ABSTRACT

In this chapter, the author provides an autobiographical account of her Ph.D. fieldwork at St. Luke's. The author begins with some caveat, because she has certain reservations about discussing the material so long after the events. She presents material from the PhD thesis, Academic Conformity Observed: Studies in the Classrooms, set in italics, with a commentary written in 1982/83. The introduction to the thesis describes the central features of her research at St. Luke's, in the context of 1972/73. The thesis had 10 chapters in 3 sections - one on the pupils and the teachers based on questionnaires, interviews, and documents; the next on the systematic observation; and then one on the unstructured observation which built to a theorised crescendo. After the description of what was in the 10 chapters, she reviews some basic literature on the 'Three Traditions'. The author recollects the access, data collection and recording, analysis, writing up, and ethics.