Enlightenment and the ‘heart of darkness’: (neo)imperialism in the Congo, and elsewhere

This essay addresses the ‘state of qualitative inquiry’ twice; first, as an allegory of a contemporary epistemological imperialism; second, as an experiment in thinking and writing otherwise. Lacking any manifesto, distrusting abstract envisioning, it offers a worked example not of the future but of the present reconsidered. The ambition is to be multi-disciplinary, to work the literary into that conjured literality, to address the present as a past-future, and to do so by way of analogy, juxtaposition and allegory1. The subject is the modernity and madness ‘imperialism’, past, present, historical and virtual. The setting is the ‘chaosmos’ of the Congo, starting with the trading 'stations' H.M. Stanley planted on that river in the late 19th century

Appreciating failure, depreciating success : an antidote to the eulogies of departure

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Progressivism against the audit culture: the continuing case of Summerhill School versus OfSTED

This is an account of how OfSTED tried to close down Summerhill School. It begins with the 1999 Inspection of the school, and the issuing of a 'Notice of Complaint' - a list of alleged inadequacies in the school. Failure to remedy these would have led to the closure of the school, or at the very least, the destruction of its freedoms. Summerhill appealed against these complaints, and the appeal was heard by a Tribunal in 2000. The Government backed out of the appeal after only three days. Summerhill then complained about the quality of inspection, an appeal that was largely dismissed by OFSTED, and then by an appeal adjudicator. It is clear that the events of 1999-2000 were a victory for the school. Equally, that victory is far from final and legal changes in 2003 once again threaten the philosophy and practices of Summerhill. This article vindicates the school's claims, and offers a comprehensive indictment of the inspectorial process. It is also a case study of the 'audit culture' in action, providing insight into the defective culture and ethos of government agencies, in particular the lengths they will go to in order to make sure that evidence and reason do not get in the way of policy and prejudice

Sex, science and educational research: the unholy trinity

This article examines the state's contemporary construction of 'sex' as an educational problem in England. It does so by interrogating the notion of the 'pregnant teenager' as it is semantically and statistically constructed in accountability discourses, as well as research constrained within them. It then examines certain features of an exemplary solution to the problem, as proferred by one of the largest contemporary research projects into sex education in the UK (the RIPPLE project). A critique is offered of the 'scientific' nature of some of these findings. We claim conclusions to be undermined by statistical and rhetorical gerrymandering, a prejudicial rendering of pupil 'voice', and an underlying reductionism. The article concludes that many of the features of such current problem-constructing and solution-rendering can be characterised as a false invocation of 'Science', and that their conjunction fuels an enduring infantilisation of educational discourses about sex and sex education

Towards an uncertain politics of professionalism: teacher and nurse identities in flux

This paper is about the nature of contemporary professional identity. It looks at the ways in which 'discursive dynamics' come to re-write the professional teacher and nurse as split, plural and conflictual selves, as they seek to come to terms with a political impetus written through what the authors term an 'economy of performance' in uncertain conflict with various 'ecologies of practice'. The teacher and nurse are thus located in a complicated nexus between policy, ideology and practice. Epistemologically, the paper offers a deconstruction of professional identities, and criticizes the reductive typologies and characterizations of current professionalism. Politically, it reaches towards a more nuanced account of professional identities, stressing the local, situated and indeterminable nature of professional practice, and the inescapable dimensions of trust, diversity and creativity

“Hello Central, Give Me Doctor Jazz”: Auto/Ethnographic Improvisation as Educational Event in Doctoral Supervision

Through exchanges within a doctoral supervision, the authors explore a range of dilemmas and challenges for reflexive inquiry. These include the problematic business of naming, the impossibility of objective separation of self from research, the merging of researcher subjectivities, and differences between performance and performativity. We note the educational potential in what can conventionally be considered “unprofessional” approaches to qualitative inquiry: neologisms, personal experience, stories, conversations, music, poetry, paintings, and film. We engage in reflexive interactions with each other and with such “data.” This was undertaken in the spirit of jazz improvisation—an unrehearsed performance—something that “happened,” an unplanned educational event but also an agency enabled by structure

How policy impacts on practice and how practice does not impact on policy

Our project attempts to understand how the Learning and Skills Sector functions. It traces how education and training policy percolates down through many levels in the English system and how these levels interact, or fail to interact. Our first focus is upon how policy impacts upon the interests of three groups of learners: unemployed people in adult and community learning centres, adult employees in work-based learning and younger learners on Level 1 and Level 2 courses in further education. Our next focus is upon how professionals in these three settings struggle to cope with two sets of pressures upon them: those exerted by government and a broader set of professional, institutional and local factors. We describe in particular how managers and tutors mediate national policy and translate it (and sometimes mistranslate it) into local plans and practices. Finally we criticise the new government model of public service reform for failing to harness the knowledge, good will and energy of staff working in the sector, and for ignoring what constitutes the main finding of our research: the central importance of the relationship between tutor and students

Reflexivity, the picturing of selves, the forging of methods

This paper addresses alternative models for a reflexive methodology and examines the ways in which doctoral students have appropriated these texts in their theses. It then considers the indeterminate qualities of those appropriations. The paper offers a new account of reflexivity as 'picturing', drawing analogies from the interpretation of two very different pictures, by Velázquez and Tshibumba. It concludes with a more open and fluid account of reflexivity, offering the notion of 'signature', and drawing on the work of Gell and also Deleuze and Guattari in relation to the inherently specific nature of 'concepts' situated in space and time