Ivor Goodson

Tallinn University | TLU

A good deal of sociological energy has been expended on the exploration of the relationship between disciplinary knowledge and the social order. Focussing on this ongoing interface is one way to explore the ends of knowledge. In some ways this is a task for the curriculum historian, as well as the sociologist. As Young et al argued in their volume...

The election of a fantasist as the President of the United States highlights a growing phenomenon in our contemporary world; the accelerating disconnects between daily life and the narratives we are presented with. Whether we call this fake news or draw on Orwell's notion of 'newspeak'-this rupture between our lived experience and what we are told...

Trinta anos após a queda do bloco soviético, ainda persiste uma retórica de diferenciação e polarização discursiva entre os padrões educacionais ocidentais e não ocidentais. Tal retórica ofusca uma semelhança potencial, ou homogeneidade, entre os diversos contextos dominantes e marginalizados. Variações regionais, locais e pessoais são prematuramen...

To listen to both: 'Explaining Life History Methods' and 'Autobiography and Method' interviews access: https://player.captivate.fm/collection/b9d64a80-5a71-42a0-81f3-a6218689f180 This interview begins with Helen Eikeland and Ivor Goodson explaining how they came to work together. Helen had come to see Ivor in Brighton and wanted to use life history...

This interview begins with Helen Eikeland and Ivor Goodson explaining how they came to work together. Helen had come to see Ivor in Brighton and wanted to use life history methods in her work on Aid and Development. HE: was working on a piece about aid and development, and I have been working within aid and development for a long time and I remembe...

This article explores the intersection of place-based reading practices of rural working-class males and reading practices in school. Life story interviews have been conducted with six men in different ages (age 19-63) living in a rural region in Sweden, focusing on their reflections on their own relation to reading across a life span from the stan...

This paper will investigate patterns of historical periodisation with regard to public intellectual work. It will begin with a focus on educational studies and with a specific case study of the Centre for Applied Research in Education (CARE) at the University of East Anglia. The case study will highlight the roles of leading public intellectuals su...

The meeting of tribal learning and schooling is the central focus of this study. The study delves into the dilemma raised in various social research concerned with the significant disconnect between ordinary everyday working people and systems of governance. The theoretical framework is based on the concept of tribal learning, related to the notion...

Thirty years after the demise of the Soviet bloc, there still persists a rhetoric of differentiation and a discursive polarisation between the Western and the non-Western educational thinking and practices. This rhetoric overshadows a potential similarity, or homogeneity, between the dominant and several marginalised contexts. Regional, local and p...

This paper will investigate patterns of historical periodisation with regard to public intellectual work. It will begin with a focus on educational studies and with a specific case study of the Centre for Applied Research in Education (CARE) at the University of East Anglia. The case study will highlight the roles of leading public intellectuals su...

Recently in Europe, neoliberal ‘knowledge economy’ policies and related reforms in higher education have positioned universities as ‘fixers’ of economic problems. The narrative line that has consistently run through recent neoliberal European policy agendas is that universities fail to supply the ‘knowledge economy’ with practically applied knowled...

We live in a time of global crisis where social isolation is required and necessary. Nevertheless, and paradoxically, it has never been more crucial to show how cross-cultural boundaries can create meaningful educational and curricular experiences. In this article we present the life history of an indigenous teacher living in the Xingu Park in Braz...

The coronavirus crisis has appeared like some vast, cruel sociological experiment. It has confined people to their homes, radically disturbed their taken-for-granted knowledge and beliefs, and forced them to alter behaviors once casually, even unthinkingly, employed in their everyday personal, working, and social lives. What has been learned? How m...

This chapter broadly traces the theoretical roots of the Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices (S-STEP) group, a Special Interest Group (SIG) established in 1993 as part of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). Beginning with the perennial problem of the theory-practice split in the field of teaching and teacher edu...

The coronavirus crisis has appeared like some vast cruel sociological experiment confining people to their homes, radically disturbing their taken for granted knowledge, beliefs, and behaviours previously casually even unthinkingly employed in their everyday personal, working and social lives? What has been learnt? And how might it stimulate reimag...

This book offers a remarkable range of research that emphasises the need to analyse the shaping of curricula under historical, social and political variables. Teachers’ life stories, the Cold War as a contextual element that framed curricular transformations in the US and Europe, and the study of trends in education policy at transnational level ar...

We aim to problematise the understanding of neoliberalism as a world movement and as the dominant global discourse. We argue that neoliberalism has been adjusted variously in educational reforms not only in different country contexts, but also at different levels of mediation, therefore providing globalisation but not homogeneity. We discuss the un...

