Key themes in Qualitative Research and Enquiry Based Learning Biographical Knowledge and Curricular Action John Schostak1992Spencer Hall Invitational Conference, University of Western Ontario, OctoberKnowing is not enough. Even if what is known is certain,
or at least plausible, without being able to act, without
being able to feel integrated with the knowing, this
knowledge is without social relevance, personal value. In
some everyday sense knowing entails someone who knows
something about something. Self, object and experience seem
tied indissolubly. This self-evident indissoluble tie
generates a sense of biography, that is, a sense of a self
and the world of experience that persists through time.
Biography is in part an act of memory and imagination and in
part the product of complex processes of social interaction
and enculturation. The surface unity of the Self as
expressed through a particular body is easily exploded. The
biographical unity is for some purposes a useful fiction but
for others an imprisoning delusion. What is known is never
enough to hold everything together.
The Discourse of the OtherContained metonymically, metaphorically, secretively, within the biographical story is the discourse of the other. Discourses that have been glossed over to present a self clear of all self-subversive influences and evidences do not just vanish. They may be marginalised to the darkened corners of an institution, or to the whispers behind the hand but they remain. The signs of their existence may be through sudden eruptions of anger, or sullen resistance. They may appear as graffiti, or as vandalism, or as riot. When a discourse about experience is covered over, having no voice on the accepted public stage, no legitimate course is imaginable, therefore no course is possible except a course of extreme violence. The extent of the silence about deeply self disturbing experiences is more widespread than most can imagine: My eyes were really opened a year ago when we talked about family um, violence in the family and how many kids have had to deal with that. I think I was really certainly na---ive about that in terms, I mean, I knew it happened (...) They ran a programme here that, a whole school programme on family violence. And they brought in um counsellors and facilitators from outside the system. We saw a presentation by (Name) and um people from the women's shelter e' in the auditorium. Everybody saw it. Then they went back to their classrooms and they talked with their teacher and a facilitator about the whole issue and. Um, out of 21 children that I had in class that day, teenagers, um 14 talked to me about some sort of incident of violence in their background. And uh, a couple came to me afterwards and then, so you're up to 16. And now you think, how many chose not to say anything? Um also at the age that they're at the 'woe is me age' sometimes, you don't know whether some of it is exaggerated or maybe they've taken little incidences that, that were really not .. you know, traumatic or something and have built them a bit more. But I'd say a substantial amount have been through traumatic things. The Domestic Scene in British and North American politics
is the primal scene of the Happy Family, the symbolic centre
of public virtue. Under its sway, to act as normal requires
a kind of structured ignorance. Remaining ignorant of that
which would disrupt normal action or the presentation of the
normal self is essential. Giving voice to the suppressed
reveals the actors in the shadows behind the domestic
dummies of the Happy Family. Hearing the submerged
discourses, draws out the forbidden knowledge, amplifying
the Biographical Self to encompass the silenced Other. (C.f.
