Topics covered in the book
This edited collection aims to elucidate and explore Lawrence Stenhouse's major achievements and influence on education and educational research. The book reveals that Stenhouse's major achievements were his work on the Humanities Curriculum Project (HCP) and the subsequent establishment of the Centre for Applied Research in Education (CARE). Stenhouse had a lasting influence on the educational scene long after his death in 1982. Evidence of his theories on curriculum, pedagogy and educational research can still be found in the twenty-first century, and continue to counterbalance instrumental and technocratic thinking in education.
Stenhouse espoused several beliefs and values that drove his work:
(1) Contrary to the belief that education is the transmission of culture, the classroom is a cultural laboratory and culture a resource for the development of independence, individuality and creativity. Thus, schools should use culture to liberate rather than to control individuals.
(2) A worthwhile, meaningful and thoughtful encounter with culture as a resource for creativity is within the reach of most, if not all, children. Intellectual and cultural resources should be widely accessible to all and help to shape children's future.
(3) Knowledge is provisional, and that gained through research is questionable, verifiable and differentially secure (p. 5). The application of the results of research to educational practice rather than the use of educational practice to test the findings of research is an error. Only teachers can put theories to the test in the classroom. It is thus necessary for teachers to research their own practices to achieve lasting improvements in education quality and to become lifelong learners.
(4) The epistemological purpose of educational research is not a generalisation but an application. Educational research should support rather than supplant the professional judgement of teachers (p. 37). Generalisations from educational research should be treated as working hypotheses to be tested by teachers in their particular classrooms, and not as conclusions.
These ideas were put to the test in the HCP, which was also an experiment in enquiry-based teaching strategies that teachers were encouraged to put into practice. Stenhouse's work has influenced the careers of a large number of people: teachers, teacher educators and educational researchers.
Structure of the book
The work of Stenhouse and the significance of the HCP are put into perspective and unravelled through contributions from various authors.
The book begins with a biographical portrayal of Stenhouse by Nigel Norris, an excellent choice that helps the reader to know and relate to Stenhouse as a person before learning about his work. As a reader, I appreciated finding out that he was an ordinary person like me and not a genius. He sometimes did very well at school and sometimes did not. One thing that stands out is that “teachers matter”. He was fortunate to have met some excellent teachers who had a great impact on his personal development. Like me, he started as a teacher before moving into teacher education and later becoming an academic. The chapter also gives an overview of Stenhouse's ways of thinking and his work.
The subsequent chapters by Richard Pring, Mary James, John Elliott and Ivor Goodson approach the work of Stenhouse from different angles, which allow the reader to gain a multidimensional perspective of Stenhouse's work and contributions.
In Pring's chapter “Culture, a neglected concept”, he describes three of Stenhouse's most important contributions. First, Stenhouse took both the general culture that people inherit and the cultures of learners seriously; second, he re-conceptualised “elite culture” from being for the few to being intellectual and aesthetic resources for the many; and third, he developed a pedagogy that connected and formed bridges between different cultures. This educational vision was embedded in the HCP, which also endorsed the belief of the teacher as researcher (pp. 55-57).
In “An alternative to the objectives model. The process model for the design and development of curriculum”, Mary James argues that the way in which Stenhouse regarded knowledge led to his process model of knowledge as the growth of understanding, and drove him to bring theory and practice closer together. To be successful, the process model depends on the quality of the teachers, which suggests the need for on-going professional development based on critical enquiry in the classroom, and thus the emergence of the concept of teacher as researcher (pp. 69-70).
In Chapter 4, “Teaching controversial issues, the idea of the teacher as researcher; and contemporary significance for citizenship education”, John Elliott maintains that how the discussion of controversial issues should be informed in an educationally worthwhile manner was somewhat neglected until Stenhouse, who argued that the knowledge and understanding that are relevant to discussions of human events and issues cannot be pre-specified but need to be determined within the context of discussion-based enquiry. The curriculum materials developed by the HCP team aimed to counteract the biases introduced by teachers’ interventions, such as selecting information from their particular discipline that might be biased by their own perceptions of values.
Elliott describes how the HCP promoted the notion of “teacher as researcher”, and thus conceptually linked empirical research in pedagogy with philosophical reflections on the aims of education, thereby unifying pedagogy, research and philosophical enquiry, which had become specialised and separate from each other (p. 93). Elliott also argues that Stenhouse created a model of citizenship and civic education that employed “reflective conversation” as a pedagogy, the purpose of which was to help students to understand their own and others’ distinctive outlooks and perspectives. This approach can be used to counterbalance a curriculum driven by economic ends, and, in the process, to challenge a model of citizenship education that fits into the established instrumental curriculum framework (p. 103).
