedagogic moment: Searches for passion and purpose in education. In At Sætte spor en vandring fra Aquinas til Bourdieu – æresbog til Staf Callewaert. Denmark: Forlaget Hexis. Goodson, I. F. (2006). Socio-historical processes of curriculum change. In A. Benavot & C. Braslavsky (Eds.), School knowledge in comparative and historical perspective: Changing curricula in primary and secondary education. Comparative Education Research Centre. Hong Kong: The University of Hong Kong [ISBN 987-962-8093-52-6]. Goodson, I. F. (2005). The personality of change. In W. Veugelers & R. Bosman (Eds.), De strijd om het curriculum (The struggle around the curriculum). Antwerpen/Apeldoorn: Garant (series sociology of education). Goodson, I. F. (2004). Change processes and historical periods: An international perspective. In C. Sugrue (Ed.), Curriculum and ideology: Irish experiences international perspectives. Dublin: The Liffey Press. Goodson, I. F. (2002). Afterword - international educational research: Content, context, and methods. In L. Bresler & A. Ardichvili (Eds.), Research in international education: Experience, theory, & practice (Vol. 180, pp. 297–302). New York: Peter Lang [ISBN 0-8204-5215-7]. 137

PUBLICATIONS BY IVOR F GOODSON – A SUMMARY Goodson, I. F. (2001). Basil Bernstein F. 1925–2000. In J. Palmer (Ed.), Fifty modern thinkers on education: From Piaget to the present (pp. 161–169). London and New York: Routledge. Goodson, I. F. (2000). Foreword - contextualizing the curriculum. In B. Adamson, T. Kwan, K. K. Chan (Eds.), Changing the curriculum: The impact of reform on primary schooling in Hong Kong (pp. xv–xvi). Aberdeen, KH: Hong Kong University Press. Goodson, I. F. (2000). Curriculum contests: Environmental studies versus geography. In S. Ball (Ed.), The sociology of education: Major themes. London and New York: Routledge [Hb: 0-415-19812-7]. Goodson, I. F. (2000). Professional knowledge and the teacher’s life and work. In C. Day, A. Fernandez, T. E. Hauge, & J. Møller (Eds.), The life and work of teachers: International perspectives in changing times. London and New York: Falmer Press [ISBN 0-750-70944-8]. Goodson, I. F. (1999). Schulfächer und ihre geschichte als gegenstand der curriculumforschung im angelsächsischen raum. In I. Goodson, S. Hopmann, & K. Riquarts (Eds.), Das schulfach als handlungsrahmen: Vergleichende untersuchung zur geschichte und funktion der schulfächer (pp. 29–46). Köln, Weimar, Wien, Böhlau: Böhlau Verlag GmbH & Cie [ISBN 3-412-04295-1]. Goodson, I. F. (1999). Entstehung eines schulfaches. In I. Goodson, S. Hopmann, & K. Riquarts (Eds.), Das schulfach als handlungsrahmen: Vergleichende untersuchung zur geschichte und funktion der schulfächer (pp. 151–176). Köln, Weimar, Wien, Böhlau: Böhlau Verlag GmbH & Cie [ISBN 3-41204295-1]. Goodson, I. F. (1999). A crise da mudança curricular: Algumas advertências sobre iniciativas de reestruturação. In L. Peretti & E. Orth (Eds.), Século XXI: Qual Conhecimento?Qual Currículo? (pp. 109–126). Petrópolis, Brazil: Editora Vozes [ISBN 85.326.2202-X]. Goodson, I. F. (1999). Representing teachers. In M. Hammersley (Ed.), Researching school experience: Ethnographic studies of teaching and learning. London and New York: Falmer Press [ISBN 0-75070914-6]. Goodson, I. F. (1998). Education as a practical matter: Some issues and concerns. In C. Sugrue (Ed.), Restructuring initial teacher education: A focus on pre-service and induction at primary level. Dublin: St Patrick’s College [ISBN 1-872327-18-4]. Goodson, I. F., (1997). Holding on together: Conversations with Barry. In P. Sikes & F. Rizvi (Eds.), Researching race and social justice education - essays in honour of Barry Troyna. Staffordshire: Trentham Books. Goodson, I. F. (1997). Action research and the reflexive project of selves. In S. Hollingsworth (Ed.), International action research: A casebook for educational reform. London and Washington: Falmer Press. Goodson, I. F. (1996, Fall). Towards an alternative pedagogy. In S. Steinberg & J. Kincheloe (Eds.), Taboo, The Journal of Culture and Education. Goodson, I. F. (1997). Trendy theory and teacher professionalism. In A. Hargreaves & R. Evans (Eds.), Beyond educational reform. Open University Press. Goodson, I. F. (1997). New patterns of curriculum change. In A. Hargreaves (Ed.), A handbook of educational change. Kluwer. Goodson, I. F. (1997). Storying the self. In W. Pinar (Ed.), New curriculum identities. Westview. Goodson, I. F. (1997). The life and work of teaching. In B. Biddle, T. Good, & I. Goodson (Eds.), A handbook of teachers and teaching (Vols. 1–2). Kluwer. Goodson, I. F. (1997). Writing for Bjorg Gundem: On curriculum form. In B. Karseth, S. Gudmundsdottir, & S. Hopmann (Eds.), Didaktikk: Tradisjon og fornyelse: Festskrift til bjorg bradntzaeg gundem (pp. 35–51). Norway: University of Oslo, Institute for Educational Research. Goodson, I. F. (1996). Representing teachers: Bringing teachers back. In M. Kompf (Ed.), Changing research and practice: Teachers professionalism, identities and knowledge. London and New York and Philedelphia: Falmer Press. Goodson, I. F. (1996). Studying the teacher’s life and work. In J. Smyth (Ed.), Critical discourses on teacher development. Cassell.

