Explorations in teaching and learning: a biographical narrative and some enduring issues

This article takes a broad, and somewhat personal, sweep across the last 30 years or so of educational history in the United Kingdom (UK)and highlights some of the challenges concerning research, policy and practice on teaching and learning which developed over the period. Issues associated with academic agency are considered and a narrative of the author's academic biography, particularly associated with primary education, is used to illustrate some of the dilemmas posed. The author's role as director of the Teaching and Learning Research Programme of the Economic and Social Research Council, the UK's largest contemporary investment in educational research, provides a particular context for this discussion. The article concludes that teaching and learning are always in ‘changing times’, but argues that many of the underlying issues are more enduring. It illustrates how history and biography shape the development of ideas, and how they pose questions and challenges for researchers at particular historic and biographical moments. The importance of cumulative synthesis of knowledge about key enduring issues, as generated through the biographies of each generation of researchers, is suggested.