ABSTRACT
Reflecting upon his work, some three years after writing Closely Observed Children, Michael Armstrong wrote: ‘I believe that educational theory finds its most appropriate expression within the practice of sustained description.’ 1 The emphasis I have placed upon my descriptive accounts of some of the activity of the children in Chris Harris’s class reflects the same belief that it is by describing rather than by naked theorizing that we gain some insight into the child’s mind. Nevertheless, it is through these descriptions that threads of theory emerge. The attempt to tease out these threads is an essential part of the reflective process which is at the heart of an enquiry. Just as Ian had to take a step back from his experience of measuring in order to reach a more enlightened view about the mid-point of his aeroplane wing (p. 72), or Helen and Karen ‘operated upon’ their experience of the bridge when they came to write about it (p. 100), so we also must, at times, take a more distanced view of our descriptions of classroom life. But Michael Armstrong’s comments suggest a warning: that any attempt to set too great a distance between the descriptions of the particular and the theory which underlies or emerges from them will inevitably lead to theorization which is sterile, leaves the child and the classroom out of focus and can play little part in our practice of teaching children and understanding them.