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PUBLICATIONS BY IVOR F GOODSON – A SUMMARY Goodson, I. F. (1996). The personal and political. In T. Tiller, A. Sparkes, S. Karhus, & F. Dowling Naess (Eds.), Reflections on educational research: The qualitative challenge. Landas, Norway: Caspar Forlag A/S. Goodson, I. F. (1996). Scrutinizing life stories: Storylines, scripts and social contexts. In D. Thiessen, N. Bascia, & I. Goodson (Eds.), Making a difference about difference (pp. 123–138). Canada: Garamond Press. Goodson, I. F. (1995). Materias excolares y la construccion del curriculum: Texto y contexto. In J. G. Minguez & M. Beas (Eds.), Libro de texto y construccion de materiales curriculares (pp. 183–199). Granada, Spain: Proyecto Sur de Ediciones S.A.L. Goodson, I. F. (1995). A nation at rest: The contexts for change in teacher education in Canada. In N. K. Shimahara & I. Z. Holowinsky (Eds.), Teacher education in industrialized nations (pp. 125–153). New York and London: Garland Press. Goodson, I. F., & Walker, R. (1995). Telling tales. In H. McEwan & K. Egan (Eds.), Narrative in teaching, learning, and research (pp. 184–194). New York: Teachers College Press. Goodson, I. F. (1995). The context of cultural inventions: Learning and curriculum. In P. Cookson & B. Schneider (Eds.), Transforming schools (pp. 307–327). New York and London: Garland Press. Goodson, I. F. (1995). Basil Bernstein and aspects of the sociology of the curriculum. In P. Atkinson, B. Davies & S. Delamont (Eds.), Discourse and reproduction (pp. 121–136). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Goodson, I. F. (1995). A genesis and genealogy of British curriculum studies. In A. Sadovnik (Ed.), Knowledge and pedagogy: The sociology of Basil Bernstein. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Goodson, I. F., (1993, November 19–20). ‘Un pacte avec le diable’ ou des elements de reflexion a l’intention des formateurs de maitres. In L’universite et le milieu scolaire: Partenaires en formation des maitres, Actes du troisieme colloque (pp. 3–21). Monteal: Universite McGill. Goodson, I. F., & Cole (1993). Exploring the teacher’s professional knowledge. In D. McLaughlin & W. G. Tierney (Eds.), Naming silenced lives (pp. 71–94). London and New York: Routledge. Goodson, I. F. (1992). Studying teachers’ lives: An emergent field of inquiry. In I. F. Goodson (Ed.), Studying teachers’ lives (pp. 1–17). London and New York: Routledge. Goodson, I. F. (1993). Sponsoring the teachers voice. In M. Fullan & A. Hargreaves (Eds.), Understanding teacher development. London: Casell & New York: Teachers College Press. Goodson, I. F. (1992). Studying teachers’ lives: Problems and possibilities. In I. F. Goodson (Ed.), Studying teachers’ lives (pp. 234–249). London and New York: Routledge. Goodson, I. F. (1992). Laroplansforskning: Mot ett socialt konstruktivistiskt perspektiv. In S. Selander (Ed.), Forskning om utbildning (pp. 136–155). Stockholm/Skane: Brutus Ostlings Bokforlag Symposion. Goodson, I. F. (1992). Dar voz ao professor: As historias de vida dos professores e o seu desenvolvimento profissional. In A. Novoa (Ed.), Vidas de professores, coleccao ciencias da educacao. Portugal: Porto Editora. Goodson, I. F. (1992). Nations at risk and national curriculum: Ideology and identity. In J. Lynch, C. Modgil, & S. Modgil (Eds.), Equity or excellence? Education and cultural reproduction (pp. 199–213). Cultural Diversity and the Schools (Vol. 3). London, New York and Philadelphia: Falmer. Goodson, I. F. (1990). Curriculum reform and historical amnesia. In R. Moon (Ed.), New curriculum national curriculum. Hodder and Stoughton. Goodson, I. F. (1990). Tornando-se uma matéria acadêmica: Padrões de explicaçâo e evolução. In T. Tadeu da Silva (Ed.), Teoria & Educaçâo (No. 2, pp. 230–54). Porto Alegre, Brazil. Goodson, I. F., & Medway, P. (1990). Introduction. In I. F. Goodson & P. Medway (Eds.), Bringing English to order (pp. vii–xv). London, New York and Philadelphia: Falmer. Goodson, I. F. (1990). National curriculum: Ideology and identity. In Studies in education. London, New York and Philadelphia: Falmer. Goodson, I. F. (1990). Why study school subjects. In H. Haft & S. Hopmann (Eds.), Case studies in curriculum administration history (pp. 81–90). Goodson, I. F., & Dowbiggin. (1990). Commonalities in the history of school subjects in psychiatry. In S. Ball (Ed.), Foucault and education (pp. 105–192). Routledge and Kegan Paul. 139

