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Abstract
Between 1972 and 1975 Eric Midwinter, Principal of the Liverpool Teachers’ Centre, established a unified organisational structure responsible for delivering continuing professional development (CPD) to Liverpool schools. His ambition was to embed community education practices across the city’s entire teaching force. However, during a seven-week period crossing Christmas and New Year 1976, the concept of a unified teachers’ centre was abandoned. Historical analysis of these events raises levels of historical awareness amongst educationists in order to open their eyes to ‘the real nature of their work’. Taking a long view of the relationship between serving teachers and the professionals who provide their CPD offers a new perspective on the potential of ‘in-service’ training to embed an educational philosophy, organisationally and ideologically, within the practice of teachers on a macro scale. Events in Liverpool suggest that the vested interests of professional groups outweigh the impetus for radical change.
Notes
1 Brian Simon, Education and the Social Order 1940–1990 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1991), 16.
2 Wendy Robinson and Marie Bryce, ‘“Willing Enthusiasts” or “Lame Ducks”? Issues in Teacher CPD Policy in England and Wales 1910–1975’, Paedagogica Historica 49, no. 3 (2013): 346. The project’s title is ‘Revisiting Teacher CPD: Past and Present Models’.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid., 346.
5 Ibid., 347.
6 Ken Jones, Education in Britain. 1944 to the Present (London: Polity, 2003), 53.
7 Simon, Education and the Social Order 1940–1990, 17.
8 See for example, Eric Midwinter, Education – A Priority Area (London: NUT, October 1970); Eric Midwinter, Projections: An Educational Priority Area at Work (London: Ward Lock, 1972); Eric Midwinter, Priority Education: An Account of the Liverpool Project (London: Penguin, 1972) and, Eric Midwinter, ‘Teachers’ Centres: The Facilitators’, British Journal of In-Service Education 1, no. 1 (1974): 10–14.
9 Eric Midwinter, ‘The Vulnerability of Innovation, or, but look what happened to Rolls Royce’, in Personal papers, unpublished, not dated.
10 Robinson and Bryce, ‘“Willing Enthusiasts” or “Lame Ducks”?’, 345.
11 Chun Lin, The British New Left (Edinburgh: University Press, 1993), 44.
12 Michael Kenny, The First New Left (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1995), 93.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid., 95.
15 Ibid., 58.
16 Ibid., 112.
17 Ibid., 60.
18 Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-Identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (London: Polity, 1991), 210.
19 LEPA, Projectile, Journal of the Liverpool Educational Priority Area Project 1, no. 1 (1969): 5.
20 Henry Giroux, ‘Foreword’, in Paolo Freire and Donaldo Macedo, Literacy: Reading the Word and the World (London: Routledge, 1987), 2.
21 Ibid., 2.
22 Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, On Ideology (London: Hutchinson, 1997), 186.
23 Ibid.
24 Bob Ashcroft and Keith Jackson, ‘Adult Education and Social Action’, in Community Work One, ed. David Jones and Marjorie Mayo (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1974), 44–65.
25 Ibid., 49.
26 Ibid.
27 Keith Jackson and Bob Ashcroft, Institute of Extension Studies, University of Liverpool, ‘Adult Education, Deprivation and Education – A Critique’ (paper presented at the Nuffield Teacher Enquiry conference, ‘Social Deprivation and Change in Education’, University of York, April 1972).
28 Giroux, in Literacy: Reading the Word and the World, 4.
29 Carlo Raffo, ‘Educational Equity in Poor Urban Contexts – Exploring Issues of Place/Space and Young People's Identity and Agency’, British Journal of Educational Studies 59, no. 1 (2011): 14.
30 Jenny Ozga and Martin Lawn, Teachers Professionalism and Class (London: Falmer Press, 1981), 123.
31 Ibid.
32 Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies, On Ideology, 174.
33 Simon, Education and the Social Order 1940–1990, 16.
34 Times Educational Supplement, ‘News’, September 10, 2010.
35 Robert McCormick, ‘The State of the Nation in CPD: A Literature Review’, Curriculum Journal 21, no. 4 (2010): 395.
36 Gary McCulloch and William Richardson, Historical Research in Educational Settings (Buckingham: Open University Press, 2000).
