ABSTRACT

In this chapter, I write about Stephen J. Ball, the professor who shaped my intellectual life, offered me a vision and a way of approaching the world, and stirred my desire for meaning and significance. For the most part, I consider the ways in which he has influenced how I think about education—and also (and perhaps primarily) about my own self. As a result, this chapter actually puts me under revision. It is a form of critique on and examination of myself, and it is about the realisation of what I have become, what I want, and what I do not want to be—realisations that were enabled in part by my dissertation work and my doctoral studies in general, which were carried out with the help of Stephen J. Ball.