FORUM invited Melissa Benn and Jane Martin to interview Clyde Chitty, a brilliant and effective classroom and university teacher, one of the most well-known advocates of comprehensive education, a long-standing member of FORUM's editorial board, and for two decades co-editor of the publication. It was Michael Armstrong who called him 'the patron…

In this paper, I theorize fantasies of idealization at work in narratives of educational research. I take as an example one of the very first psychoanalytically oriented studies in the field: Marion Milner's, "The Human Problem in Schools," published in 1938. Evidence is drawn from Milner's published book as well as from the historical…

This article focuses on feminist activist academics who were instrumental in creating the UK Gender & Education Association at the turn of the twenty-first century. Drawing on my own intellectual biography (David, M. E. 2003. "Personal and Political: Feminisms, Sociology and Family Lives" Stoke-on-Trent. Trentham Books.) linked to…

This article is concerned to respond to recent UK governments' attitudes to teachers, who are predominantly women, and who are denied a voice and sense of professionalism. It looks to the role of teacher research in school decision-making, including school improvement, historically in England, which set a pioneering example in years before the…

This article takes a broad, and somewhat personal, sweep across the last 30 years or so of educational history in the United Kingdom (UK)and highlights some of the challenges concerning research, policy and practice on teaching and learning which developed over the period. Issues associated with academic agency are considered and a narrative of…

Graduate education in Britain was studied through structured interviews with approximately 800 full-time students, postal questionnaires from about 230 part-time students, interviews with university staff, and postal questionnaires from about 2,300 past graduate students. Students were questioned concerning their reasons for their choice of…

Racial and cultural diversity issues have been a source of some interest amongst outdoor and environmental educators. Early research was framed in terms of the "under-participation" of people of colour, which led to the development of ethnocentric and methodologically problematical "marginality" and "ethnicity"…