ABSTRACT
This book represents the culmination of a long career researching the governance of education, but it also reflects a life driven by the transforming experience of a comprehensive school, to understand and to persuade others of its value for the common good. The work has created the theory in support of comprehensive education, but does the life itself communicate more directly the significance of the cause than the abstract ideas? I want to reflect on the nature of that personal trajectory of learning before proceeding to acknowledge my gratitude to the many people to whom I owe so much for enabling my career to develop.
