Professor Michael Fielding
Schools for Deep Democracy:in praise of radical
traditions of publicly-funded education
Michael Fielding is Emeritus Professor
of Education at the Institute of Education, University of London.
Some of his innovative research work (he coined the term Joint
Practice Development) is currently influencing professional
learning in schools. Widely published in the fields of student
voice, educational leadership and radical education, his
co-authored book with Peter Moss, Radical Education and the Common
School – a democratic alternative was published in January
2011.
Lecture content
At a time when parliamentary democracy
is facing recurring challenges, particularly, though not
exclusively,from young people, it is especially reprehensible that
neither our schools nor our publicly funded systems of education
take democracy as seriously as they could or should.
There are, however, exceptions and it
is to our alternative radical democratic traditions of state
education that we can usefully turn to challenge the current
‘dictatorship of no alternative’ to the tyranny of the market and
the unguent condescension of our ruling elite. Drawing on his 20
years as a teacher in some of England’s radical comprehensive
schools and over two decades of engaged research and writing in
three universities, Michael Fielding will not only argue that we
should ‘build a new world in the shell of the old’, but offer
examples of what a radical democratic school looks like and feels
like in practice.