In Chapter 5, “Case study and the contemporary history of education”, Ivor Goodson points out that Stenhouse was concerned with two aspects of the subject: how the case study can be developed to become exemplary and thereby provide generalisations; and how to develop a grounded educational theory within the framework of a contemporary history of education founded on case studies. Goodson explains that Stenhouse's insistence on his role as a public intellectual is central to understanding Stenhouse's work. A public intellectual is one who expects his ideas to form the basis of influence and action in the public sphere (p. 114). Stenhouse's main concern was the role of education in empowerment and social justice. His HCP (in 1967) led to the establishment of CARE in 1970, which caused the concept that educational researchers are public intellectuals to flourish, at least until the political climate changed and CARE faced a “crisis of positionality” trap and had to make a choice between vision and securing funding (p. 119).
Chapter 6, “Research as a basis for teaching”, is by Lawrence Stenhouse himself. It is interesting to read how Stenhouse argues for research as a necessary basis for good teaching. One can also use this chapter to triangulate with other chapters in the book.
In Chapter 7, “The Stenhouse legacy”, John Elliott and Nigel Norris summarise the contributions that Stenhouse has made to our understanding of pedagogical science; curriculum planning, design and assessment; the role of teachers in improving education; and educational theory and its relationship to practice (p. 137).
Relevance of Stenhouse's work for researchers of lesson and learning studies
This book will be of interest to researchers of lesson and learning studies. Stenhouse's vision that teachers will work alongside academic curriculum experts to generate pedagogical insights and understanding from experimentation in the classrooms – the vision of teachers as researchers – is realised through lesson and learning studies. His emphasis on critical scrutiny through the discussion of evidence, which is the basis for reflective teaching, dialogic learning and classroom enquiry (p. 74), is also echoed in these studies.
As a researcher who has a great interest in learning study, I read the book from a special angle. I cannot help but make comparisons between the theory and practice of learning study, and to draw insights that would enhance its further development. I found several commonalities.
The object of learning must be worthwhile: its selection for a learning study is a major concern. Stenhouse holds worthwhile topics to be those with “enduring human interest because of their importance to the human situation” (p. 20), and those that give “all young people some access to a complex cultural inheritance, some hold on their personal life and on relationships with the various communities to which they belonged, and some extension of their understanding of, and sensitivity towards, other people” (p. 20). These considerations are also taken into account in the selection of an object of learning in a learning study, in terms of its general aspect and the establishment of its relevance to students (Lo, 2012).
The object of learning is dynamic: Stenhouse regarded all knowledge as provisional and open to question. He believed that education, as induction into knowledge, is successful to the extent that it makes “the behavioural outcomes of the students unpredictable” (p. 38). This corresponds to the idea that the nature of the object of learning is dynamic, and that critical features cannot be pre-determined but are dependent on the students (Lo, 2012, p. 51).
Theories must be field tested by teachers: at a time when academic educational theory is not always tested rigorously in practice, and policy initiatives are not always based appropriately on theory and evidence, Stenhouse's HCP brought theory and practice together. He stressed that the function of educational research in its application to practice is to provide a theory of educational practice that can be tested by teachers through experiments in the classroom. Again, this is echoed in learning studies: those that are based on the framework of variation theory not only develop a shared language for reflection and discussion, but also put the theory to the test and, at the same time, generate knowledge on how to put the theory into practice.
Stenhouse believed in the direct involvement of teachers in curriculum research and development. To him, to develop a curriculum is to mount a series of educational experiments to be tested in classrooms by teachers. This is consistent with the view of lesson studies and learning studies as a necessary component of school-based curriculum development.
Knowledge is contextualised: Stenhouse claimed that he had come to believe that knowledge can only be taught correctly through some form of research-based teaching (p. 124), because when results are detached from an understanding of the research process from which they evolved, they are falsified. Researchers in lesson and learning studies are also concerned with how the professional knowledge that is generated in these studies can be shared and communicated rather than presented as a rhetoric of conclusion.
Pointers for the future development of lesson and learning studies
Stenhouse differentiated between information and knowledge. “Information is not knowledge until the factor of error, limitation or crudity in it is appropriately estimated, and it is assimilated to structures of thinking – disciplines, realms of meaning, modes of experience – which give us the means of understandings” (p. 126). To Stenhouse, the aim of teaching in its fullest sense is “to develop an understanding of the problem of the nature of knowledge through an exploration of the provenance and warrant of the particular knowledge we encounter in our field of study” (p. 126). He explained that the difference is between insight that merely increases competence and the possession of information and a type of intellectual power that can lead to emancipation. This is the level of learning to which lesson and learning studies should aspire.
According to Stenhouse, “The teacher who founds his practice of teaching upon research must adopt a research stance to his own practice: it must be provisional and exploratory” (p. 133). As researchers, we are constantly trying to “learn the wisdom which we do not possess” (p. 134). Of the many insights that can be gained from reading this book, this is of particular relevance to those involved in lesson and learning studies, and commits us to the pursuit of an ever-receding goal. The reward of research is not “from a leap towards finality, but from the gradual cumulation of knowledge through the patient definition of error. Its achievement is always provisional, the base camp for the next advance. We shall only teach better if we learn intelligently from the experience of shortfall, both in our grasp of the knowledge we offer and of our knowledge of how to offer it” (p. 134).