Schostak 1993)
Possible SelvesIt is about a play of texts, the making of possible representations of the self that at once situate the self along a course of development, and constructs a realisable future by playing with possible futures for the self. A police officer spoke of her early childhood as an orphan. It was a time, for her, of intolerable powerlessness. Becoming a police officer was for her the discovery of an identity that grounded her in the community of others. To be seen in uniform gave her a sense of her own self worth and presence: to be out in the streets, to be seen. If you're seen there's no crime at all. There might be something round a block where a building's blocking you. If you're seen out in uniform it's a deterrence straight away. It's like the little old lady on the train, she likes to see you in uniform. If you're standing there in plain clothes, she doesn't know who in the hell you are. You can be Jack Smith across the road. But if you're in uniform that lady feels safe, therefore she has no worries of getting mugged on the way home. Walking down the street, I find that's great being seen in uniform. Being seen, is a major thing. When you're driving, driving a, down the street in the police truck is great, just to be seen in the area. But if we're not seen in the area equally the crime rate .... (...) (New South Wales, 1989) Becoming a police officer not only gave her access to narratives of power, but gave her the right to play out that power, to position herself biographically within a world populated by 'little old ladies', 'Jack Smith across the road' and the Other 'round a block where a building's blocking you'. These were stories that meshed with other stories told by trainee and experienced officers alike. They created an intertextual mesh that rapidly socialised trainees into the occupational culture and provided the anecdotal knowledge base of the serving officers. The power of the shared anecdote is that it is Biographically grounded, that is, it is rich with lived experience and yet imaginatively situates the self with others in the same occupational and apparently sharable reality. These are 'knowledge stories' which explain why something is known, why an alternative viewpoint cannot be correct, positions others into 'knowers', 'competents', 'incompetents', 'fools', 'wise one's', 'predators', 'victims' and so on. "I couldn't live without men." Debbie grinned at her friend Sharon. "Let's see, would you like to go out playing football with the lads? I love it. Your life is so dull. You just go home, do your homework, go to bed. Girls are so boring. I like to settle down with some rum in front of the telly. It's great." (Schostak 1985, p: 467) Debbie was a popular and powerful personality. Her provocative storying dominated social relations. Her narratives organised others, placing her own biography centre stage with others as crowds, stereotypes, bland and manipulable around her. However, when she appeared in the narratives told by teachers, she was repositioned as rebel, as trouble maker, even as dangerous. She became a case history, a story told by professionals, having institutional consequences. Story and counter story collide. No meeting, no dialogue, no turning point is possible.
Turning Points - the construction of Biographical CurriculaCentral to the history of the Biographical Self is the knowledge story or vignette that justifies a 'turning point' and its consequent course of action: Lucy: I went for an interview from the um, people down at the uh job centre, right? So, there was this girl alright, (...) OK, I was dressed in my best dress, right, an' I saw a white girl in there right. She 'ad punk sort of style, come in there with jeans an' she looked really off and - 'cos I would never like to get up in the morning an' see that, I'd run, right? That's 'ow she made me feel. So, it's a thing like, she went, or I went before 'er for interview, right? No, she went before me. So she 'ad, I hear that she had to sit back outside. So, I went for my interview an' he said, "I'll write you in the future." Right? So, I was finkin', "Ah, right, so I'll sit back outside like 'ow she's sittin' outside." (Schostak 1985, p: 320-1) It may be called a lesson in life. The anecdote had
entered circulation with other comparable stories which were
shared amongst Lucy's friends and neighbours. Together they
comprised the everyday curricular discourses. It was a
negative turning point in her life, a time when she at last
came to understand the political and economic implications
of being black in a white world. Her anger when she told the
story was intense. 2. You have kids, you get married, you have kids and you wait til they're growin' up. Well for me anyway, but like I went back to school I took a machine shop course that's how, 'cos I was quality control inspector in the factory see. And then when it closed down, well because the boy he's goin' to university now and I got one girl in college right now, and then you get divorced, things happen down the road, where you have to pick a career as though you're going to be able to survive on your own and look after yourself. And that's the position I'm in so I thought well, nursing. And I always wanted to do it. And that seems pretty stable and so I went for it. When asked why she did not work at school, the second speaker said I hated school. I hated school with a passion. The only grade I had was grade 9 when I left. And no matter what, I had, my mum was great always supported me and everything. But I was lazy. I just thought, get married and that's all it was for women, just get married and have somebody support you the rest of your life. That's that's the way I saw it back in them days (grinning). And boy was I wrong. (laughing) The more you darn well, the older you get the wiser you get. In her school years there was a kind of fateful
structuring of experience. The biographical narrative itself
point towards the way in which the fatefulness is
constructed: 'You have kids, you get married, you have kids
and you wait til they're growin' up'. It is a story of being
locked in economic and social circumstances within a
patriarchal context not of one's own making. It seems that
change may also be experienced as equally fated: the factory
closes down, 'you get divorced, things happen down the road,
