Serendipity, curiosity and restlessness: the biography of an academic nomad

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Serendipity, curiosity and restlessness the
biography of an academic nomad

• Peter Moss
• Thomas Coram Research Unit
• Institute of Education University of London
• Peter.moss_at_ioe.ac.uk

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• Wanderings
• Reflections
• Traces
• Critical questions for education

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Wanderings

• History lifelong love
• Campaign for the Mentally Handicapped
• Deinstitutionalisation
• Social work
• Early childhood education and care
• Childrens Centres
• Employment, care and gender
• Parental leave/time credit...men as carers

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• Crossing (national) borders
• Networks...comparative research...Children in
  Europe
• Crossing (paradigmatic and theoretical) borders
• Listening?democracy
• Social pedagogy...C.U.S.P.
• Pre-school school
• Radical Education the Common School

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Childrens Centres

• the basic form of service (for children 0-6 and
  families) should be multi-purpose childrens
  centres offering part and full-time care with
  medical and other services, to a very local
  catchment area, but there is much room for
  experimentationFor a society which provides free
  education (and) a free public health service, a
  free pre-school service is a logical corollary
• (Tizard, Moss and Perry, All Our Children, 1976)

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Reflections

• Nomadic career crossing many borders subject,
  national, theory, paradigm
• new perspectives connections, context
  complexity...breadth or depth?
• Serendipitous career
• Contingency, re-invention, unpredictable
  outcomes... impossible today?

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Reflections

• Paradigmatic naivety
• discovered paradigm late in working life central
  issue and choice...invisible in policy and
  research can it be made visible?
• Monolingualism and its discontents
• Limits of translation missed opportunities...dang
  ers of English dominance?

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• (The difficulties in acquiring a foreign
  language) has led to a pragmatism of settling for
  the English language with all the associated
  exclusionary consequences
• There is always the need to get results, to be
  pragmatic, to overcome language differences as
  barriers, and not enough time and space to
  explore the subtleties of discovering meaning
  through non-comprehension...This seems to hold up
  the works, those representing lesser spoken
  languages come to regard this as a personal
  problem
• Despite decades of exchanges and collaboration it
  is still almost impossible to make
  English-speaking colleagues and students in
  social work understand the nature of social
  pedagogy (Lorenz, 1999).

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Traces

• Dictatorship of no alternatives...need
  possibilities, real utopias, hope
• Impact of neoliberalism on policy, practice and
  subjectivity...but resistable
• Put research in its place
• tells us nothing contextual interpretation
• more cultural, less technical role
• phronetic social science - practical wisdom
  contributing to democratic deliberation

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Cultural role for research

• In the technical role, research is a producer of
  means, strategies, and techniques to achieve
  given ends...There is at least one other way in
  which research can inform practice. This is by
  providing a different way of understanding and
  imagining social reality...the cultural role of
  research (Biesta, 2007)

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Traces

• Early intervention and education are not magic to
  solve problems caused by unjust, dysfunctional
  socio-economic relations
• Education is first and foremost an ethical and
  political practice technical practice is
  secondary

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Traces

• World and our knowledge of it are socially
  constructed
• Everything is dangerous importance of critical
  thought and questions...The Minority World lives
  in a culture where we are constantly being
  offered solutions, before we have asked the
  critical questions (Carlo Ginsburg)

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Educationcritical questions

• What is the state we are in?
• What is education for?
• What is the concept of education?
• What are the fundamental values for education?
• What is our image of...the child...the
  school...the educator?
• (What do we mean by knowledge and learning?)

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What is the state we are in?

• Unsustainable economic model cant continue as
  we are?prosperity without growth
• Damocletian phase of deadly global threats
  global warming, resource depletion, nuclear
  proliferation...Doomsday clock at 23.55
• Diversity threatened biological, individual,
  intellectual
• Democracy and solidarity weakened
  neo-liberalisms individualism suspicion of
  democracy, public sphere...anything public

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Prosperity withoutgrowth

• A world in which things simply go on as usual is
  already inconceivable. But what about a world in
  which nine billion people all aspire to the level
  of affluence achieved in the OECD nations? Such
  an economy would need to be 15 times the size of
  this one by 2050 and 40 times bigger by the end
  of the century. What does such an economy look
  like? Does it really offer a credible vision for
  a shared and lasting prosperity?(Sustainable
  Development Commission, 2009)

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What is education for?

• Survival a shift from an exploitation attitude
  to a gardener attitude (Thierry Gaudin for EC)
• Human and societal flourishing
• Diversity valuing, promoting
• DemocracyDemocracy has to be born anew every
  generation, and education is its midwife (John
  Dewey)

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What is the concept of education?

