This session aims to encourage debate about the current state of educational studies as an academic field – its strengths, limitations, constraints and challenges.Ìý I use my own career as a researcher, stretching over some 40 years, to raise issues that I think have continuing validity.
My first university appointment was to a Lectureship in Education at Glasgow University in 1976.Ìý At that time there was a generally held view that Education as a field of study could be explained in terms of four ‘foundation’ disciplines – history, philosophy, psychology and sociology.Ìý Many courses of teacher education were structured along these lines, with inputs from specialists in these four areas. It was hoped that some kind of magical synthesis would take place in the minds of students, enabling them to understand the complexity of educational events.Ìý
One criticism of the ‘foundation disciplines’ model was that it seemed to present Education as being parasitic on other fields of enquiry. The question was asked, ‘Does it not have an intellectual core of its own?’ This led to a focus on curriculum, evident in the work of, e.g., Denis Lawton and Lawrence Stenhouse.Ìý In the decades that followed all sorts of other specialisms developed – leadership and management, school effectiveness and improvement, special educational needs, multicultural and anti-racist education, etc.Ìý This diversity had some advantages: it showed the vast scope of educational studies, the breadth and depth of its application.Ìý But it also led to intellectual fragmentation.Ìý What was missing was a comprehensive overview of the central principles and concerns of the field.Ìý I remember asking, rather naively, why it was that John Dewey’sÌýDemocracy and Education,ÌýfirstÌýpublished in 1916, seemed to be the last attempt at a general theory of education.
Against this background, how did my own intellectual interests develop?ÌýÌý They were influenced by working on a co-edited book on the history of Scottish education with a colleague at Glasgow, Hamish Paterson.Ìý This caused me to question the official narrative of the Scottish educational tradition, as a story of continuous progress, exemplifying the principles of democracy and equality, maintained by the stewardship of a disinterested leadership class.Ìý I then extended my critical perspective to look at the contemporary scene.Ìý If the myths of the past needed to be deconstructed, what about the myths of the present?Ìý
My bookÌýThe Leadership Class in Scottish EducationÌýwas published in 1986, two years before Andrew McPherson and Charles Raab’s much more scholarly work,ÌýGoverning Education.ÌýWhereas my book was deliberately polemical and provocative, theirs was based on painstaking research, informed by extensive interviews, and written in measured tones.Ìý Although very different in methodology and style, the two together helped to establish policy studies as an important field of enquiry.
I sometimes doubt whetherÌýThe Leadership ClassÌýwould be accepted for publication today.Ìý My naming of particular individuals – politicians, senior civil servants, directors of education and chairs of national bodies – departed from the polite conventions of professional exchanges.Ìý I learned later that one director of education (now deceased) took legal advice about whether he might have grounds for suing me for defamation.Ìý But I had been careful.Ìý The paragraphs that he found offensive were largely based on an ill-judged conference speech he had given at a national event, the text of which was subsequently published under his own name in an educational journal.Ìý My account drew on a number of quotations from this article which suggested that power struggles between officials and elected members tended to occupy more time than plans to improve the educational service.Ìý In other words, he had condemned himself out of his own mouth.