Will Brehm  3:26
John Furlong and Geoff Whitty, welcome to FreshEd.

John Furlong  3:29
Thank you very much indeed. It’s very good to be here. It’s very good to have an opportunity to talk about our new book.

Geoff Whitty  3:35
Yeah, good to be able to talk to you.

Will Brehm  3:38
In your new co-edited book, you look at the diversity of intellectual traditions and practices that constitute the field of education in many different countries. And you call these “knowledge traditions in the study of education”. Could you just quickly, and maybe briefly, explain what you mean by the term “knowledge tradition”?

Geoff Whitty  4:01
We mean distinct approaches to teaching and/or research in the field of education. Distinct in terms of the basis of what they see that the purpose of studying education as. And distinct in terms of the basis of their knowledge claims – the sort of knowledge that is seen as legitimate in studying education.

Will Brehm  4:28
What countries were you looking at in this book of yours?

Geoff Whitty  4:31
We brought together colleagues from Australia, China, France, Germany, Latvia, and the USA. And we also looked at the United Kingdom, where we ourselves have done research in the past. So the study draws on these different countries, and we try to distill from what we found out about the study of education in those different studies a number of different knowledge traditions.

Will Brehm  5:09
Were these countries selected because you thought that they would represent a distinct way of thinking educationally? Or were there other reasons why you brought this particular group of countries together?

Geoff Whitty  5:23
There were two reasons: One was that we thought they had interestingly different approaches in most cases, but also because we had limited funding for the research, they were countries with which we were familiar and were already visiting. So there was a sort of principled and pragmatic approach to the selection. But we did actually look at a few additional countries and came down to these six or seven countries on the basis that there were both differences and overlaps.

Will Brehm  6:02
So what are some of the broad types of knowledge traditions that you were able to identify across these different countries?

John Furlong  6:12
What we do is actually divide these different knowledge additional into three different segments. We talk about academic knowledge traditions, we talk about practical knowledge traditions, and we talk about integrated knowledge traditions. And within those, we identify 12 different traditions in all. Though I have to say that these are really a first stab at trying to identify those and there is some movement between them, and we are simply putting this forward as a way to start having a debate about these sorts of traditions. And they are different in certainly very key ways. The academic knowledge traditions, what we’re looking at is those traditions of knowledge and education that are systematic, that are principled, that have within them established ways of working that an academic community can, to different degrees, test the rigor and the appropriateness of the sorts of knowledge that’s being put forward. An example might be the tradition of the disciplines of education, what in France is called the Sciences de l’Education – those traditions which are based on the disciplines of sociology, psychology, philosophy, history, economics. Within those traditions, there are clear procedures for establishing and validating knowledge. Another academic tradition might be what we call the “new science of education”, where, very strong at the moment, actually internationally is a growing force, or way of thinking about educational knowledge. Where there is a strong emphasis on highly rigorous research methods, particularly the notion of randomized controlled trials, where the knowledge is established through those rigorous scientific research methods. So these are examples of academic knowledge traditions. We then also look at practical knowledge traditions. So for example, the tradition which is focusing on standards and competencies, where very often governments, in relation to teaching, actually define what it is to be an effective teacher, right down the forms of knowledge that teachers need to acquire. Those things are not necessarily conceptualized in the same way as academic knowledge is. They are intended to be grounded in the world of practice at the same time.

Another practical knowledge tradition that’s very powerful in the UK, particularly in England at the moment, is what we call “network knowledge production” where again, our government in England is encouraging groups of schools to work together to develop their own networked knowledge. So groups of schools will work together on key issues they’re focusing on, whether that’s on effective teaching, on the curriculum, on assessment procedures. But the argument they are using is that by sharing that knowledge, they’re producing more rigorous forms of craft knowledge that actually is applicable in a whole range of different contexts. It has a quite problematic relationship to the world of academic knowledge. Sometimes it’s got bits and pieces that are borrowed, but its focus is on shared practice. So those are different sorts of traditions that are very practical in their orientation. And finally, we look at those traditions which tended to be integrated, where there is an aspiration to try and bring together the strength of academic traditions as well as the strength of practical traditions. So for example, the whole action research/practitioner inquiry tradition is clearly part of that, as is the current interest in empirical practice for developing new teachers. What both traditions try to do is to put the student teacher or the practicing teacher at the heart of the whole process, saying that they need to start where their practical concerns are, but then they’re supported to draw on academic knowledge, rigorous research procedures, to try and understand and illuminate for themselves what it is that they’re dealing with in their own practice every day. So it’s an attempt to bring together those two different traditions.