where you have to pick a career as though you're going to be
able to survive on your own and look after yourself'. Or,
'the older you get the wiser you get.' Carol is an attractive fifteen year old. Her fear is age. To be forty or to be fifty years old is to her disgusting. Everyday brings a sense of loss, draws her closer to the age when she will be loathesome in the eyes of those like her now. What is her life to her? One day Carol gave her answer. She was lounging in an easy chair, stretched out sidelong on the chair and observed: (Schostak and Logan 1984: 1) The curriculum as a fateful structure has as its counter structure the educational curriculum through which the fatefulness can be suspended, new possibilities imagined, and a turning point achieved. Carol had not met such a turning point. The turning point for Lucy was at best ambivalent. It is a resolution of sorts. But it is a resolution which removed the power to change circumstances from her reach. It could be said that this was simply a recognition of the facts. For the two mature school students returning to study nursing, a different kind of turning point was achieved. They appeared to experience a genuine opening of opportunities. Although their interviews revealed many concerns with the practice of schooling, they were able to 'keep their heads down' in a way that some of their younger counterparts could not achieve. However, the resolution is ambivalent. The social and political circumstances of schooling had not changed and they felt they had no way of making changes, instead, they kept their heads down in their own best interests. The new narrative through which they could make sense of their lives made no real challenges to the status quo. Rather, it buried them further within its seductive networks of meaning.
The Politics of Curricular ActionPolitics is an attempt to totalise the fragmentary nature
of experience, to turn it into a 'direction' towards
something, a particular 'way of life', Utopia. Schooling,
whether through the school system, the media, the Churches,
is an instrument of politics. Curricular action, in this
most general sense, is made meaningful as a story told, an
imaginative grasp that ties together the pieces in a jigsaw
that never quite fit and always at some time explode away to
reformulate towards another ultimately ungraspable whole.
Each reformulation is another way of explaining the status
quo. (..) once we've got teachers and once we've got curriculum, then it's a matter of really selling .. to the students and the community, ah of what we have to offer. People have to buy in, if they're going to learn. If you're going to buy a car for example and you've got four/five models to choose from, then the model that you select is obviously the model you've bought into, whether the salesman has given you the pitch, or whatever the case is. We have to do the same thing to kids. We have to say "Look here are the skills that we can offer you, here are the things that have to happen. Alright? Life is not what you see on television, or in the movies. Alright? And we have to do this and you, if you buy in, then we can give you three or four skills, computation skills, literacy skills, you know, those kinds of things and decision making and so on. If we can do that then you're going to have a shot at doing some things for you. Schooling is a sales pitch. The individual is a design element within curriculum planning. The intention is utopian. It intends to design a world, by transforming it from one design plan to another. I think probably because .. with the 19th century model of industrialisation that we're slowly changing, other countries are further ahead um you have a tendency to have very limited knowledge of a certain area. If you have limited knowledge in one area and someone has limited knowledge in another area and so forth, it takes more effort to get those people to teamwork, to solve any problem um. I've worked in a lot of factories and that when I was going to university and uh (...) but what I found there in working in that, that situation was well 'This went wrong here, well that's not my problem'. 'That went wrong there, that's not my problem'. No one would take ownership - again we come back to that word ownership - of the whole issue. You know as long as I picked up my cheque and I did my job I'm OK. Uh, the new issue, I think, is saying, we want everyone to take responsibility for the whole thing. So for example, if we're building an automobile or whatever the case may be, you. The fact that automobile is a quality automobile is important to me. Not that I put on four bolts in the back wheel, OK and sent it on its way and I don't care if it falls apart. So I think the main advantage to what we're going to be doing is ownership, a broader base of skills, more co-operative learning, and all in all better people. OK? Because that decision making's going to be 'Well, let's do the whole thing, let's make this work'. Be more responsible citizens, maybe that's really Utopian, I don't know but I can see, why they're trying to do that. In Britain during the 1960s and early 1970s the comprehensive movement had an alternative vision, it was that: (Through little things) you hope that you're doing something towards building the uh the New Jerusalem. Y' know, in very Romantic terms uh. And hopefully when we get this, y'know, if we can get kids to believe a little bit in themselves, to have some pride in themselves they might start to take a pride in their home, in their street and maybe eventually their town and we won't get the appalling conditions we've got round, around us at the moment, of vandalism and graffiti and so on. But the, the school is so limited that that, in terms of what it can do about that on itself because there are so many other uh pressures on these kids that, that we have no control over um ... And I think the biggest evil for them at the moment is uh um is the prospect of unemployment and (...) the work opportunities appear to be shrinking. Um it's always been bad here. The last few years its got progressively worse and worse and worse. (Schostak 1985, p: 329) The vision in each case has serious flaws which are breaking open as unemployment and poverty increases in both North America and Europe, and millions in the world suffer incessent wars and starvation. The vision does not hold.
