Response to Megan Laverty's Review of Beyond Learning

Abstract

First paragraph: In her very generous review of my book Beyond Learning, Megan Laverty raises some important, and in a sense fundamental points about the ideas put forward in the book. I find Laverty's review generous because, in hindsight, I feel that I could have knitted together the ideas presented in the book more tightly than I have managed to do. Having said this, the relatively loose fabric of the book may well provide readers with opportunities to pursue their own threads which, in terms of what I try to argue for in the book -- that educators are not there to tell others what to think, what to do, or what to be, but rather to evoke responses -- is, perhaps, not entirely a bad thing. From this angle I am quite pleased with Laverty's characterisation of the book as ‘remarkably versatile' although I should add, not without a sense of irony, that Laverty's perceptive and nuanced reconstruction of the main argument in the book is very close indeed to what I intended to convey.