Managing Marginality: teacher development through grounded life history

Abstract

In exploring an exceptional educational event in his school, a teacher had recourse to his life history. The event was the fullest expression in his teaching to date of his self, and to understand the event fully, it was necessary to see how that self had come into being, developed, resisted attack, been mortified, survived, and at times prospered. His philosophy of teaching was rooted in these childhood experiences, which he saw as starkly divided between the alienating world of formal schooling and a natural world of real learning. Critical incidents and degradation ceremonies marked those occasions when the two came into conflict. The sense of marginality that resulted has stayed with him throughout life, though it has had its moments of exquisite pleasure as well as intense pain. In managing his marginality, he has cultivated private places and a reference group of significant others who have supported and developed his preferred beliefs. But success in teaching is the main support. Finally, I discuss grounded life history as a research method, and as yet another potential resource for the teacher.