Biographical Knowledge and EducationWhat matters for education is not the totalising attempts, but the creative play in between. It is a play that challenges the fatedness of the narratives that define the Biographical Self and its courses of action in the world. The little challenges to conformity are common place. Particularly, the little rebellions of adolescence so skilfully marketed in industrialised youth culture: (Maria) has always considered that 'your true self comes out when you're drunk. Sober people tend to want to conform to each others' expectations'but as you go through the amount you have, you become relaxed and you feel free to say what you want and then you begin to get further and further into it until you don't care if they're going to accept what you say or not. So you just say whatever you want, what come into your mind, as you are not trying to hold anything back, your true self is beginning to come out'. She says that even when she doesn't drink she says things to shock people: 'because it really annoys me when people go "Oh my God, what is she doing?" I just don't like it and I don't think people should be shocked by the way other people behave. So I deliberately try and shock people anyway.' (Schostak and Davies in: Schostak 1991, p: 130) The marketing of alcohol has always capitalised upon its
effect of reducing inhibitions and revealing the 'true
self'. However, there is in her account, some thing which
seems to exist behind the self that is presented for
conformist purposes. She refers to a transformation in
consciousness that allows the true self to emerge. True or
not, appropriate or not, it provides for her a rationale and
explanation of what she does, what she feels and what she
will continue to do. Conventional health education about the
effects of alcohol was considered by her a waste of time.
Her experiences of alcohol fitted into a course of
experiences that were in themselves vital to her conception
of self. It is a way of expanding her sense of self and also
of shocking others into a recognition of alternative ways of
behaving. Alcohol in this sense is a prop. As such it fits
into alternative traditions of using consciousness altering
drugs or rituals in the culturally significant quest for the
'true self'. Her account can either be treated as a
legitimate representation of such an experience and a point
of view and thus made available for reflection and
discussion; or, rejected, silenced. Education seeks to
manifest the secretive, the silenced and to represent
alternative possibilities. The Educational Perspective:
Of course authors, researchers and practitioners can be
cited who have made enduring contributions to an empowering
form of educational perspective, a perspective capable of
critiquing cultural forms and engaging in cultural and
political action. However, educational action that is
defined in terms of curricula for 'repositioning', for
'reidentifying' and for 'redesigning horizons of
possibility', or 'redesigning the scenes for action' is not
on the agenda of the mainstream of contemporary schooling.
For this it needs the lived accounts of everyday experience,
of transitions, transformations or revolutions in perception
that can be its curriculum materials, processes and
productions. That is, it requires an alternative approach to
'knowledge', knowledge that is the result of reflection,
dialogue and debate about the issues of living. The
individual is constituted out of biographical curricula
through which a dynamic and change-oriented,
multi-dimensional self can be negotiated. To contact author: John SchostakSchool of Education and Professional Development University of East Anglia
email: j.schostak@uea.ac.uk. ReferencesSchostak, J. F. (1985) Education and the Emergence of
Individuality, unpublished Ph. D. thesis, University of
East Anglia
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