Another one rather different, but also very interesting, a much smaller tradition, a newer tradition is what we call the “learning sciences” tradition. It’s a development of the new science approach, where rigorous analysis is undertaken, but this is a tradition which really takes ideas, a model from engineering, where scientists work together drawing on theories from theories of learning, theories of artificial intelligence where they’re developing new innovations in classroom practice. They’re then taking those into classrooms, testing them out, subjecting them to rigorous analysis, and then returning back to the university to develop a further iteration of that whole process. They’re moving backwards and forwards in trying to develop new ways of supporting learning. What’s also interesting – very different from action research – is that they’re also interested in contributing to developing the theory about learning as well. So these learning sciences, again, are kind of in this hinterland of drawing on academic traditions, but trying to work with them in ways that will actually have an impact on practice in the classroom; they’re very closely focused on real live learning situations as well as the academic traditions they’re drawing on. So that’s the broad structure of what we’ve been trying to sort out: these three different major traditions, which have a number of different elements within them.

Will Brehm  12:07
So are there strengths and weaknesses that you are able to identify among these three broad categories: one is focused on academic knowledge, one more practical knowledge, and then one that combines the two of practical and academic knowledge coming together. What are the strengths and weaknesses of academic knowledge traditions that you uncovered?

John Furlong  12:34
Academic knowledge traditions have a real strength in that they are based on rigorous knowledge that one can test, to different degrees. But if you are working within the psychology of education as an intellectual tradition, there are established procedures by which you can establish the veracity of what it is your arguments and your research is telling you. There is a community of people around there within the field of the psychology of education who understand what counts as good quality research. They can be part of the validation process. The same with all of those academic traditions to different degrees. There are ways of establishing the knowledge and the extent to which what is being put forward is good quality knowledge. And that also then allows that knowledge to accumulate over time. Those are its great strengths. The weaknesses are that it is often a different sort of knowledge from the sort of knowledge that practitioners in their everyday lives use. That’s why it’s actually represented in academic journals. They’re not necessarily the sort of journals that a classroom teacher would want to go and read, because they’re part of a different sort of conversation. They may throw light on the world of practice, but there’s a big translation process that goes on – that has to go on. And that’s their weakness. The other weakness … for example, the new science of education – the application of very rigorous scientific procedures to work to find out what works – it produces forms of knowledge which somehow, when they’re translated into the world of practice, they simply reduce the teacher themselves to a technician. They produce the sorts of evidence that tells the teacher, “Do it like this, and you will get result like this.” And in fact, in reality we know that the world of education is immensely complex and always demands that professionals themselves have to understand and engage and interpret findings from research.

So there is this big gap and there is a real problem about how those two different worlds – the world of research and the world of practice – actually relate to each other. And I think that’s why, in more recent years, there has been this interest in integrated knowledge traditions as well. If we go into the weaknesses of the practical ones, one of the great difficulties there – practical knowledge traditions – is that the knowledge that are produced through craft forms of different craft training, through competencies, through network knowledge production, there is no way in which we can actually test the validity of the knowledge that’s produced. It’s very context-specific. It’s often very individualistic. It may be that it’s very easy to apply because it’s very close to the world of practice, but it is actually very difficult to test. When someone comes up with their own theory of how things work, even if they share it with teachers across their school, or with half a dozen schools, it’s still very difficult to actually test that. It’s difficult to get that knowledge to be cumulative. Then the final one, as I said, is the integrated knowledge tradition, where people are trying to build those things together. The whole point about the action research tradition is to try and say, “We work with people who are located at a particular location, for example, inside the school, but we help them in using the procedures from research to actually illuminate and clarify what’s happening in their particular contexts.” So those are the three traditions, and those, I think, are really their main strengths and their main weaknesses. Geoff, do you want to add anything to that?

Geoff Whitty  16:32
Well, I think it’s certainly the case that the integrated knowledge traditions are trying to resolve some of the problems of the other traditions in the sense that the key question that we end with and don’t necessarily answer is, “What is powerful professional knowledge?” In the words of Karl Maton, it’s mastery of how different knowledges are brought together and changed. So in our case, academic knowledge traditions and practical knowledge traditions are being brought together in a way that can make a difference. But the integrated knowledge traditions do it in different ways. So the learning sciences, as you said, John, use an engineering model drawing on academic knowledge to produce design solutions for educational problems. Whereas, say clinical practice, gives primacy to teachers’ professional problems and draws on academic knowledges as resources as and when they may be helpful in addressing them. So there is a different emphasis. And I think, to echo what John says, in our view, you need both. For instance, a purely “what works” approach to education, which is popular with politicians at the moment, is inappropriate and does turn teachers into technicians. Because to put it simply, teachers have to make judgments all the time. So they don’t just need to know what works, they need to know when it works, where it works, why it works, with whom it works. And crucially, actually, whether what they’re doing is worthwhile in the first place. And this requires, in our view certainly, the integration of academic and practical knowledge traditions. But integration is really difficult because they are different traditions. They  have different disciplinary bases, practical bases; they have different truth claims. And so, often, they speak past each other. And the big issue for us, if we are going to have knowledge which is transformative, is to find ways of bringing context-specific and more universalistic knowledge traditions together.