In recent decades, the work of teachers worldwide has undergone deep change. We have seen that teachers have encountered recent challenges differently and adapted to educational changes to a different extent depending on their personal disposition, but also school leadership and workplace support. This study focuses on the example of Estonian vocat...

The transparency of the data analysis process is one of the main criteria for the empirical reliability of qualitative biographical research based on the life history method (LHM). The aim of the paper is to examine the transparency of the data analysis process used in published scientific papers based on LHM. The results show that the data analysi...

This paper focuses on nostalgia in the narratives of vocational teachers. The aim is to understand the role of nostalgia as a mechanism for adapting to or resisting educational change. The paper is based on the secondary analysis of semi-structured interviews with 30 Estonian vocational teachers. In the teachers’ narratives, the nostalgia for the f...

This paper deals with the journey of school knowledge through different sites from its origin in the curriculum, to professional teachers’ life histories. At each site, a set of empirical materials is examined relating to the subject of research. In this sense, curriculum documents, textbooks and high school teachers’ narratives were analysed, obse...

See Introduction "Life Histories and Narratives" written by Ivor Goodson pp. 3-10.

The significant and rapid changes in policies that have occurred since the financial crisis in 2007/8 have, perhaps irrevocably, altered the educational landscape in the UK, and elsewhere. In what we term the reconstituted neo-liberal period, we have seen clear attempts to restore and enhance prior marketisation and privatisation strategies into an...

There has been widespread debate about the effects and impacts of globalisation and the predominant waves of reform that have arisen as a result. Many educational theorists have argued that there is strong empirical evidence indicating that educational reform initiatives resemble similar ‘world movements’ (see for example, Meyer et al., 1997; Meyer...

"Following the financial crises in 2007, we have seen the intensification of neoliberal policies in education, with radical and potentially irrevocable shifts in the educational landscape, promoted under the auspices of ‘austerity’. This book highlights the central features of neoliberal education policies, their origins, recent developments and al...

There is a good deal of ongoing debate about the effects and impacts of globalisation. Many educational theorists (e.g., Meyer et al., 1997) have argued that there is a world systems model at work (see Wallerstein, 2004). And we would agree that a convergent global rhetoric for education has emerged in the neoliberal period. However, whilst at the...

In this paper, we attempt to further develop the concept of ‘refraction’ (GOODSON RUDD, 2012; RUDD GOODSON, 2014). Refraction is a conceptual tool intended to support complex and rich methodological and theoretical explorations of educational discourse, systems, policies and practice. It emphasises empirical investigation at the supra, macro, meso...

The article reviews the role of autobiographical memory as a site of narrative construction. Far from being a place of liberal retrospective recall it is a site of active recapitulation and reconstruction. The article provides examples of how history and memory are intermingled. It also draws in the author’s autobiographical vignettes to explore th...

This article proposes a series of ideas to guide future education research and thinking about education, formulated as the 5Rs: remembering, regression, reconceptualisation, reflection, and renewal. Together they can provide at least a partial antidote to the dubious and damaging educational rhetoric associated with the promotion and normalisation...

This article provides a historical overview of how the process of curriculum change has evolved over the past 40 years. The intention is to explore how patterns of power and control have changed their configuration during different historical periods. The historical investigation of curriculum change shows a progressive movement away from the defin...

Relative importance of work has exponentially grown in teachers’ lives in the last 40 years. Moves to restructure schooling and education have increased and so have studies on the impact of these changes. This work allows us to concentrate on some of the complexities at the heart of many new school reform initiatives. Writing in 1975, at the end of...

Töö suhteline osakaal õpetajate elus on viimase 40 aasta jooksul astmeliselt kasvanud. Ettepanekuid kooli ja hariduse ümberkorraldamiseks on esitatud üha rohkem, niisamuti on suurenenud muutuste mõju käsitlevate uuringute arv. Siinne uurimus võimaldab meil keskenduda mõningatele keerulistele probleemidele, mis peituvad uue koolireformi algatustes....

Recent writing on education and social change, and a growing number of new governmental initiatives across Western societies have proceeded in denial or ignorance of the personal missions and biographical trajectories of key public sector personnel. This book stems from an underpinning belief that we have to understand the personal biographical if...

We examine the comparative “return” experiences of second-generation Greek-Americans and British-born Greek Cypriots who have relocated to their respective parental homelands of Greece and Cyprus. Sixty individuals, born in the United States or the United Kingdom yet now living in Greece or Cyprus, were interviewed and detailed life narratives reco...

Previous educational studies have investigated the impact of skills and contextual influences on adolescents’ citizenship participation and efficacy. Yet, we know little about how adolescents give meaning to their citizenship efficacy. This study explores the narratives of 27 adolescents in the Netherlands on their citizenship efficacy. A thematic...