37 Robinson and Bryce, ‘“Willing Enthusiasts” or “Lame Ducks”?’, 358.
38 Board of Education, Teachers and Youth Leaders (The McNair Report), Report of the Committee appointed by the President of the Board of Education to consider the Supply, Recruitment and Training of Teachers and Youth Leaders (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1944).
39 DES, Teacher Education and Training (The James Report) (London: HMSO, 1972), paras 1.3–1.8, cited in Donald Simpson, The Responses of Local Education Authorities to Changes in Their Functions: A Study of In-Service Education and Training (PhD thesis, Open University, 1998).
40 DES, White Paper, Education a Framework for Expansion (London: HMSO, 1972), para. 57.
41 Jones, Education in Britain: 1944 to the Present, 54.
42 Dick Weindling and Margaret I. Reid, ‘INSET Curriculum Development and Teachers’ Centres’, Educational Research 25, no. 3 (1983): 163–70.
43 Bob Gough, ‘Teachers’ Centres as seen through the Pages of the British Journal of In-Service Education’, British Journal of In-Service Education 23, no. 1(1997): 23–9.
44 Ibid., 24.
45 Ibid., 25.
46 Gough, ‘Teachers’ Centres as Providers of In-service Education’, 11–14.
47 Malcolm Lee, ‘Teachers Centres and Life Long Education’, British Journal of In-Service Education 2, no. 1 (1975): 55–60.
48 Keith Williams, ‘The North of England Educational Priority Area projects 1968–1971: An Area-based Response to Educational Underachievement’ (PhD thesis, University of London, Institute of Education, 2012).
49 Margaret Thatcher to A.H. Halsey, letter, September 13, 1972 in George Smith, Personal EPA papers, Oxford.
50 Gerald Grace, Teachers, Ideology and Control A Study in Urban Education (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), 79.
51 Ibid., 1.
52 National EPA Project Progress Report on the Establishment of a National Institute for Community Education, Spring 1971, in George Smith, personal EPA papers, Oxford.
53 Midwinter, Education – A Priority Area.
54 The Sun, the Daily Mirror, the Daily Post, all October 16, 1970.
55 The Guardian, the Daily Mail, both October 16, 1970.
56 Morning Star, Daily Sketch, Teachers World, all October 16, 1970.
57 Michael Young, ‘Proposal for a National EPA Centre’ (Cambridge: Advisory Centre for Education, 1971), 1, in George Smith personal EPA papers, Oxford. See also, Times Educational Supplement, February 5, 1971.
58 Young, ‘Proposal for a National EPA Centre’, 2.
59 Ibid., 8.
60 Ibid.
61 LEPA Steering Committee minutes, September 24, 1971 in George Smith, personal EPA papers, Oxford.
62 See, for example, Jean Floud and A.H. Halsey, ‘Homes and schools: social determinants and educability’, Educational Research 2, no. 2 (1961).
63 Eric Midwinter in email correspondence with the author, February 2007.
64 Ibid.
65 Midwinter, Projections: An Educational Priority Area at Work .
66 Ibid.
67 Midwinter, Priority Education: An Account of the Liverpool Project, 8.
68 Eric Midwinter in email correspondence with the author, October 2006.
69 Ibid.
70 Ibid.
71 Midwinter, ‘The Vulnerability of Innovation’.
72 Eric Midwinter in email correspondence with the author, September 2012.
73 Midwinter, ‘Teachers’ Centres: The Facilitators’, 11.
74 Keith Baker, ‘A Review of Current Induction Programmes for New Teachers’, British Journal of In-Service Education 2, no. 3 (1976): 179–86.
