Conceptions of Teacher Identity: Creating Self-Boxes as Arts-Based Self-Study

This paper presents a palimpsest of ways in which self-study draws upon arts-based methods not just as processes towards teacher development, but also as means to problematize and inquire into conceptualizations of the self. It focuses on the creation of individual self-boxes that mediate teachers’ dynamic narratives of identity. Concepts of the unitary self, the decentred self and the relationship between inner and outer experience are challenged and illustrated through two interlapping stories made manifest through the creation of self-boxes. From time immemorial man has known that he is the subject most deserving of his own study, but he has also fought shy of treating this subject as a whole, that is, in accordance with its total character. (Buber, 1947, p. 140)

“Telling Tales About Men: Conceptions of Conscientious Objectors to Military Service in the First World War”

Review

‘Playing it by the rules': the politics of research in ‘race' and education

This article offers an examination of the interplay between politics, ethics, theory and methodology as they impact upon social research, through a critical analysis of the ethnographic study conducted by Peter Foster. It will be argued that his highly contentious claim to have found no manifestations of racism (either direct or indirect) throughout his study of an inner-city, multi-ethnic comprehensive school was, in the last analysis, both misleading and inaccurate. It will be contended that such claims were based upon a research design and methodology which were ultimately determined by his own political orientation and the ethical and theoretical positions which he developed as a consequence.