Ivor Goodson

About:

Ivor Goodson grew up in a village on the outskirts of Reading in Berkshire. His parents were working people: his father was a gas fitter and his mother worked in a munitions factory for a period and later as a dinner lady.

He trained in economic history at the University of London and conducted doctoral work on Irish immigrants in Victorian England. However he became increasingly drawn to the new comprehensive schools that were being built by the Labour government that had been elected in 1964 and in 1969 went back to train as a teacher at the Institute of Education in London. In 1970 he began teaching in comprehensive schools and taught history and social studies. The schools he taught in, Countesthorpe and Stantonbury Campus, were leading innovative comprehensive schools. The focus was on developing alternative pedagogies which would further social inclusion.

Frustrated by the barriers to innovations aiming at social justice he returned to the University of Sussex to study the historical patterns which underpinned barriers to social inclusion. His PhD on this subject explored the construction of school subject knowledge and its relationship to social processes. This led to his first book ‘School Subjects and Curriculum Change’ which is now in its 3rd edition. Following that book which was published in 1983 he produced a series of books which aim to explore the curriculum as a site of social contestation and social distribution. The series ‘Studies in Curriculum History’ was commissioned by Falmer Press in 1984 and led to the publication of over 20 books which established the history and sociology of curriculum construction, not just in the United Kingdom but around the world. His own contributions to the series the books ‘Social Histories of the School Curriculum’, ‘Defining the Curriculum’, ‘The Making of Curriculum’, ‘Studying School Subjects’ and ‘Subject Knowledge’ formed a corpus of books which elaborate the relationship between curriculum and society but also provide ‘how to do’ guidance on the nature of curriculum study using the historical focus.

Alongside his work on curriculum he began to develop a range of qualitative methodologies focussing on life history approaches. The first book ‘Biography, Identity and Schooling’ co-authored with Rob Walker sought to explain how life history methods could connect our understanding of personal motives and missions to wider social movements and processes. In particular his work explored the relationship between teachers life purposes and their work. The pioneering book ‘Teachers Lives and Careers’ published in 1985 and co-edited with Stephen Ball opened up a new field of study focussing on the teachers life and work. This was followed by ‘Studying Teachers Lives’ published in 1992 which took further the focus on teachers lives and explored both the methodologies and the substantive findings emerging in this field. One of his recent books ‘Professional Knowledge, Professional Lives’ looks at how understanding the teachers life and work provides new insights into why reform initiatives succeed or fail. This book is the result of a large 4-year Spencer Foundation project on stability and change in schooling focussing on the United States of America and Canada.

His most recent book ‘Learning, Curriculum and Life Politics’ seeks to bring together the stream of curriculum work with the stream of work on life history and life politics.

Many of his books are available in translation and have been published in Japan, China, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, Ireland, Portugal and Spain. Currently his collective works are being translated into Spanish, Chinese and Japanese.

Ivor is the Founding Editor of the Journal of Education Policy which he currently co-edits with Stephen Ball and Meg Maguire and is the European Editor for the journal Identity.