ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. Richard Pring in a recent collection of intellectual self-portraits by leading figures in the field of philosophy of education. The main focus of Pring's philosophical attention in the 1990s was the relationship between liberal education and vocational preparation. The topic of his contribution to Robin Barrow and Patricia White's Festschrift for Paul Hirst, of his first Victor Cook Memorial Lecture and of his book Closing the Gap. The scholars who took a serious interest in work were Christopher Winch and Judith Suissa. Winch shared Pring's ambition to reconcile liberal and vocational educational aims, and the two would later work closely together on the Nuffield Review of Education and Training. Suissa explored the limitations of Pring's liberal vocationalism in her PhD thesis, a version of which was subsequently published as Anarchism and Education.
