Abstract
Editorial
Completing her 3 years as Lead Editor of Power & Education Heather Piper found preparing this edition a bittersweet experience. She remains extremely grateful for the contribution of the many authors and reviewers, the support of members of the Editorial Board, and the work of the book reviews editors (Laurette Bristol and formerly Renée Depalma), which made the journal possible, and her own work easier.
We are proud of the way that Power & Education has evolved and consolidated in recent years. It is no longer a newcomer to the scene; some new journals fail to complete 6 years in such good health, with a consistently viable number of submissions, an expanding readership, and wide recognition. It has been good to include articles by prominent and distinguished colleagues, but also others from doctoral students who we hope will remember where their first article was published. This inclusiveness and diversity is well exemplified in this edition. The international profile of the articles published in Power & Education remains a further positive and distinctive feature. Our status as an international journal is secure, and in the last 10 editions, beyond the UK, there have been articles (in some cases a number) from South Africa, Canada, Poland, Greece, the USA, Spain, Portugal, Italy, France, Luxembourg, Sweden, Ghana, Hong Kong, Cyprus, Denmark, and Australia. It is well worth committing the time necessary to facilitate the work of colleagues writing in their second (or third…) language, in order to ensure a breadth of perspective and subject matter. A further notable characteristic of the journal is the tendency for a significant proportion of the published articles to be relatively opinionated and argumentative. Some academic ivory tower dwellers may see this as a deficiency, but it is a characteristic that we relish, and clearly many readers agree.
After this edition, the Lead Editor role will be taken up by Professor Dean Garratt. Heather has worked with Dean on and off over many years, including on a series of articles on citizenship education, and on ESRC funded research around the politics of touch in sports coaching. We know he will bring valuable attributes to the role, including real breadth of knowledge and expertise, a willingness to engage with an eclectic range of ideas and research, and a scrupulous attention to detail. Power & Education will be safe with Dean; we wish him well. In addition, our book reviews editor is also about to change. For the past couple of years Laurette Bristol has carried out this responsibility perfectly, and we will miss her quiet efficiency and thank her for all her effort. Mark Pulsford is taking over this responsibility and we wish him luck and know he will continue the good work of his predecessors.
There is a further changing of the guard to be reported. When the editorial team, emerging from the Discourse, Power, and Resistance conference series, first explored the idea of the journal seven 7 ago, the wise counsel received from Roger Osborne-King at Symposium was reassuring and invaluable. Since then, Roger has delivered on every promise, ensured that Symposium made its inputs with absolute efficiency, and made it easy for the lead editors to get on with the job. We are very grateful for this crucial supportive contribution. However, responsibility for the academic journals published by Symposium has been taken over by SAGE Publications, with whom we have entered into a contract that covers the publication of Power & Education for the next 5 years. Obviously, this has involved some detailed discussion, and we look forward to working with a new publisher. Some editorial processes will change, but neither authors nor readers should notice much difference, other than the move to electronic submission from 2015, and we are confident that the journal will be able to go from strength to strength under this new and larger umbrella.
That's quite enough valedictory preamble; time to introduce this edition.
We open with an article by the new Lead Editor, ‘Challenging convention: Methodological explorations in contemporary qualitative inquiry’, in which Dean Garratt presents a critical appreciation and analysis of the application of different research methodologies to selected social and educational research contexts. The article is based on his recent professorial inaugural lecture, which explored his theoretical and substantive interests and development, but in doing so touches on themes (e.g. neoliberalism, ‘truth’) that are central to this edition as a whole. Set against the backdrop of an ontological question concerning the possibility of truth, he explores the untenability of any notion of absolute truth in qualitative inquiry, and examines the corollary implications for determining the nature, role, and status of research. Utilising three contrasting methodological frameworks (Gadamerian hermeneutics, Foucauldian theory, and Lacanian psychoanalytic theory), the narrative details a journey of personal development. Inaugural lectures tend to follow a relatively autobiographical script, and Dean’s approach to fulfilling his role led him into areas of self-disclosure which some may find surprising; the practical experience underlying the theoretical discussion in his final section can be identified through a cursory web-search (http://www.flickriver.com/photos/photoroger/3150456675/). The article is an effective way for him to say hello.
After this, the edition picks up and explores themes which go to the core of Power & Education’s mission, namely: the damage done to real education by the general and specific imposition of crude discourses of neoliberalism and managerialism; the need to analyse carefully what is happening in particular contexts; and the possibility of constructing resistance and concrete alternatives. Contributions range from overviews to the subject- and sectoral-specific, including considerations of the university itself. Incisive think pieces from three senior colleagues set the scene, and then a range of contributions explore the problems.