PUBLICATIONS BY IVOR F GOODSON – A SUMMARY Goodson, I. F. (1990). Teachers’ lives. In J. Allen & J. Goetz (Eds.), Qualitative research in education (pp. 150–160). Atlanta. Goodson, I. F. (1989). Understanding/undermining hierarchy and hegemony – a critical introduction to A. Hargreaves. In Curriculum and assessment reform (pp. 1–14). Milton Keynes & Philadelphia: Open University Press. Goodson, I. F. (1988). Three curricular traditions and their implications. In R. Dale, R. Fergusson, & A. Robinson (Eds.), Frameworks for teaching (pp. 217–219). London: Hodder and Stoughton. Goodson, I. F. (1988). Beyond the subject monolith. In A. Westoby (Ed.), Culture and power in educational organizations (pp. 181–197). Milton Keynes & Philadelphia: Open University Press. Goodson, I. F. (1988). Putting life into educational research. In R. Webb & R. Sherman (Ed.), Qualitative studies in education (pp. 110–122). London, New York and Philadelphia: Falmer Press. Goodson, I. F. (1985). History context and qualitative method. In R. C. Burgess (Ed.), Strategies for educational research. London, New York and Philadelphia: Falmer Press. Goodson, I. F., & Ball, S. (1985). Understanding teachers: Concepts and contexts. In S. Ball & I. Goodson (Eds.), Teachers’ lives and careers. London and Philadelphia: Falmer Press. Goodson, I. F. (1985). Towards curriculum history. In I. F. Goodson (Ed.), Social histories of the secondary curriculum: Subjects for study. London and Philadelphia: Falmer Press. Goodson, I. F. (1985). Subjects for study: Case studies in curriculum history. In I. F. Goodson (Ed.), Social histories of the secondary curriculum: Subjects for study. London and Philadelphia: Falmer Press. Goodson, I. F. (1984). Beyond the subject monolith. In P. Harling (Ed.), New directions in educational leadership. London, New York and Philadelphia: Falmer Press. Goodson, I. F. (1984). Subjects for study. In I. Goodson & S. Ball (Eds.), Defining the curriculum. London, New York and Philadelphia: Falmer Press. Goodson, I. F. (1984). Becoming an academic subject. In I. Goodson (Ed.), Social histories of the secondary curriculum: Subjects for study. London, New York and Philadelphia: Falmer Press. Goodson, I. F. (1984). Defining a subject for the comprehensive school: A case study. In S. Ball (Ed.), Comprehensive schooling: A reader. London, New York and Philadelphia: Falmer Press. Goodson, I. F. (1983). Defining and defending the subject. In A. Hargreaves & M. Hammersley (Eds.), Sociology of curriculum practice. London, New York and Philadelphia: Falmer Press. Goodson, I. F. (1983). Life histories and teaching. In M. Hammersley (Ed.), The ethnography of schooling. Nafferton. Goodson, I. F. (1980). History 13–16. In L. Stenhouse (Ed.), Curriculum research and development in action. Heinemann. Goodson, I. F. (1978). New views of history: From innovation to implementation. In A. Dickinson & P. Lee (Eds.), History teaching and historical understanding. Heinemann. Goodson, I. F. (1977). Evaluation and evolution. SAFARI Occasional Paper No. 4, University of East Anglia. Goodson, I. F., & Walker, R. (1977). Jokes in the classroom. In P. Woods (Ed.), School experience. Croom Helm. Goodson, I. F. (1976). Towards an alternative pedagogy. In M. F. D. Young & G. Whitty (Eds.), Explorations in the sociology and politics of school knowledge. Nafferton. Goodson, I. F. (1975, September). Urban Studies. In C. Martin & K. Wheeler (Eds.), New insights in environmental education. Oliver and Boyd.

