ABSTRACT
Theories of discourse have again been helpful. In Politics and Ideology in Marxist Theory
(1977), Laclau examines the nature of ideological interpellations, that is, the way
that people are discursively constructed as roles and identities. He says that there are
two main forms of interpellation: class antagonisms and popular-democratic
antagonisms. I can relate these ideas to my context. The class antagonisms I have
experienced are mainly in relation to those people in university and other third-level
or government agency settings, who place themselves ‘above’ practitioners in
workplaces, and who value technical rational forms of knowledge, and hold practical
forms of knowledge in lower regard. (This does not apply to all people in those
settings. Many colleagues working in institutional settings who hold values around
the social benefits of practitioner-based learning experience the same difficulties.)
Established hierarchical power relationships suggest that the university and its agencies
have control over what counts as legitimate knowledge and who should be regarded
as a knower. The work I have been doing with practitioners has challenged the
dominance of technical rational forms, so strategies have been exercised to keep me
and my course members under control. While I have met and challenged the
dominance of technical rational forms, I have not overcome them. I live with them,
and adapt to them. Fortunately, because I work at a distance and also maintain my
independent status as an unsalaried researcher, I enjoy relative autonomy. I am able
to interpret course content and course management in my own way, provided I
demonstrate to the university that the educational experience of course participants
is high. This has meant that course participants can research their own practice
(which they want to do) while at the same time fully meeting assignment assessment
criteria. Course participants’ results lists at university examinations boards display a
rich sprinkling of distinctions. The quality of work is not in doubt. The courses have
a 100 per cent pass rate. Validated evidence exists that course members are benefiting
from their study. I deliberately use the resources available to me to change institutional
cultures. The legitimacy of personal claims to professional knowledge is rigorously
validated and constitutes a powerful body of scholarship. The body of work
contributes to wider bodies of evidence which are systematically reconceptualising
the knowledge base of institutional knowledge.