Will Brehm  19:08
It’s interesting that you say the “what works” is becoming so popular in policy circles to try and find out what are the best practices for a teacher, or for learning. Usually, or often, nowadays, I hear it in terms of “global best practices”. There are these, “what works in a school in Japan, they should also work in a school in America or in the UK”. You looked at these different countries and found these different knowledge traditions, and I just wonder: these knowledge traditions, how do they look in these different countries? Do certain countries emphasize one, or do they emphasize all of them? How do they actually look differently in these different countries?

Geoff Whitty  19:58
Well, there are certainly marked differences. Probably the classic case is the difference between Germany and France, where Germany has a distinctive, rather self referential tradition of educational theorizing, whereas as in France, the study of education is much more closely linked to the broader social sciences. And similarly, to some extent in the USA. But you talk about the “what works” tradition, which is very popular at the moment. It’s part of what Pasi Sahlberg probably calls the global educational reform movement – the GERM. And it certainly is the case that some of the approaches in the context of globalization are probably becoming more common across the world, particularly the new science of education approach because it’s linked to things like the PISA studies that compare the educational performance of different countries. So that’s a huge driver towards some convergence between traditions. But it’s also the case that countries maintain their more traditional traditions while at the same time being influenced by these more global approaches fostered by OECD and so on.

John Furlong  21:35
Yes, I’d just like to chip in a bit here, take a little bit further. I’ll give some more examples. One of the case studies we’re looking at is the case of Germany, where there has been traditionally this very strongly philosophical approach to the understanding and the exploration of what “good education” should be for the child, for society. It is a very strongly moral approach to the study of education and very strongly philosophical. What’s been interesting in Germany over the last few years, is the growing number of lectureships and professorships that have been redefined so they’re no longer within that tradition, but they’re increasingly taking on the new science of education research model. That’s how those posts are being redefined. And there’s kind of a struggle going on there. We also recorded that struggle going on in Latvia, where there’s a very particular … it comes from German tradition, but it also has been influenced by the work of Dewey, by the work of Vygotsky. It’s a very particular and distinctive way of thinking about pedagogy. And that has been a philosophical and practical tradition, which is very interesting about the traditional approach in Latvia. But again, since what they call the “political redirection” of Latvia, from the 1990s onwards, that tradition has been increasingly challenged with new initiatives establishing themselves inside the universities which take this new science model as well. And in fact, inside the University of Latvia, there are now two departments – one of which is based on the new science, one of which is based on their more traditional notions of this philosophical conception of pedagogy. So I think you start to see these sorts of initiatives in a wide variety of different places. And Geoff is absolutely right: it isn’t that countries are giving up their traditional conceptions about what constitutes knowledge within the field of education, but there is evidence, from what we’ve looked at, of rather different traditions coming in being particularly simulated by how to deal with performance and working out what works to actually help compete in PISA competitions and those sorts of things.

Geoff Whitty  24:17
We could also look at China – we’ve got a chapter on China – and rather like Latvia, it’s been influenced by different traditions because of political and cultural changes. And in China, they were influenced by the Soviet tradition for a long time, but they’d also prior to that, been influenced by Dewey, as it happens – the American progressive tradition. And they’re now influenced by the new science of education. And the authors of our chapter on China point to something that’s happening now, which is an attempt to develop a much more distinctive Chinese approach to the study of education. The study of education with Chinese characteristics, as you might put it, whereby they are trying to reassert traditional Confucian approaches alongside the traditions that have been imported from the West.

Will Brehm  25:20
It seems like the new science approach has come up a few times in these different countries that you’ve looked at. Would you say that the new science approach and PISA and the OECD, it sounds like they have a huge amount of power in challenging some of these national knowledge traditions that you’ve found. So from Germany, the move to new science or from Latvia, and now also China.

Geoff Whitty  25:52
I would say “Yes and no” to that. I don’t know what John would say. I think it’s one of the features of globalization: that it is resisted and reinterpreted. As I say, in China, they are looking to reassert traditional approaches. And I think similarly, actually within the UK or the US or Australia, teachers themselves are saying: “The new science is not enough. We need our own reflective practice, our own practical theorizing.” Because education is something that is done in interaction between the teachers and learners, and is not something that is spread across the world in some mechanical way.