Technical Reports Goodson, I. F., Biesta, G., Field, J., Hodkinson, P., & Macleod, F. (2008). Learning lives: Learning, identity and agency in the life course. The Economic Research Council [Reference: RES-139-25-0111]. Goodson, I. F., & Norrie, C. (2008). A literature review of welfare state restructuring in education and health care in European nursing professions and their professional knowledge (PROFKNOW) for Professional Knowledge in Education and Health Restructuring Work and Life between State and Citizens in Europe. EU Sixth Framework Programme. 140

PUBLICATIONS BY IVOR F GOODSON – A SUMMARY Goodson, I. F. (1999). Studying the teacher’s life and work. In P. Kansanen (Ed.), In discussions on some educational issues VIII, Research Report (Vol. 204). Helsinki, Finland: Department of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki [ISBN 951-45-8293-4/ISSN 0359-4203]. Goodson, I. F., & Mangan, J. (1991). An Alternative Paradigm for Educational Research’, from the project ‘Studying Teacher Development’. London, Ontario: Faculty of Education, University of Western Ontario. Goodson, I. F. (1991). Studying teacher’s lives: Problems and possibilities. From the project Studying Teacher Development, London, Ontario: Faculty of Education, University of Western Ontario. Goodson, I. F. (1991). Curriculum and context, 147. In J. M. Mangan & V. A. Rhea (Ed.), Volume 1 of the summative report from the project curriculum and context in the use of computers for classroom learning. London, Ontario: Faculty of Education, University of Western Ontario. Goodson, I. F. (1991). The use of computers for classroom learning. In J. M. Mangan & V. A. Rhea (Ed.), Volume 2 of the summative report from the project curriculum and context in the use of computers for classroom learning (p. 202). London, Ontario: Faculty of Education, University of Western Ontario. Goodson, I. F. (1991). Closing the circle: Conclusions and recommendations. In J. M. Mangan & V. A. Rhea (Ed.), Volume 3 of the summative report from the project curriculum and context in the use of computers for classroom learning (p. 172). London, Ontario: Faculty of Education, University of Western Ontario. Goodson, I. F. (1991). Classroom cultures and the introduction of computers. In J. M. Mangan & V. A. Rhea (Ed.), Interim Report #5 from the project curriculum and context in the use of computers for classroom learning (p. 228). London, Ontario: Faculty of Education, University of Western Ontario. Goodson, I. F. (1990). Induction of community college instructors, from the Interim Report of the project studying teacher development with C. Fliesser and A. Cole (pp. 50–56). London, Ontario: Faculty of Education, University of Western Ontario. Goodson, I. F. (1990). Illuminative evaluation of classroom computing. In J. M. Mangan & V. A. Rhea (Ed.), Interim Report #3 from the project curriculum and context in the use of computers for classroom learning (p. 182). London, Ontario: Faculty of Education, University of Western Ontario. Goodson, I. F. (1990). Teacher development and computer use in schools. In J. M. Mangan & V. A. Rhea (Ed.), Interim Report #4 from the project curriculum and context in the use of computers for classroom learning (p. 125). London, Ontario: Faculty of Education, University of Western Ontario. Goodson, I. F. (1989). Research strategy for computers in education. In J. M. Mangan & V. A. Rhea (Ed.), Interim Report #1 from the project curriculum and context in the use of computers for classroom learning (p. 174). London, Ontario: Faculty of Education, University of Western Ontario. Goodson, I. F. (1989). Emergent themes in classroom computing. In J. M. Mangan & V. A. Rhea (Ed.), Interim Report #2 from the project curriculum and context in the use of computers for classroom learning (p. 178). London, Ontario: Faculty of Education, University of Western Ontario.

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