In this experimental article, the author initiates a methodological move toward the aesthetic in educational research. In doing so, he uncovers the hidden dynamics of power in the politics of knowledge. By treating the current commonsense images of public schooling as part of an emerging pluralism, he argues for a conception of aesthetics that is anchored in everyday cultural practices. Viewing public schooling as both a site of theoretical/methodological inquiry and intervention, the article begins to move away from an epistemological perspective that is rooted in “problem solving” to one that Willis captures as the “relations of creativity.”
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