Education - An 'Impossible Profession'?

Tamara Bibby is a lecturer in Learning and Teaching at the Institute of Education, University of London, UK.

• 1. Introduction  2. The Primary Task of the School?  3. Mirror, Mirror on the Wall: The Lacanian Mirror in the Classroom  4. Accountability: Winnicott in the Playless Classroom  5. Tall Poppies and Shrinking Violets: Freud, Foulkes and the Nature of Groups  6. Group Processes: Bion and the Desire Not to Know  7. When Does the Lesson Start? Thoughts, Thinking, Learning and Knowing  8. But I Think Best with My Friends: Thinking in Relationships  9. Being ‘Good Enough’: Resisting Idealisations and Taking the Risk to ‘Fail Better’

"The structure is good and the use of the field notes, data, and handling of the soft psychoanalytic concepts are something to marvel over. All at once Bibby manages to get at the heart of our educational drama. The book is a delight and much needed." Deborah Britzman, York University, Canada"I liked this book very much. It will not help us ‘cure’ the ills of the education system, but it does encourage us to think and act more mindfully about the ways in which we are being encouraged to act, as teachers and learners. One of its successes is that the author manages to bring extremely complex theory alive and put it hard to work in the task of bringing to light some of the less visible, unconscious dimensions of life in primary school classrooms. Bibby also never loses sight of the wider context, of policy and politics, culture and the family, and this strengthens the book enormously. Academic texts based on research do not always manage to be both erudite and grounded, but this one has, making it appealing for those already familiar with psychoanalytic theories, and for those readers for whom may be encountering newer territories. It will undoubtedly make an important contribution to the growing field of psychosocial studies in the field of education." Helen Lucey, Journal of Psycho-Social Studies