• Education in its broadest sense...
• A broad concept that understands education as
  fostering and supporting the general well-being
  of children and young people, and their ability
  to interact effectively with their environment
  and to live a good life. This is education as a
  process of upbringing and increasing
  participation in wider society, with the goal
  that both individual and society flourish (Moss
  and Haydon, 2008)...connects to social pedagogy

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...with an ethics of care

• Care is a species activity that includes
  everything that we do to maintain, continue and
  repair our world so we can live in it as well
  as possible...An ethics of care involves
  particular acts of caring and a general habit of
  mind to care that should inform all aspects of
  moral life (Tronto, 1993, 127)

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...and an ethics of an encounter

• Not grasping to make the Other the Same
• Respect for absolute otherness
• Putting everything one encounters into pre-made
  categories implies we make the Other into the
  Same, as everything which does not fit into these
  categories, which is unfamiliar has to be
  overcomeSo to think another whom I cannot
  grasp is an important shift and it challenges the
  whole scene of pedagogy. It poses other questions
  to us pedagogues. Questions such as how the
  encounter with Otherness, with difference, can
  take place as responsibly as possible (Dahlberg,
  2003)

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What are the fundamental values?

• Solidarity and collaboration
• Diversity
• Dialogue
• Subjectivity
• Experimentation
• Democracy

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Democracy as a value

• Democracy as a way of governing
• All those who are affected by social
  institutions must have a share in producing and
  managing them
• Democracy as a way of living and relating
• Primarily a mode of associated living
  embedded in the social relationships of everyday
  life
• Democracy is a way of personal life
  controlled not merely by faith in human nature
  but by faith in the capacity of human beings for
  intelligent judgment and action if proper
  conditions are furnished (John Dewey)

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What is our image?

• Importance of social constructions (images) for
  policy, provision, practice
• The child as the rich child, with a hundred
  languages, a citizen and a subject of rights
• The school as
• a collective responsibility
• a public space for citizens young and old, a
  place of encounter
• a collaborative workshop full of possibilities??

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A collaborative workshop full of possibilities

• Learning
• Researching
• Experimenting
• Building solidarity, offering support
• Inclusion into community
• Sustaining diversity
• Economic development
• Promoting equalities rights
• Democratic practice
• ????????????

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What is our image?

• The worker as a democratic professional
• Researcher
• Critical thinkerasks critical questions
• Diversity, inc. paradigms and theories
• Contextualised judgements
• No right answer but many alternatives
• DP offers her reading of the worldher role is
  to bring out the fact that there are other
  readings of the world at times in opposition to
  her own (Paulo Freire)

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There are alternatives, we have collective
choices to make

• Any vision of education that takes democracy
  seriously cannot but be at odds with educational
  reforms which espouse the language and values of
  market forces and treat education as a commodity
  to be purchased and consumed...Freedom of
  choice will be a major principle in determining
  educational policy, but the notion of choice
  will not simply refer to the rights of
  individuals to pursue their narrow self-interests
  in a competitive marketplace. Instead it will be
  recognised that, in a democracy, individuals do
  not only express personal preferences they also
  make public and collective choices related to the
  common good of their society (Carr and Hartnett,
  1996)

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• Aldrich, R. (2008) Education for survival,
  History of Education
• Biesta, G. (2007) Why What works wont work,
  Educational Theory, 57(1)
• Carr,W. And Hartnett, A. (1996) Education and the
  Struggle for Democracy. Buckingham UK Open
  University Press
• Dahlberg, G. Moss, P. (2005) Ethics and
  Politics in Early Childhood Education. London
  Routledge
• Dahlberg, G., Moss, P. Pence, A.(2007) Beyond
  Quality in Early Childhood Education and Care.
  London Routledge
• Gaudin, T. (2009) The world in 2025 a challenge
  to reason. Brussels European Commission.
  http//2100.org/World2025.pdf

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• Jackson, T. (2009) Prosperity without growth.
  London Sustainable Development Corporation
• Moss, P. (2009) There are alternatives! Markets
  and democratic experimentalism in early childhood
  education and care. http//www.bernardvanleer.org/
  publications_results?SearchableTextB-WOP-053
• Rinaldi, C. (2006) In Dialogue with Reggio
  Emilia. London Routledge
• Unger, R.M. (2005) What should the Left propose?
  London Verso
• Wilkinson, R. Pickett, K. (2009) The Spirit
  Level. London Allen Lane