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I find it difficult to define myself in terms of what I do, because what I do is create my life with every new moment. If pressed, I would say I am a teacher, in the sense that I encourage other people to learn in ways that enable them to realise their capacity for creativity. I believe profoundly, like Chomsky (1986), in the idea that people are born with the capacity for an unlimited number of creative acts, from washing their faces to performing great works of art. I also believe that we are born with the capacity to make our own choices (Berlin 2002); so, as a teacher, I believe it is my responsibility to help others and myself to make the kind of choices that are right for ourselves and right for other people. I see teaching as a form of enabling people to explain how we hold ourselves accountable for what we do, as we create our lives in company with one another. This is what I do, and my classrooms are anywhere where people are prepared to learn, whether in mainstream schools, where I began my working life, to university learning rooms, where I am mainly situated these days.
I was born and grew up in Dorset, where I still live, though I am away from home more often than not. My father was Scottish, and my mother was Scottish-Irish. Consequently, I feel at home anywhere on these islands. Indeed, I tend to feel at home anywhere I go - and I go to a lot of places - because, although customs and traditions are different in different countries, people are still people, and probably feel the same the world over. Everyone needs love and affection; everyone is vulnerable in some way; and everyone feels the same joy and pain when things go right and wrong (see also Sacks 2002). So I tend not to feel a stranger, but go through life with a strong faith that if I respond to people as I hope they will respond to me, we will probably get along.
This sense of the ever-present now, of the real-life everyday nature of human interchange, informs the way I practise and write, as well as the ideas I bring to my writing. Although I enjoy the idea of grand theory, and draw on people's writings extensively to inform my own thinking, I tend to remain grounded in the idea that each one of us can, and should, offer our own explanations for what we are doing. My friend and colleague, Jack Whitehead, communicates this idea as the capacity of each person to offer their living educational theories of practice (Whitehead 1989). I agree, and, from working with Jack, have done whatever I can to legitimise this idea, as can be seen from our writings cited above. The efforts at legitimisation have included supervising masters and doctoral studies, so that the living theories of practitioners from any context may be validated by the Academy and so be seen as high quality knowledge. You can see extensive examples of the realisation of this idea in our websites. (Jack's website, Jean's website)
I think this is probably the greatest significance of what I do: to bring the knowledge of the townships and the streets into the Academy, and have the knowledge of teachers and children in poverty-stricken areas legitimated alongside the knowledge of academics working in universities, and, in the process, reconceptualise educational theory, from its present dominant propositional form to a transformational living form. This also has implications for the creation of a new form of public sphere. We are all people who can think for ourselves and offer our own explanations for our practices, regardless of our workplaces. I did my PhD studies mainly while working in my seaside gift shop, when I went into the retail business after taking early retirement from secondary mainstream education. I have since retired three more times, yet probably work harder these days than ever before. I do not believe practitioners need to be told what to do - we know our practices and we can imagine ways of improving them, and testing the validity of our knowledge claims; and I agree with the recent (2009) House of Lords report that ‘able, brilliant and skilled professionals do not thrive in an environment where much of their energies are absorbed by the need to comply with a raft of detailed requirements’ (House of Lords, 2009: 15). People thrive in contexts where they feel their knowledge and capacity for creative work is valued, and where they are free to enjoy caring relationships, on an equal footing with everyone else. These are the commitments I bring to my life and my work.
I have never thought of what I do as a career. I simply try to do what I do well, which is teach, and think for myself; and I am passionate about this and protect the creative spaces that enable me to do this. Those creative spaces seem to be getting fewer these days, so I am developing a new practice, of finding ways to write on aeroplanes and in hotel rooms. In the final analysis, when we travel, in normative terms, we move to new physical and geographical spaces; but perhaps the most important form of travel is what goes on in our own minds. I have already travelled far, and I know I still have a lot of travelling to do; and I am looking forward to the journey ahead, and the new ideas that are yet to come.
