ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests a new version of research partnership that erodes the boundary between research and continuing professional development, and between practitioners and researchers in pedagogy. Sociocultural psychology allows a weaving together of mind and action, individual and group, macro- and micro-contexts, and historical framings in order to help us see how individuals are positioned within the possibilities for action available to them and what they make of those opportunities. As a social science it has a great deal to offer a research agenda for pedagogy in the new knowledge age. In France the events of 1968 led to an assertion of pedagogy, at the expense of the traditional subjects, as a means of dealing with the intellectual frustrations the disruptions represented. However, Francine Best recalls how pedagogy was again 'sunk' in France by the mid-1980s because, she argues, it was deliberately confused with non-directive education and sacrificed in the path of an emphasis on knowledge.