75 Eric Midwinter in email correspondence with the author, September 2012.
76 Ibid.
77 C.M. Darcy, ‘Notes on Priority’s Demise’, not dated, in Eric Midwinter, personal EPA papers.
78 Ibid., 2.
79 Ibid., 3.
80 Midwinter, The Vulnerability of Innovation, 3.
81 Midwinter in email correspondence with the author, September 15, 2012.
82 Midwinter, The Vulnerability of Innovation, 5.
83 Ibid.
84 Ibid., 4.
85 Ibid.
86 Eric Midwinter in discussion with the author, Harpenden, June 18, 2009.
87 Ibid.
88 Ibid.
89 Ibid.
90 Ibid., 6.
91 Ibid.
92 Flora Macleod, ‘Parental Involvement in Education: The Coventry Experience’, Early Child Development and Care 21, no. 1 (1985): 83–90; and, John Rennie, British Community Primary Schools (Brighton: Falmer Press, 1985).
93 See http://www.recentres.org.uk/index.html and, http://religiouseducationcouncil.org.uk/members/rec-members/federation-of-re-centres, both accessed February 18, 2014.
94 Midwinter in email correspondence with the author, February 2007.
95 Denis Lawton, ‘Teacher Education’, in Max Morris and Clive Griggs, Education – The Wasted Years 1973–1986 (Lewes: Falmer Press, 1988), ch. 9, 160–72, 162.
96 Ibid., 163.
97 V. Darleen Opfer and David Pedder, ‘Benefits, Status and Effectiveness of Continuous CPD for Teachers in England’, Curriculum Journal 21, no. 4 (2010): 413–31.
98 McCormick, The State of the Nation, 406.
99 Etienne Wenger, Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).
100 McCormick, The State of the Nation, 407.
101 Michael Eraut, In-Service Education for Innovation (London: National Council for Educational Technology, 1972), 3.
102 Richard Pring, Speech at the Philosophy of Education Society annual conference, New College, Oxford, 1993.
103 David Hargreaves, ‘The New Professionalism: The Synthesis of Professional and Institutional Development’, Teaching and Teacher Education 10, no. 4 (1994): 423–38, 425.
104 Ibid., 426.
105 Midwinter, ‘Teachers’ Centres: The Facilitators’, 10.
106 Ibid.
107 Grace, Teachers, Ideology and Control A Study in Urban Education, 81.
108 Ibid., 79.
109 Ibid., 82.
110 Jack Howe (1983) cited in Gough, ‘Teachers’ Centres as seen through the Pages of the British Journal of In-Service Education’, 23–29.
111 Robinson and Bryce, ‘“Willing Enthusiasts” or “Lame Ducks”?’, 348.
112 Ibid.
113 Gough, ‘Teachers’ Centres as seen through the Pages of the British Journal of In-Service Education’, 27.
114 Weindling and Reid, ‘INSET Curriculum Development and Teachers’ Centres’, 170.
115 Michael Grenfell, Bourdieu and Education: Acts of Practical Theory (Florence, KY: Taylor & Francis, 1998), 161.
116 Lois McNay, ‘Gender, Habitus and the Field: Pierre Bourdieu and the Limits of Reflexivity Theory’, Culture and Society 16, no. 1 (1999): 105.
117 Ibid., 105.
118 Ibid., 106.
119 Paul Widlake, Reducing Educational Disadvantage (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1986), 70.
120 Rachel Sharp and Andrew Green, Education and Social Control: A Study in Progressive Primary Education (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1975), cited in Paul Widlake, Reducing Educational Disadvantage (Milton Keynes: Open University Press, 1986), 13.
121 Ibid.
122 Ibid., 16.
123 James McKernan, Curriculum Action Research: A Handbook of Methods and Resources for the Reflective Practitioner (London: Kogan Page, 1996), 23.
124 Projectile (Liverpool: LEPA, Autumn 1971), 1.
125 John Dewey, ‘The Future of Liberalism’, Journal of Philosophy 32, no. 9 (1935): 225–30.
126 Simon, The State and Educational Change, 9.
127 Projectile (Liverpool: LEPA, Autumn 1971), 1.
128 Ibid.
129 Simon, The State and Educational Change, 5.
130 Ibid., 9.
131 Jones, Education in Britain: 1944 to the Present, 89.
132 Ibid.
133 Jurgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests (Cambridge: Polity, 1987), cited in Anthony Giddens, Modernity and Self-identity: Self and Society in the Late Modern Age (London: Polity, 1991), 211.
134 Simon, The State and Educational Change, 16.
135 Ibid., 17.