Richard Pring, in ‘The Teacher as High Priest and Usherer in of the Kingdom of God’, explores the nature of discourse that continues to shape both education policy and practice in schools. He presents a wide-ranging attack on the intellectual basis and practical consequences of contemporary rhetorics of neoliberalism, managerialism, and business orientation, and illustrates the full extent of the damage that related assumptions and interventions can (and seem likely to) cause. Significant collateral damage can be identified in the ways teachers see their role, which have the effect of marginalising them in major educational decisions and curriculum development. Challenging this orthodoxy, Pring revisits key ideas from Dewey and Bruner and stresses the essential need to conceive education as being concerned with creating and nurturing humanity. Thus, we need schools, and a community of teachers, that see beyond the targets set by government, beyond league tables, beyond so-called academic achievement, to prioritise the creation of a civilised community capable of producing the citizens of the future.
In ‘Defending universities: Argument and persuasion’, Stefan Collini takes the damage done by the subjection of universities in Britain and elsewhere to ‘free market' ideology and the resulting narrow concern with claimed economic effects and benefits as a given. His focus is on exploring the terms in which the defenders of universities should make their case. Arguments should be carefully pitched to enable diverse audiences to value universities’ work and continued existence; this involves being honest about their problems and limitations, while focusing on ideas and on the processes involved in their development. The case for universities should be made in appropriate intellectual, scientific, and cultural terms; thus may the current damaging orthodoxy best be resisted.
Drawing on decades of observation and research, in ‘The five Rs of educational research’, Ivor Goodson provides a succinct overview of the challenge facing educational research in neoliberal times (and thus education itself), and proposes five, or even six, key ideas in response. He argues that these ideas, taken together, can provide at least a partial antidote to the dubious and damaging educational rhetoric associated with the promotion and normalisation of the neoliberal order. Many readers may find them helpful, even if uncomfortable.
In ‘The co-operative university: Labour, property and pedagogy’, Joss Winn bases a discussion of current reality and future potentiality in co-operative higher education on a theoretical analysis drawn from classical and contemporary Marxist thought. Providing substantive information, sources, and discussion in relation to the background of co-operativism, as well as detailed consideration of specific developments at Mondragon University (Spain) and University of Lincoln (UK), the article offers insight into an alternative to the taken for granted model of the contemporary university. In discussing the idea of the co-operative university, he focuses particularly on the role of labour and property (and the notion of the academic commons), and on the crucial relationship between pedagogy and institutional form. This contribution seems likely to provoke interest and argument on many levels.
Vasco d’Agnese considers a major international initiative in ‘PISA’s colonialism: Success, money, and the eclipse of education’. He argues that, contrary to the benign claims made in OECD publications, PISA is an all-encompassing framework that intends to govern education and schooling worldwide, creating a monopoly right to establish which pupils and students are well prepared for life, which are well prepared for society, and hence who will be able to achieve success. By imposing the OECD’s univocal logic, behind a mask of objectivity, PISA manifests a clear ideology and situates education in a well-defined value square: Money, success, evidence, and competition. Through this hegemonic discourse, all other values and locally respected criteria are disregarded and devalued.
In ‘Schooling, space and social justice’, Dave Cudworth explores issues of educational social justice in relation to Gypsy/Traveller education in the UK. Drawing on the idea that the school is a socio-spatial landscape, a highly significant institutional space with which children engage, he discusses forms of educational inequality as consequences of spatial production. Using spatial theory, he examines the overlapping relationships of spatial production in teaching and learning, spatial representations in the daily experiences of school life, and also in policy discourse. This approach facilitates a compelling account of the ‘structures’ and ‘landscapes’ of the education process, as well as the social practices and interactions experienced by Gypsy/Traveller communities.
Jennifer Kitchen draws on her doctoral research in ‘The ensemble domesticated: Mapping issues of autonomy and power in performing arts projects in schools’, exploring the need for a sophisticated understanding of theatre education, and particularly a specific project. While theatre education has been positioned as an emancipatory endeavour, often drawing on the rhetoric of ‘the ensemble’ as a pedagogic approach, this assumption does not sit easily within existing normative education structures. Treating arts education projects as finite ‘interventions’, with a known set of outcomes, ‘domesticates’ the ensemble approach, flattening and masking its complexity. Further, the ensemble-based project may more usefully be seen as a pedagogic space to be populated, activated, and interpreted in diverse ways by participants in particular contexts.
In ‘School Direct: A critique’, Gemma Parker evaluates School Direct, a recently introduced Initial Teacher Education pathway for English primary schools. She focuses on power relations as the key consideration, noting the growing consensus within the education community that this route towards Qualified Teacher Status embodies a long-held government objective to remove ITE from the influence of higher education. Given this approach, a Foucauldian lens proves appropriate and illuminating.
Jacek Moroz considers ‘Knowledge and reality as educational tools of violence’, arguing that schooling represents a specific kind of symbolic violence, with sources in traditional ways of understanding education as training, and a tacitly assumed naïve realism: The belief that we can obtain objective and universal knowledge of the external world. As a consequence, education kills free and critical thinking, as well as effectively blocking social change. On this basis, she discusses selected controversies around the traditional model of knowledge and learning, and suggests different paradigms for knowledge and education.
Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
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University of Sheffield, UK
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