John Furlong  26:49
One little tweak about the new science: it is important to recognize, of course, that is actually using the idea of science to study education is not exactly new. It actually goes back to … we traced it back to a book written by a Scotsman, Alistair Bain, in 1879, called Education as a Science. And that as a strong tradition was particularly strong in the first half of the 20th century, with a strong emphasis in all sorts of research being dominated by studies of IQ, of psychological testing in a whole variety of different ways. What’s been interesting in tracing that history is that when we get into the postwar period of the 20th century, then other traditions – psychology, philosophy, history – emerge, and they don’t silence that approach but it’s just one amongst many approaches. What’s been interesting to watch in the last 10-15 years is the rediscovery of the scientific approach to the study of education and its support by governments around the world. That’s why we call it the new science, but actually it’s very important to recognize that it’s a very long tradition in our field.

Will Brehm  28:02
Would you say that the knowledge approach or the knowledge tradition of the integrated knowledge traditions are the most significant for the field of education today, or the area that is perhaps the least explored?

Geoff Whitty  28:20
I think it is where the action is. As I said earlier, I think there are different ways of integrating education knowledges and we haven’t really got one particular integrated knowledge tradition that is dominated. As I said, some of them are driven almost by a “top down” model of applying theoretical knowledge to the classroom. Others are built from the bottom by teachers studying their own practice and drawing on academic knowledge as a resource.

John Furlong  29:01
I think what I’d say is that it’s perhaps wrong to think about these as either/or. We need high quality, rigorous knowledge, whether that comes through the new science, or the applications of rigorous research procedures in a quasi-scientific mode or whether it comes from knowledge in particular intellectual traditions, whether that is from sociology or philosophy or wherever. We need those rigorous resources, but we also need to think very hard about, “What are the mediating mechanisms that actually make that knowledge of relevance to practitioners, whether they be classroom teachers or state operatives?” And that means thinking very hard about this integrated knowledge tradition approach that we’re talking about. I think we’re really only at the beginnings of working out those different sorts of ways. I think there are strengths and weaknesses about the examples that we are able to give at the moment. I do think that some of those traditions have great strengths. I think the practitioner inquiry model has great strengths, but it also has significant weaknesses as well. And I think there’s a lot more work to be done there. I think what we’re trying to do is to highlight this as a key area for further work, and explicitly for the education community to think very hard about why this arena to work in is very valuable, even though the examples we’ve got at the moment are still relatively limited.

Will Brehm  30:38
And I would add that I would imagine that the exploration of the integrated knowledge approaches, they don’t have to be nationally bound. There can be learning across all of these different countries. Just as the new sciences has moved globally, there can be opportunities to learn and innovate and adapt these sort of integrated knowledge approaches.

John Furlong  31:06
Yes, absolutely. In terms of the integrated knowledge traditions then, practitionary action inquiry, that’s very strong in the UK and Australia and in the USA. And there are very strong networks where those people collaboratively work together. The learning sciences – this newest one with the kind of engineering model – there is a strong international network of a very small number of high quality centers around the world. There’s a center here in England and in the US and Singapore has a very powerful center working collaboratively on these sorts of idea and in Sydney, Australia. And these groups are working together, quite explicitly, to develop a different way of thinking about how you link academic knowledge traditions to the world of practice. They are being networked internationally, and it’s part of their strength. I think it also needs to be part of our future, really.

Geoff Whitty  32:04
And in fact, part of the project that led to this book, brought scholars from these different countries together in Oxford a couple of years ago. And what was fascinating was, while they emphasized the nature of their own traditions in their own countries, we found an awful lot of common issues to talk about.

Will Brehm  32:30
So let me ask you a final question. In what knowledge tradition would you place your new co-edited book?

Geoff Whitty  32:38
I would say it’s located in the disciplines of education approach, but with a strong recognition of the limitations of that approach, particularly the limitations in relation to the practical knowledge and the application of knowledge in the so-called real world.

Will Brehm  32:59
Would you agree, John?

John Furlong  33:00
I would. And that’s kind of where Geoff and I are; it’s part of our history. We’re both sociologists by training but find ourselves grappling with real life, educational issues every day of our lives as well. And I think it’s that history and the context we work in that we’ve brought to this particular book

Will Brehm  33:25
Well, John Furlong, and Geoff Whitty, thank you so much for joining FreshEd. It was really wonderful to talk.

Geoff Whitty  33:31
Thank you very much indeed.

John Furlong  34:04
Thank you.

Coming soon.

Coming soon.